Skip to content

Tesla Robotaxi Freaks Out and Drives into Oncoming Traffic on First Day

Technology
181 113 680
  • I saw the Tesla Robotaxi:

    • Drive into oncoming traffic, getting honked at in the process.
    • Signal a turn and then go straight at a stop sign with turn signal on.
    • Park in a fire lane to drop off the passenger.

    And that was in a single 22 minute ride. Not great performance at all.

    I am entirely opposed to driving algorithms. Autopilot on planes works very well because it is used in open sky and does not have to make major decisions about moving in close proximity to other planes and obstacles. Its almost entirely mathematical, and even then in specific circumstances it is designed to disengage and put control back in the hands of a human.

    Cars do not have this luxury and operate entirely in close proximity to other vehicles and obstacles. Very little of the act of driving a car is math. It's almost entirely decision making. It requires fast and instinctive response to subtle changes in environment, pattern recognition that human brains are better at than algorithms.

    To me this technology perfectly encapsulates the difficulty in making algorithms that mimic human behavior. The last 10% of optimization to make par with humans requires an exponential amount more energy and research than the first 90% does. 90% of the performance of a human is entirely insufficient where life and death is concerned.

    Investment costs should be going to public transport systems. They are more cost efficient, more accessible, more fuel/resource efficient, and far far far safer than cars could ever be even with all human drivers. This is a colossal waste of energy time and money for a product that will not be par with human performance for a long time. Those resources could be making our world more accessible for everyone, instead they're making it more accessible for no one and making the roads significantly more dangerous. Capitalism will be the end of us all if we let them. Sorry that train and bus infrastructure isnt "flashy enough" for you. You clearly havent seen the public transport systems in Beijing. The technology we have here is decades behind and so underfunded its infuriating.

  • this would get a normal person's car impounded and drivers license revoked. why can a company get away with it?

    They had so many cameras on this car, how many laws do you think each average driver breaks every 22 minutes?

    It would be interesting if they could figure out why the car chose to do these specific things,

  • I am entirely opposed to driving algorithms. Autopilot on planes works very well because it is used in open sky and does not have to make major decisions about moving in close proximity to other planes and obstacles. Its almost entirely mathematical, and even then in specific circumstances it is designed to disengage and put control back in the hands of a human.

    Cars do not have this luxury and operate entirely in close proximity to other vehicles and obstacles. Very little of the act of driving a car is math. It's almost entirely decision making. It requires fast and instinctive response to subtle changes in environment, pattern recognition that human brains are better at than algorithms.

    To me this technology perfectly encapsulates the difficulty in making algorithms that mimic human behavior. The last 10% of optimization to make par with humans requires an exponential amount more energy and research than the first 90% does. 90% of the performance of a human is entirely insufficient where life and death is concerned.

    Investment costs should be going to public transport systems. They are more cost efficient, more accessible, more fuel/resource efficient, and far far far safer than cars could ever be even with all human drivers. This is a colossal waste of energy time and money for a product that will not be par with human performance for a long time. Those resources could be making our world more accessible for everyone, instead they're making it more accessible for no one and making the roads significantly more dangerous. Capitalism will be the end of us all if we let them. Sorry that train and bus infrastructure isnt "flashy enough" for you. You clearly havent seen the public transport systems in Beijing. The technology we have here is decades behind and so underfunded its infuriating.

    This technology purely exists to make human drivers redundant and put the money in the hands of big tech and eventually the ruling class composed off of politicians risk averse capitalists and beurocracy.
    There is no other explanation for robo taxis to exist. There are better solution like trains and metros which can solve the movement of people from point A to point B easily. It does not come with a 3x-10x capital growth that making human drivers redundant will for the big tech companies.

  • I saw the Tesla Robotaxi:

    • Drive into oncoming traffic, getting honked at in the process.
    • Signal a turn and then go straight at a stop sign with turn signal on.
    • Park in a fire lane to drop off the passenger.

    And that was in a single 22 minute ride. Not great performance at all.

    Fucking hell. We don't let drunks drive taxis, and that goddamn thing drove like it was under the influence.

    Does Tesla get sent tickets for traffic violations, or are we OK with this?

