- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
The U.S. government’s road safety agency is again investigating Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” system, this time after getting reports of crashes in low-visibility conditions, including one that killed a pedestrian.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says in documents that it opened the probe on Thursday with the company reporting four crashes after Teslas entered areas of low visibility, including sun glare, fog and airborne dust.
In addition to the pedestrian’s death, another crash involved an injury, the agency said.
Investigators will look into the ability of “Full Self-Driving” to “detect and respond appropriately to reduced roadway visibility conditions, and if so, the contributing circumstances for these crashes.”
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Eyes can’t see in low visibility.
musk “we drive with our eyes, cameras are eyes. we dont need LiDAR”
FSD kills someone because of low visibility just like with eyes
musk reaction -
It’s worse than that, though. Our eyes are significantly better than cameras (with some exceptions at the high end) at adapting to varied lighting conditions than cameras are. Especially rapid changes.
Not only that, when we have trouble seeing things, we can adjust our speed to compensate (though tbf, not all human drivers do, but I don’t think FSD should be modelled after the worst of human drivers). Does Tesla’s FSD go into a “drive slower” mode when it gets less certain about what it sees? Or does its algorithms always treat its best guess with high confidence?
Hard to credit without a source, modern cameras have way more dynamic range than the human eye.
Not in one exposure. Human eyes are much better with dealing with extremely high contrasts.
Cameras can be much more sensitive, but at the cost of overexposing brighter regions in an image.
They’re also pretty noisy in low light and generally take long exposures (a problem with a camera at high speeds) to get sufficient input to see anything in the dark. Especially if you aren’t spending thousands of dollars with massive sensors per camera.
I dunno what cameras you are using but a standard full frame sensor and an F/4 lens sees way better in low light than the human eye. If I take a raw image off my camera, there is so much more dynamic range than I can see or a monitor can even represent, you can double the brightness at least four times (ie 16x brighter) and parts of the image that looked pure black to the eye become perfectly usable images. There is so so so much more dynamic range than the human eye.
Do you know what the depth of field at f/4 looks like? It’s not anywhere in the neighborhood of suitable for a car, and it still takes a meaningful exposure length in low light conditions to get a picture at all, which is not suitable for driving at 30mph, let alone actually driving fast.
That full frame sensor is also on a camera that’s several thousand dollars.
if he was truthful: “the cost of adding lidar cuts in my profits”
Correction - Older Teslas had lidar, Musk demanded they be removed because they cut into his profits. Not a huge difference but it does show how much of a shitbag he is.
He really is a fucking idiot. But so few people can actually call him out… So he just never gets put in his place.
Imagine your life with unlimited redos. That’s how he lives.
You’d think “we drive with our eyes, cameras are eyes.” is an argument against only using cameras but that do I know.
How Can Cameras Be Real If Our Eyes Aren’t Real?
The cars used to have RADAR. But they got rid of that and even disabled it on older models when updating because they “only need cameras.”
Cameras and RADAR would have been good enough for most all conditions…
What pisses me off about this is that, in conditions of low visibility, the pedestrian can’t even hear the damned thing coming.
I hear electric cars all the time, they are not much quieter than an ice car. We don’t need to strap lawn mowers to our cars in the name of safety.
You can hear them, but manufacturers had to add external speakers to electric cars to make them louder.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_vehicle_warning_sounds
I think they are a lot more quiet. I’ve turned around and seen a car 5 meter away from me, and been surprised. That never happens with fuel cars.
I think if you are young, maybe there isn’t a big difference since you have perfect hearing. But middle aged people lose quite a bit of that unfortunately.
I’m relatively young and it can still be difficult to hear them especially the ones without a fake engine sound. Add some city noise and they can be completely inaudible.
‘city noise’ you mean ICE car noise. We should be trying to reduce noise pollution not compete with it.
