Impossibility of L5 using any level of new hardware

[duanra]

You mean like riding a bus, taxi, or with my wife on a daily basis I don't really find being a passenger that big a deal.

I hear you
I am not saying that it will be more unsafe. I am just saying that sitting in front of your windshield and being at the first row might be an odd feeling.

 

[woodisgood]

The fear of accidents is certainly understandable. But if you dissect that fear, it tends to come from fear of personal (or your family's) bodily harm, financial burden and headache and possibly liability, and probably lastly, causing harm to others.

If an accident is merely an inconvenience that you walk away from and hail another Robo, in which nobody is seriously harmed because of the system's ability to at least reduce collision severity, and from which you have no resulting headaches to deal with it (insurance, repair, etc.)...it kind of becomes less frightening.

"Yeah my Robo hit another car on the way to work. Sorry I'm 10 minutes late..."

 

[woodisgood]

I had an Autopilot trial in August, I would take over fairly frequently. Now, half a year later I have AP and I almost never need to take over in the same situation. The NN learned from all the input and got much much better.
Is it there, no. Will it be there in a year? maybe not quite. I think it will get there and on that 99.99 percent will be much better than a typical driver.

IMHO, in a year's time, most of the [dangerous] edge cases will start to be confined to the interaction between AP and unpredictable/impulsive/unsafe drivers of other vehicles.

 

[duanra]

The fear of accidents is certainly understandable. But if you dissect that fear, it tends to come from fear of personal (or your family's) bodily harm, financial burden and headache and possibly liability, and probably lastly, causing harm to others.

If an accident is merely an inconvenience that you walk away from and hail another Robo, in which nobody is seriously harmed because of the system's ability to at least reduce collision severity, and from which you have no resulting headaches to deal with it (insurance, repair, etc.)...it kind of becomes less frightening.

"Yeah my Robo hit another car on the way to work. Sorry I'm 10 minutes late..."

You have a point. However when you see that automation in aviation didn't allow airlines to fly commercial aircraft without pilot, I wonder if the general public is ready for driverless car.

 

[bak_phy]

The fear of accidents is certainly understandable. But if you dissect that fear, it tends to come from fear of personal (or your family's) bodily harm, financial burden and headache and possibly liability, and probably lastly, causing harm to others.

Just a few years ago many people said that they would never use an Uber for many of these reasons, but now everybody does. Surely getting used to a driving in a robotaxi shouldn't be any harder.

 

[astrowunder]

If it can pass a driving test, I guess we should let FSD drive.

My 90 y/o father in law just passed a driving test. I promise you the CURRENT autonomy is VASTLY superior to him in every way right now.

Having said that I am very skeptical we'll have FSD in 2020.

 

[woodisgood]

You have a point. However when you see that automation in aviation didn't allow airlines to fly commercial aircraft without pilot, I wonder if the general public is ready for driverless car.

There will definitely be hesitation from the public which in part, will come in the form of delayed regulatory approval in many jurisdictions. As far as adoption, much depends on Tesla's execution outside of making FSD safe and reliable and taking the rest of the robotaxi/rideshare experience seriously.

 

[pipestem]

The overall average risk might be quite low (good fsd), but the risk in a rare situation can be very high, even fatal. You cannot expect the NN to extrapolate. There are many sources of variation .. road work signage, cars merging off the road into the shoulder, taking direction from a human directing traffic, a pedestrian dodging between cars 50 feet ahead, a flooding stream, probably 100 more cases. What did Elon say is the goal, 100% FSD, or something like 90% FSD ? How much does the NN on each car learn from the driver? From other FSD cars ? I was out and have not seen much of the AD presentations.

 

[CameronB]

I had an Autopilot trial in August, I would take over fairly frequently. Now, half a year later I have AP and I almost never need to take over in the same situation. The NN learned from all the input and got much much better.
Is it there, no. Will it be there in a year? maybe not quite. I think it will get there and on that 99.99 percent will be much better than a typical driver.

NoAP drove me last month on a 400 mile one-way trip from Northern to Southern California. 3 different highways. On those 400 highway miles, I personally drove for less than 1 minute - basically just got the car onto the freeway and also manually drove through a very short construction zone. The other 99.99% of the time, AP was driving....and most importantly I only had one single disengagement. One disengagement after 395 of the about 400 miles. First...that is amazing. Literally (not figuratively!) four hours and 45 minutes of continuous driving by AP with no disengagements on the highways.

Now...the single disengagement was interesting...and probably a corner case: it happened on a short connection between one highway and another. As AP exited the highway I was on and was preparing to take a corner and then accelerate to merge into the second highway, I saw a broken down truck sitting in my (connection) lane. Because there wasn't really a shoulder to speak of on that short (⅛ mile-ish) connector, the truck was sticking out maybe a foot or so into my actual lane.

Honestly I didn't even look at the IC to see if AP "saw" the obstacle (truck). I just immediately took over and steered wide to make sure I wouldn't clip the truck. AP might have handled that situation and also steered wide to avoid the truck. Or it might have failed to see it and collided with it like it has for some of those reportedly parked firetrucks. I wasn't going to take the chance. But bar that one outlier case (it even surprised me as a human as you could only see the parked truck after you started to come around a curve - it was just suddenly there) it was an exceptional NoAP controlled trip. Smooth and confident. It does seem to be getting better and better. I look forward to seeing HW3/FSD and what it brings to the table.

 

[woodisgood]

NoAP drove me last month on a 400 mile one-way trip from Northern to Southern California. 3 different highways. On those 400 highway miles, I personally drove for less than 1 minute - basically just got the car onto the freeway and also manually drove through a very short construction zone. The other 99.99% of the time, AP was driving....and most importantly I only had one single disengagement. One disengagement after 395 of the about 400 miles. First...that is amazing. Literally (not figuratively!) four hours and 45 minutes of continuous driving by AP with no disengagements on the highways.