  • If we're gonna let them on the road, I say that software should get points just like a driver, but when it gets suspended all the cars running that software get shut down.

    How about we leave the driving to people, and not pre-alpha software?

    There's no accountability for this horribly dangerous driving, so they shouldn't be on the road. Period.

  • I saw the Tesla Robotaxi:

    • Drive into oncoming traffic, getting honked at in the process.
    • Signal a turn and then go straight at a stop sign with turn signal on.
    • Park in a fire lane to drop off the passenger.

    And that was in a single 22 minute ride. Not great performance at all.

    The rent seeking is so hard with this automate-the-profits bullshit.

    The moment we perfect auto-taxis the service should be a public benefit and run by a nonprofit.

  • Not great performance at all.

    That's better than I was expecting to be perfectly honest.

    I'm pretty impressed with the technology, but clearly it's not ready for field use.

    Yeah, it's a few years away from being ready. Plus the dumb shits need to backpedal on this "cameras for everything!" idiocy.

    I'm surprised the taxis aren't being driven remotely while Musk lies about their amazing AI or whatever.

  • Fucking hell. We don't let drunks drive taxis, and that goddamn thing drove like it was under the influence.

    Does Tesla get sent tickets for traffic violations, or are we OK with this?

    I'm sure they're legal team is hard at work trying to find loopholes to circumvent any traffic infringements

  • The rent seeking is so hard with this automate-the-profits bullshit.

    The moment we perfect auto-taxis the service should be a public benefit and run by a nonprofit.

    NYC Mayoral candidate Mamdani is talking about making busses free, and that makes a radical shitload of sense.

    Free autotaxis would be a boon for productivity and personal freedom, like AI promises to be but democratized for everybody rather than just the richest fraction of a percent.

  • To quote AVCH, "His controller disconnected."

  • Hehe got it in one.

    Some people will find him unbearable or a bit repetitive, but he really enjoys himself.

    Favorite phrases of his seem to be
    Apocalyptic Dingleberry
    His name is John Sena
    Woa Woa Woa.
    Play stupid games win stupid prizes.
    NPC move.
    Need to know when to pull out.
    You're not in the UK now.

  • I saw the Tesla Robotaxi:

    • Drive into oncoming traffic, getting honked at in the process.
    • Signal a turn and then go straight at a stop sign with turn signal on.
    • Park in a fire lane to drop off the passenger.

    And that was in a single 22 minute ride. Not great performance at all.

    The Tesla is is just following the regional driving style. Humans make the same mistakes at 15:06

    /s

  • I'm sure they're legal team is hard at work trying to find loopholes to circumvent any traffic infringements

    Depending on how exactly the laws are worded, they might even get away without paying fines. Many traffic codes define that only the driver (not the owner of the car) can be fined, and these robo taxis don't have drivers.

  • NYC Mayoral candidate Mamdani is talking about making busses free, and that makes a radical shitload of sense.

    Free autotaxis would be a boon for productivity and personal freedom, like AI promises to be but democratized for everybody rather than just the richest fraction of a percent.

    People are going to take a shit in them. And ride them around for fun

  • ...oh, that's just the vietnam regional setting...

    It could be the south or west of France too. Driving as if you were drunk is a universal skill.

  • I am entirely opposed to driving algorithms. Autopilot on planes works very well because it is used in open sky and does not have to make major decisions about moving in close proximity to other planes and obstacles. Its almost entirely mathematical, and even then in specific circumstances it is designed to disengage and put control back in the hands of a human.

    Cars do not have this luxury and operate entirely in close proximity to other vehicles and obstacles. Very little of the act of driving a car is math. It's almost entirely decision making. It requires fast and instinctive response to subtle changes in environment, pattern recognition that human brains are better at than algorithms.

    To me this technology perfectly encapsulates the difficulty in making algorithms that mimic human behavior. The last 10% of optimization to make par with humans requires an exponential amount more energy and research than the first 90% does. 90% of the performance of a human is entirely insufficient where life and death is concerned.