It’s not safe for cars to be totally silent when moving imo since I’d imagine it’s more likely to get run over.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is now definitely on Musk’s list of departments to cut if Trump makes him a high-ranking swamp monster
Why do you think musk dumping so much cash to boost Trump? The plan all along is to get kickbacks like stopping investigation, lawsuits, and regulations against him. Plus subsidies.
Rich assholes don’t spend money without expectation of ROI
He knows Democrats will crack down on shady practices so Trump is his best bet.
He’s not hoping for a kickback, he is offered a position as secretary of cost-cutting.
He will be able to directly shut down everything he doesn’t like under the pretense of saving money.
Trump is literally campaigning on the fact that government positions are up for sale under his admin.
“I’m going to have Elon Musk — he is dying to do this… We’ll have a new position: secretary of cost-cutting, OK? Elon wants to do that,” the former president said"
Alongside the EPA for constantly getting in the way of the FAA trying to slip his SpaceX flight licenses through with a wink and a nudge instead of properly following regulations, and the FAA for trying to keep a semblance of legality through the whole process.
This is legitimately one of the real reasons Musk is pushing for Trump so hard. NHTSA (and all the other regulatory agencies) were effectively gutted completely by the Trump admin and it’s basically the entire reason Elon could grift his way to where he is today. The moment Biden got into office, basically every single agency in existence began investigating him and pushing blocks out of the proverbial Jenga tower of the various Musk companies. He’s praying that Trump will get elected and allow him to keep grifting, because otherwise he’s almost definitely going to jail, or at a minimum losing the vast majority of his empire.
Tesla, which has repeatedly said the system cannot drive itself and human drivers must be ready to intervene at all times.
how is it legal to label this “full self driving” ?
“I freely admit that the refreshing sparkling water I sell is poisonous and should not be consumed.”
“But to be clear, although I most certainly know for a fact that the refreshing sparkling water I sell is exceedingly poisonous and should in absolutely no way be consumed by any living (and most dead*) beings, I will nevertheless very heartily encourage you to buy it. What you do with it after is entirely up to you.
*Exceptions may apply. You might be one.
That’s pretty clearly just a disclaimer meant to shield them from legal repercussions. They know people aren’t going to do that.
Last time I checked that disclaimer was there because officially Teslas are SAE level 2, which let’s them evade regulations that higher SAE levels have, and in practice Tesla FSD beta is SAE level 4.
and in practice Tesla FSD beta is SAE level 4.
In theory this is pure bull, and in practice it is level 4 bull.
That’s what I read from an article but I don’t think whether they’re level 4 or not doesn’t really matter. The point is they officially claim to be level 2 but their cars clearly function beyond level 2.
cars clearly function beyond level 2.
You want to read again what level 4 means.
Between the levels it is not just about function, but about completeness of circumstances.
It drives your full self, it doesn’t break you into components and ship those seperately.
If customers can’t assume that boneless wings don’t have bones in them, then they shouldn’t assume that Full Self Driving can self-drive the car.
The courts made it clear that words don’t matter, and that the company can’t be liable for you assuming that words have meaning.
Right? It’s crazy that this is legal.
Now go after Oscar Meyer and Burger King. I am not getting any ham in my burger or dog in my hot’s. They are buying a product which they know full well before they complete the sale that it does not and is not lawfully allowed to auto pilot itself around the country. The owners manuals will give them a full breakdown as well I’m sure. If you spend thousands of dollars on something and don’t know the basic rules and guidelines, you have much bigger issues. If anything, one should say to register these vehicles to drive on the road, they should have to be made aware.
If someone is that dumb or ignorant to jump through all the hoops and not know, let’s be honest: They shouldn’t be driving a car either.
I sometimes find a small seed in seedless watermelons.
It’s the same issue, although the seeds are unlikely to harm you.
Literally its “partial self driving” or “drive assist”
It is a legal label, if it was safe it would be “safe full self driving”.
legal or not it’s absolutely bonkers. Safety should be the legal assumption for marketing terms like this, not an optional extra.