Now...the single disengagement was interesting...and probably a corner case: it happened on a short connection between one highway and another. As AP exited the highway I was on and was preparing to take a corner and then accelerate to merge into the second highway, I saw a broken down truck sitting in my (connection) lane. Because there wasn't really a shoulder to speak of on that short (⅛ mile-ish) connector, the truck was sticking out maybe a foot or so into my actual lane.

Honestly I didn't even look at the IC to see if AP "saw" the obstacle (truck). I just immediately took over and steered wide to make sure I wouldn't clip the truck. AP might have handled that situation and also steered wide to avoid the truck. Or it might have failed to see it and collided with it like it has for some of those reportedly parked firetrucks. I wasn't going to take the chance. But bar that one outlier case (it even surprised me as a human as you could only see the parked truck after you started to come around a curve - it was just suddenly there) it was an exceptional NoAP controlled trip. Smooth and confident. It does seem to be getting better and better. I look forward to seeing HW3/FSD and what it brings to the table.

Just curious, on your trip, did you kind of check out and just let it get you from point A to point B or were you watching carefully?

I have yet to take a loooong NoA trip - hope to do Norcal to SoCal later this summer. Usually when I use NoA, I am watching everything like a hawk and get freaked out by small situations - mostly related to how I see other drivers interacting with my AP-driven car (e.g. passing it angrily because AP was brake checking a little early, passing it on the right because it wasn't picking up speed quite as quickly as it could when the lane opened up, etc.). In other words, it would probably do a very fine and very safe job if I wasn't bothered by how other drivers were perceiving its/my driving.

 

[Oyinko]

Doesn’t have to be perfect. Just several times better than the average human driver. The bar isn’t that high. Watching the demo video, I know people who drive worse than that.

Better than humans will be achievable but we also need to solve the psychological aspects. Would you get into a Tesla that has a 0.01% probability of making a random mistake and kill you during your commute?

 

[Paddy3101]

The overall average risk might be quite low (good fsd), but the risk in a rare situation can be very high, even fatal. You cannot expect the NN to extrapolate.

Actually, you can. That IS what NN do, always. They extrapolate. They don't learn by rote they learn the rules, then apply the rules to every novel situation.

ALL of the driving that the NN does, is new to it. It has never seen that exact scene/situation before.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

NoAP drove me last month on a 400 mile one-way trip from Northern to Southern California. 3 different highways. On those 400 highway miles, I personally drove for less than 1 minute - basically just got the car onto the freeway and also manually drove through a very short construction zone. The other 99.99% of the time, AP was driving....and most importantly I only had one single disengagement. One disengagement after 395 of the about 400 miles. First...that is amazing. Literally (not figuratively!) four hours and 45 minutes of continuous driving by AP with no disengagements on the highways.

Now...the single disengagement was interesting...and probably a corner case: it happened on a short connection between one highway and another. As AP exited the highway I was on and was preparing to take a corner and then accelerate to merge into the second highway, I saw a broken down truck sitting in my (connection) lane. Because there wasn't really a shoulder to speak of on that short (⅛ mile-ish) connector, the truck was sticking out maybe a foot or so into my actual lane.

Honestly I didn't even look at the IC to see if AP "saw" the obstacle (truck). I just immediately took over and steered wide to make sure I wouldn't clip the truck. AP might have handled that situation and also steered wide to avoid the truck. Or it might have failed to see it and collided with it like it has for some of those reportedly parked firetrucks. I wasn't going to take the chance. But bar that one outlier case (it even surprised me as a human as you could only see the parked truck after you started to come around a curve - it was just suddenly there) it was an exceptional NoAP controlled trip. Smooth and confident. It does seem to be getting better and better. I look forward to seeing HW3/FSD and what it brings to the table.

Traffic must have been horrendous if your trip took that long.

 

[CameronB]

Traffic must have been horrendous if your trip took that long.

400ish miles (410 I think) in just under 5 hours is an average of almost 80mph. So not really.

 

[commasign]

Better than humans will be achievable but we also need to solve the psychological aspects. Would you get into a Tesla that has a 0.01% probability of making a random mistake and kill you during your commute?

Same psychological barrier for getting into a car driven by that one crazy friend or family member. You know the one that gets into a near-accident every time he or she drives.

 

[insaneoctane]

What does it even take to get "regulatory approval". Seems to me like this is undefined?

 

[duanra]

Old fart comment :

(old fart is me by the way).

How fun is being driven around in a robocar ?

Safer yes, but...

 

[insaneoctane]

Old fart comment :

(old fart is me by the way).

How fun is being driven around in a robocar ?

Safer yes, but...

When you're in traffic and don't want to be driving, it ought to be loads of fun.....

 

[duanra]

When you're in traffic and don't want to be driving, it ought to be loads of fun.....

You never get to drive on a nice road with light traffic ?
You didn't buy your Tesla for the fun of driving it too ?

 

[lampcord]

I personally think FSD will be here quite soon and will be an awesome feature. I know a lot about AI and NN's and was extremely impressed with the approach Tesla is taking.

But I am against the idea of getting rid of the wheel and pedals. I would always want the option to take control for a couple of reasons:

1) Human instinct should not be underrated. Sometimes you can just sense that a situation is dangerous and you want to be able to make driving decisions that a general AI would never make.

2) I like to drive. Part of the appeal of a Model 3 is actually driving it. I get pleasure from driving a performance car and I don't want to lose that. I could see using FSD 90% of the time but I want the option to take it out to a winding road and have fun.