    Investment costs should be going to public transport systems. They are more cost efficient, more accessible, more fuel/resource efficient, and far far far safer than cars could ever be even with all human drivers. This is a colossal waste of energy time and money for a product that will not be par with human performance for a long time. Those resources could be making our world more accessible for everyone, instead they're making it more accessible for no one and making the roads significantly more dangerous. Capitalism will be the end of us all if we let them. Sorry that train and bus infrastructure isnt "flashy enough" for you. You clearly havent seen the public transport systems in Beijing. The technology we have here is decades behind and so underfunded its infuriating.

    Public transport systems are just part of a mobility solution, but it isn't viable to have that everywhere. Heck, even here in The Netherlands, a country the size of a post stamp, public transport doesn't work outside of the major cities. So basically, outside of the cities, we are also relying on cars.

    Therefore, I do believe there will be a place for autonomous driving in the future of mobility and that it has the potential to reduce number of accidents, traffic jams and parking problems while increasing the average speed we drive around with.

    The only thing that has me a bit worried is Tesla's approach to autonomous driving, fully relying on the camera system. Somehow, Musk believes a camera system is superior to human vision, while it's not. I drive a Tesla (yeah, I know) and if the conditions aren't perfect, the car disables "safety' features, like lane assist. For instance when it's raining heavily or when the sun is shining directly into the camera lenses. This must be a key reason in choosing Austin for the demo/rollout.

    Meanwhile, we see what other manufacturers use and how they are progressing. For instance, BMW and Mercedes are doing well with their systems, which are a blend of cameras and sensors. To me, that does seem like the way to go to introduce autonomous driving safely.

  • I saw the Tesla Robotaxi:

    • Drive into oncoming traffic, getting honked at in the process.
    • Signal a turn and then go straight at a stop sign with turn signal on.
    • Park in a fire lane to drop off the passenger.

    And that was in a single 22 minute ride. Not great performance at all.

    What real world problem does this solve?

  • What real world problem does this solve?

    Task automation

  • Public transport systems are just part of a mobility solution, but it isn't viable to have that everywhere. Heck, even here in The Netherlands, a country the size of a post stamp, public transport doesn't work outside of the major cities. So basically, outside of the cities, we are also relying on cars.

    Therefore, I do believe there will be a place for autonomous driving in the future of mobility and that it has the potential to reduce number of accidents, traffic jams and parking problems while increasing the average speed we drive around with.

    The only thing that has me a bit worried is Tesla's approach to autonomous driving, fully relying on the camera system. Somehow, Musk believes a camera system is superior to human vision, while it's not. I drive a Tesla (yeah, I know) and if the conditions aren't perfect, the car disables "safety' features, like lane assist. For instance when it's raining heavily or when the sun is shining directly into the camera lenses. This must be a key reason in choosing Austin for the demo/rollout.

    Meanwhile, we see what other manufacturers use and how they are progressing. For instance, BMW and Mercedes are doing well with their systems, which are a blend of cameras and sensors. To me, that does seem like the way to go to introduce autonomous driving safely.

    There's usually buses from villages into the major cities though, it live in one and there's a bus every hour to go to a nearby city, from where I can then take a train. I wouldn't say it's that bad

  • Elon has enough fuck-you money to pay off anyone who would've complained.

    He also paid his way into a government position to shut down the government offices that opposed him.

  • Google Keeps Making Smartphones Worse

    Technology technology
    11
    1
    130 Stimmen
    11 Beiträge
    0 Aufrufe
    S
    I really want to try a pinephone or something with Ubuntu touch. It’s likely not daily driver ready but I’m still curious at how far along it is.
  • I doubt this is the case.

    Technology
    7
    3 Stimmen
    7 Beiträge
    0 Aufrufe
    A
    How is it not a desktop? My steamdeck is as much of a desktop as my laptop.
  • I will fully switch when installing mods are just as easy as windows.