Tesla: Why would we need lidar? Just use visual cameras.
TeslaMusk: Why would we need lidar? Just use visual camerasFTFY
Humans know to drive more carefully in low visibility, and/or to take actions to improve visibility. Muskboxes don’t.
They also decided to only use cameras and visual clues for driving instead of using radar, heat cameras or something like that as well.
It’s designed to be launched asap, not to be safe
I mean, that’s just good economics. I’m willing to bet someone at Tesla has done the calcs on how many people they can kill before it becomes unprofitable
Muskboxes
like that
I’m not so sure. Whenever there’s crappy weather conditions, I see a ton of accidents because so many people just assume they can drive at the posted speed limit safely. In fact, I tend to avoid the highway altogether for the first week or two of snow in my area because so many people get into accidents (the rest of the winter is generally fine).
So this is likely closer to what a human would do than not.
The question is, is Tesla FSD’s record better, worse, or about the same on average as a human driver under the same conditions? If it’s worse than the average human, it needs to be taken off the road. There are some accident statistics available, but you have to practically use a decoder ring to make sure you’re comparing like to like even when whoever’s providing the numbers has no incentive to fudge them. And I trust Tesla about as far as I could throw a Model 3.
On the other hand, the average human driver sucks too.
Yeah, I honestly don’t know. My point is merely that we should have the same standards for FSD vs human driving, at least initially, because they have a lot more potential for improvement than human drivers. If we set the bar too high, we’ll just delay safer transportation.
You can’t measure this, because it has drivers behind the wheel. Even if it did three “pedestrian-killing” mistakes every 10 miles, chances are the driver will catch every mistake per 10000 miles and not let it crash.
But on the other hand, if we were to measure every time the driver takes over the number would be artificially high - because we can’t predict the future and drivers are likely to be overcautious and take over even in circumstances that would have turned out OK.
The only way to do this IMO is by
- measuring every driver intervention
- only letting it be driverless and marketable as self-driving when it achieves a very low number of interventions ( < 1 per 10000 miles?)
- in the meantime, market it as “driver assist” and have the responsibility fall into the driver, and treat it like the “somewhat advanced” cruise control that it is.
low visibility, including sun glare, fog and airborne dust
I also see a ton of accidents when the sun is in the sky or if it is dusty out. \s
Yup, especially at daylight savings time when the sun changes position in the sky abruptly.
Cameras are probably worse here, but they may be able to make up for it with parallel processing the poor data they get.
The median driver sure, but the bottom couple percent never miss their exit and tend to do boneheaded shit like swerving into the next lane when there’s a stopped car at a crosswalk. >40,000 US fatalities in 2023. There are probably half a dozen fatalities in the US on any given day by the time the clock strikes 12:01AM on the west coast.
Edit: some more food for thought as I’ve been pondering:
FSD may or may not be better than the median driver (maybe this investigation will add to knowledge), but it’s likely better than the worst drivers… But the worst drivers are the most likely to vastly overestimate their competence, which might lead to them actively avoiding the use of any such aids, despite those drivers being the ones who would see the greatest benefit from using them. We might be forever stuck with boneheaded drivers doing boneheaded shit
Really fucking stupid that we as a society intentionally choose to fuck around and find out rather than find out before we fuck around.
You got one part wrong. The people fucking around aren’t the ones having to do the “finding out” part.
By refusing to vote in competent regulatory bodies, the ones finding out are a part of the problem with the societal ails. I don’t want specific people punished with prejudice, I want a rule of law that holds all people accountable as equals and averts all harm before it can happen.
Are you victim blaming the
killedmurdered pedestrians?I am speaking about societal problems in context of society as a whole, as I have been the entire time.
Makes you wonder if removing the lidar and using fucking cameras isn’t part of the problem… cheap bastards.
Was that cause of the cost? Didnt Elon come out claiming lidar was a “crutch” or something?
It’s an extra 60k.
Well he said all sorts to try and justify it but really it was a cost-cutting exercise, of course it was a cost cutting exercise, why else would they do it?
Anyway that explanation doesn’t make sense, if using lidar was a crutch then surely that’s a good solution right. It’s a bit like going, no you shouldn’t use wings on your aircraft that’s a crutch, you should be using the antigravity tech that we don’t have yet.
In the long run there probably are going to be better solutions (that’s how civilizations advance), but those better solutions don’t exist yet, so… maybe we should use what we have.
Full Self Driving shipping
202520262027309844841e+156^ You are hereIf anyone was somehow still thinking RoboTaxi is ever going to be a thing. Then no, it’s not, because of reasons like this.
It doesn’t have to not hit pedestrians. It just has to hit less pedestrians than the average human driver.
Exactly. The current rate is 80 deaths per day in the US alone. Even if we had self-driving cars proven to be 10 times safer than human drivers, we’d still see 8 news articles a day about people dying because of them. Taking this as ‘proof’ that they’re not safe is setting an impossible standard and effectively advocating for 30,000 yearly deaths, as if it’s somehow better to be killed by a human than by a robot.
If you get killed by a robot, it simply lacks the human touch.
If you get killed by a robot, you can at least die knowing your death was the logical option and not a result of drunk driving, road rage, poor vehicle maintenance, panic, or any other of the dozens of ways humans are bad at decision-making.
It doesn’t even need to be logical, just statistically reasonable. You’re literally a statistic anytime you interact w/ any form of AI.
Or the result of cost cutting…
or a flipped comparison operator, or a “//TODO test code please remove”
“10 times safer than human drivers”, (except during specific visually difficult conditions which we knowingly can prevent but won’t because it’s 10 times safer than human drivers). In software, if we have replicable conditions that cause the program to fail, we fix those, even though the bug probably won’t kill anyone.
The problem with this way of thinking is that there are solutions to eliminate accidents even without eliminating self-driving cars. By dismissing the concern you are saying nothing more than it isn’t worth exploring the kinds of improvements that will save lives.
But they aren’t and likely never will be.
And how are we to correct for lack of safety then? With human drivers you obvious discourage dangerous driving through punishment. Who do you punish in a self driving car?
It needs to be way way better than ‘better than average’ if it’s ever going to be accepted by regulators and the public. Without better sensors I don’t believe it will ever make it. Waymo had the right idea here if you ask me.
But why is that the standard? Shouldn’t “equivalent to average” be the standard? Because if self-driving cars can be at least as safe as a human, they can be improved to be much safer, whereas humans won’t improve.
I’d accept that if the makers of the self-driving cars can be tried for vehicular manslaughter the same way a human would be. Humans carry civil and criminal liability, and at the moment, the companies that produce these things only have nominal civil liability. If Musk can go to prison for his self-driving cars killing people the same way a regular driver would, I’d be willing to lower the standard.
Sure, but humans are only criminally liable if they fail the “reasonable person” standard (i.e. a “reasonable person” would have swerved out of the way, but you were distracted, therefore criminal negligence). So the court would need to prove that the makers of the self-driving system failed the “reasonable person” standard (i.e. a “reasonable person” would have done more testing in more scenarios before selling this product).
So yeah, I agree that we should make certain positions within companies criminally liable for criminal actions, including negligence.
I think the threshold for proving the “reasonable person” standard for companies should be extremely low. They are a complex organization that is supposed to have internal checks and reviews, so it should be very difficult for them to squirm out of liability. The C-suite should be first on the list for criminal liability so that they have a vested interest in ensuring that their products are actually safe.
Sure, the “reasonable person” would be a competitor who generally follows standard operating procedures. If they’re lagging behind the industry in safety or something, that’s evidence of criminal negligence.