    Technology
    4
    1 Stimmen
    4 Beiträge
    0 Aufrufe
    A
    I cant commend on the first 3 but im a huge rimworld enjoyer and i've had 0 issues modding on linux. Steamworkshop works as expected and even RimPy launcher workers natively on linux.
  • 262 Stimmen
    10 Beiträge
    0 Aufrufe
    Z
    than you would expect. The cause might be somewhere in your expectations...
  • We're Not Innovating, We’re Just Forgetting Slower

    Technology technology
    39
    1
    287 Stimmen
    39 Beiträge
    0 Aufrufe
    P
    Gotcha, thank you for the extra context so I understand your point. I'll respond to your original statement now that I understand it better: I ALSO think the author would prefer more broad technical literacy, but his core arguement seemed to be that those making things dont understand the tech they’re built upon and that unintended consequences can occur when that happens. I think the author's argument on that is also not a great one. Lets take your web app example. As you said, you can make the app, but you don't understand the memory allocation, and why? Because the high level language or framework you wrote it in does memory management and garbage collection. However, there are many, many, MANY, more layers of abstraction beside just your code and the interpreter. Do you know the webserver front to back? Do you know which ring your app or the web server is operating in inside the OS (ring 3 BTW)? Do you know how the IP stack works in the server? Do you know how the networking works that resolves names to IP addresses or routes the traffic appropriately? Do you know how the firewalls work that the traffic is going over when it leaves the server? Back on the server, do you know how the operating system makes calls to the hardware via device drivers (ring 1) or how those calls are handled by the OS kernel (ring 0)? Do you know how the system bus works on the motherboard or how the L1, L2, and L3 cache affect the operation and performance of the server overall? How about that assembly language isn't even the bottom of abstraction? Below that all of this data is merely an abstraction of binary, which is really just the presence or absence of voltage on a pit or in a bit register in ICs scattered across the system? I'll say probably not. And thats just fine! Why? Because unless your web app is going to be loaded onto a spacecraft with a 20 to 40 year life span and you'll never be able to touch it again, then having all of that extra knowledge and understanding only have slight impacts on the web app for its entire life. Once you get one or maybe two levels of abstraction down, the knowledge is a novelty not a requirement. There's also exceptions to this if you're writing software for embedded systems where you have limited system resources, but again, this is an edge case that very very few people will ever need to worry about. The people in those generally professions do have the deep understanding of those platforms they're responsible for. Focus on your web app. Make sure its solving the problem that it was written to solve. Yes, you might need to dive a bit deeper to eek out some performance, but that comes with time and experience anyway. The author talks like even the most novice people need the ultimately deep understanding through all layers of abstraction. I think that is too much of a burden, especially when it acts as a barrier to people being able to jump in and use the technology to solve problems. Perhaps the best example of the world that I think the author wants would be the 1960s Apollo program. This was a time where the pinnacle of technology was being deployed in real-time to solve world moving problems. Human kind was trying to land on the moon! The most heroic optimization of machines and procedures had to be accomplished for even a chance for this to go right. The best of the best had to know every. little. thing. about. everything. People's lives were at stake! National pride was at stake! Failure was NOT an option! All of that speaks to more of what the author wants for everyone today. However, that's trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist today. Compute power today is CHEAP!!! High level program languages and frameworks are so easy to understand that programming it is accessible to everyone with a device and a desire to use it. We're not going to the moon with this. Its the kid down the block that figured out how to use If This Then That to make a light bulb turn on when he farts into a microphone. The beauty is the accessibility. The democratization of compute. We don't need gatekeepers demanding the deepest commitment to understanding before the primitive humans are allowed to use fire. Are there going to be problems or things that don't work? Yes. Will the net benefit of cheap and readily available compute in the hands of everyone be greater than the detriments, I believe yes. It appears the author disagrees with me. /sorry for the wall of text
  • Say Hello to the World's Largest Hard Drive, a Massive 36TB Seagate

    Technology technology
    256
    1
    604 Stimmen
    256 Beiträge
    16 Aufrufe
    A
    Thank you for all this information. One day when my ADHD forces me into a making myself a home server I'll remember this and keep it in mind. I've always wanted to store movies but these days just family pictures and stuff. Definitely don't have terabytes but I'm getting up 100s of gb.
  • 471 Stimmen
    65 Beiträge
    285 Aufrufe
    J
    my question was not directed at you Sorry for that, but you could say "it's NoneOfUrBusiness" (their username)
  • 6 Stimmen
    19 Beiträge
    46 Aufrufe
    J
    Bleep bleep bloop indeed human, affirmative, am human, ...thinking... Well to the best of my knowledge anyway