And yes, the C-suite should absolutely be the first to look at, but the problem could very well come from someone in the middle trying to make their department look better than it is and lying to the C-suites. C-suites have a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders, whereas their reports don’t, so they can have very different motivations.
Humans absolutely improve.
Not on average as drivers, safety protections in do improve though.
The average human driver is tried and held accountable
That is the minimal outcomes for an automated safety feature to be an improvement over human drivers.
But if everyone else is using something you refused to that would have likely avoided someone’s death, while misnaming you feature to mislead customers, then you are in legal trouble.
When it comes to automation you need to be far better than humans because there will be a higher level of scrutiny. Kind of like how planes are massively safer than driving on average, but any incident where someone could have died gets a massive amount of attention.
It’s bit reductive to put it in terms of a binary choice between an average human driver and full AI driver. I’d argue it has to hit less pedestrians than a human driver with the full suite of driver assists currently available to be viable.
Self-driving is purely a convenience factor for personal vehicles and purely an economic factor for taxis and other commercial use. If a human driver assisted by all of the sensing and AI tools available is the safest option, that should be the de facto standard.
Charge the stupid fuck Tesla chain of decision making with murder. This bullshit “self driving” advertising is premeditated, that’s no longer manslaughter.
And charge the driver(s) with manslaughter under aggravating circumstances.
But oh no, muh profts, hurr-durrr…
Wouldn’t it be death by negligence rather than pre-meditated murder. After all I don’t think anyone at Tesla actually wanted this particular person to die, they just didn’t really care to take any action to prevent it.
“I aimed my rifle at that person’s head and pulled the trigger, but I swear I didn’t want them to die”
Tesla should be broken up and reassembled with zero overlap in management.
And yes, legally it won’t stick, but the shitty south african oligarch should absolutely be tried for murder.
Every time I hear something about pedestrian being killed by something self-driving, it begins to irk me as to why are we pushing for such and such technology.
The bad news is people hitting and killing pedestrians is so common you don’t hear about it. Fuck Musk and all that, but some number of people are always going to get killed. Even the FSD system that was as close to perfect as possible would still occasionally kill someone in large enough numbers, because there’s too many variables to account for. If the numbers are lower than a human driving, it’s a positive.
We should be trying to move away from cars though ideally. Fuck electric cars, FSD cars, and all other cars. A bus, train, bike, or whatever else would be safer and better for the environment.
Public transport is the way to go, just need to break the cycle of six decades of automobile addiction.
Because it is generally proven to save lifes. You’ll never hear of “thanks for the auto-brake system no one got injured and everything was boring as usual” but it happened a lot (also to me in first person).
I don’t like Musk but in general its a good thing to push self driving cars IMO. I drive 2 hours per day and the amount of time where I see retarded people doing retarded stuff at the wheel is crazy.
This is the thing. Musk and everything his company does in terms of labour and marketing, and just their whole ethos is unethical as fuck, and I can’t stand that as a society we are celebrating Tesla.
But self driving cars are not inherently bad or dangerous to persue as a technological advancement.
Self driving cars will kill people, they’ll will hit pedestrians and crash into things.
So do cars driven by humans.
Human driven cars kill a lot of people.
Self driving cars need to be safer than human driven cars to even consider letting them on the the road, but we can’t truly expect a 0% accident rate on self driving cars in the early days of the technology when we don’t expect that of the humanity driven cars.
Air travel is generally safer than driving too, but every accident is studied thoroughly. Self-driving is fine, but anyone trying to implement it should be held to a high standard. Boeing slacked off and they’re facing some backlash.
No, it is not generally proven to save lives, you are listening to lies somewhere. Its not a good thing to push self-driving cars and Musk is the one being retarded. Plus he supports Trump and not Harris.
The technology behind it is proven to save lifes. The reaction time of a full brake to stop a car crash i had the “luck” of experiencing on a Volkswagen was outstanding.
Same thing for the lane assist function if you are sleepy
Same thing for the lane assist function if you are sleepy
If you are sleepy behind the wheel, you need to pull over, get off the road, and take a rest.
Thanks mom. I brought cases to prove my point I’m not saying you should go on a road trip while sleepy.
Because self-driving cars are safer than human drivers, when implemented properly. A proper one is absolutely loaded with sensors, radar, laser, sonar; not just some cameras like Tesla’s system.
If you ever get the chance to, hop in a Waymo and you’ll become a believer too (currently available only in Cali and AZ). These little robotaxis see everything at all times, not just what’s in front of them like humans. I trust them more than I’d trust any human driver. They can avoid accidents that you and I would never see coming. Witnessed this first-hand.
There is no proof they are safe, and we should stop trying to replace people.
Again, ride in one yourself when you get the chance and I promise you you’ll change your mind immediately.
Again, not only no valid proof they are safe, but they are being used to put people out of work like Taxi and Uber drivers.
It’s for the better. They will find other jobs. You sound like the people crying about coal mines being closed down.
The worst way to die would be getting hit by a shitbox Tesla. RIP.
I mean I’ll take it over being burned alive or brutally eaten alive by a pack of ravenous wolves.
I’ll take the wolves
Neither of those are necessarily quicker or less painful than getting hit by the car.
For some real fun, try for all three at once!
Thats just a south park skit.
I thought it was illegal to call it full self driving? So I thought Tesla had something new.
Apprently it’s the moronic ASSISTED full self driving the article is about. So nothing new.
Tesla does not have a legal full self driving system, so why do articles keep pushing the false narrative, even after it’s deemed illegal?Assisted full self driving is an oxymoron.
100% agree. Who sells assisted full self driving anyway? Tesla’s is supervised which means it drives and the person behind the wheel is liable for its fuckups.
Absolutely, but that’s what Tesla decided, that or supervised, because it’s illegal to call it actually full self driving.
But an oxymoron is also fitting for Musk. You can even skip the oxy part. 😋
so why do articles keep pushing the false narrative, even after it’s deemed illegal?
The same reason that simple quadcopters have been deemed by the press to be called “drones”. You can’t manufacture panic and outrage with a innocuous name.
Calling it a drone has nothing to do with how many propellers it has, some drones are Jet driven. some are boats and some are vehicles.
A Drone is simply an unmanned craft, controlled remotely or by automation.https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/drone
an uncrewed aircraft or vessel guided by remote control or onboard computers:
It sure doesn’t say when that was updated, but for a long period of time the use of drone when discussing unmanned aircraft was reserved for military craft that were usually armed and used to kill people. In the attempt to demonize hobby rc use, the press started calling simple quadcopters (and other propeller configurations if we are being pedantic) drones and not what they were normally called by the people using and making them in the hobby. My point still stands, the press likes to change the wording of things, and will perpetuate their narrative in order to garner views. Manufacturing fear is part of their tactic, and is why I replied what I replied to the question of why the press continues to push the false narrative of these cars being “self driving”.
It sure doesn’t say when that was updated,
This meaning probably dates back before you were born, as it’s use can be tracked back to at least early 19 hundreds:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_unmanned_aerial_vehicles
I’m pretty sure I remember the word used in SciFi novels from the 70’s. where drones are mindless automatons a kind of primitive robots, very much in line with this description point 3:
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/droneMy point still stands
I don’t see that. it just seems you were ignorant of the actual meaning and use of the word.
Did they change it again? It was FSD Beta, then Supervised, now you’re telling me it’s ASSISTED? Since that’s not in TFA…
IDK I heard assisted, maybe they decided on supervised? The central point is that it’s illegal in some states to call it full self driving, because it’s false advertising.
It was called that name at the time when the kills happened.
To be fair its marketed as full self driving, not full self no crashing
It sure crashed its full self
I purchased FSD when it was 8k. What a crock of shit. When I sold the car, that was this only gave the car value after 110k miles and it was only $1500 at most.
