Self-driving Uber car kills pedestrian in Tempe, AZ

Apologies, I got my wires crossed

 

If you have that reaction to driver assist technologies, you definitely should steer clear of them.
For me, 'Autopilot' lowers my fatigue, raises my awareness, lowers my blood pressure, and keeps me safer.
Using a tool for something it is not intended, or having people near you doing so, leads to frustration.

 

I think my problem is I'm a control freak, so if I transfer control to a computer, it'd better be RELIABLE. Unfortunately, working in IT for over 32 years, I've realized that computers, like politicians, can't be trusted. My office computer has 4 main backup systems; that's how much I trust computers! I have, to this point NEVER lost any data I wanted to keep, but I frequently run into less careful people who are victims of computer technology.
Besides, I LOVE to drive, and the Prime is fun!

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.
AChoiredTaste.com

 

Your house and property are BEAUTIFUL!!

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.
AChoiredTaste.com

 

Yeah, split-second decisions come as free, standard equipment on all cars! AutoPilot will rarely-but-not-never add to the split-second-decision count. Usually though, it will do exactly what needs to be done.

Typed by Mr88cet’s dancing thumbs

 

The motto for FHOP

 

Haven't used a Tesla's autopilot, but my concern is that it falls into the gap between driver assist (the Prius DRCC) and full autonomy (only in test vehicles now): it requires your attention or it can proactively wreck you, so you can't really relax so much that you can't be back in the zone within 2-3 seconds.

With assistance, like the Prius DRCC, I know I still have to steer and pay attention to distance in front of me. It can assist me by slowing sooner than I would have -- helping me to avoid judgement mistakes -- but I have to basically be fully engaged throughout the trip.

Fully autonomous cars may not even have a steering wheel, so by definition you not only don't have to pay attention, you may not be able to do anything about it even if you notice a problem.

Tesla Autopilot is neither. Notice what Tesla said about the recent crash: the driver had been warned to put their hands on the wheel, the driver had a view of the barrier for 5 seconds before the crash, etc. Autipilot is good enough that owners routinely cheat and view the "hands-on" warnings as only something that Tesla has to do for legal reasons. No argument there. But the stories about it crossing center lines or drifting towards trucks in adjacent lanes are real, and you have to be prepared to correct it -- perhaps vigorously -- within a 2-5-second window. That's why it makes you keep your hands on the wheel.

Don't get me wrong: I seriously looked at a Tesla and if we had the money there's a good chance we'd have gotten one. It's the only EV I'd buy at this point because of its supercharger network. And a couple of times a month, I have to drive the same two interstates four hours round-trip. Autopilot under those conditions really, really intrigues and excites me.

But psychologically, I don't think I would relax with Autopilot except perhaps on relatively straightforward interstate driving. Glad you can, and your point about abusing the system is well-taken.

(I also have reservations about whether the Teslas will ever achieve full autonomy. As far as I can tell, no current Tesla has sufficient computing power, sensors, or redundancy to do so, in spite of what they say. From my reading, they trail the pack in terms of autonomous driving, along with Uber and both are way behind Google and GM. They seem to have really blown what should have been a solid position near the front of the pack.)

 

Exactly. Tesla offers you a beta (or maybe alpha) testing opportunity. If you view it as a fun challenge that's often useful and might be (in an emergency situation) critical, it's all good. But it's not something I'd hand to my wife.

Heck, I tested our new Prius' parking capabilities and based on its poor performance won't be using it or recommending my wife. Once it tried to parallel park between two cars in a situation that I wanted to back-in park. It also, apparently, would have backed into a pillar next to our parking space at home. It worked well another couple of times I tried it, but it's not robust enough for my use.

 

I agree that it’s a curious middle ground — harder to make sense of than “purely autonomous” or “purely manual.”

It’s important to remember, however, that Tesla Autopilot is pretty darned good. There’s no doubt that it can make mistakes, but pretty rarely for routine freeway driving. Also, it gives warnings when it can’t drive confidently, such as when what it sees on its cameras doesn’t seem to agree well with GPS.

I gather that the way people use it could be described as like driving as a ship’s captain more than a ship’s helmsman: Stay alert, supervise it, and be ready to hop in if necessary, but don’t worry about the minutia of lane centering, etc.

Typed by Mr88cet’s dancing thumbs

 

another thing with tesla like systems is that people may drive too long thinking that don't need to be fully prepared.
i think i read an article by a writer crossing europe in one, and he said it's hard not to get sleepy when the car is doing a lot of the driving.
but i may be misremembering.

 

Pretty much everyone except Tesla's saying you need lidar for an autonomous car. The Nvidia cards in the current Tesla don't appear to have enough horsepower. And other manufacturers -- though it could be due to bias -- claim the Tesla doesn't have enough system redundancy.

Toyota seems to be taking things a step at a time and not overpromising. In my opinion, parking assist is a bad sign, lane-keeping is intermediate, and DRCC is a good sign. I've read quite a bit about GM and Google and how many thousand miles their test cars are logging between incidents where the test car drivers intervened. Wish I'd hear more about Toyota.

I'm very skeptical in the general fully-autonomous case (in terms of as soon as people think): what happens if the car runs up to an accident where the only viable alternative is to turn around, what about parking in your garage space two floors underground, what about roads/alleys that don't exist in an electronic map (yet), what about pedestrian walkways that don't have a curb to delimit them from traffic, etc?

That's not even mentioning worries about hacking of communications for phone-home cars, GPS spoofing/jamming, other spoofing/jamming -- imagine once cars all talk if I could convince them all that the intersection I want to go through has stopped cars in it, so they stop and yield to me.

 

toyota typically keeps things pretty close to the vest until they are ready for market. there have been a few exceptions.
gm likes to pound there chest, but you never know if they will deliver or not. google is harder to figure.

 

As with electrification (largest battery being 8.8KWh, compared 40-100 for most pure EVs), indeed Toyota is taking the classic Japanese “Kaizen” approach of measured, incremental improvements.

Tesla is obviously taking a much more American “bet the farm,” “all or nothing” approach, which is starting to catch up with them. (They reeeeeally gotta start cranking out those Model 3s out, en masse and profitably! If they can pull it off though, they will become a serious force to be reckoned with in the industry.)

Typed by Mr88cet’s dancing thumbs

 

Just read today they cranked up to over 9,000 recently and stock went up!

 

A brother/friend said the victim in California had complained about auto-pilot making mistakes along that stretch of road.

I can get sleepy driving long stretches without any auto aids. People differ.

 

Cool! Hopefully their bond rating will go back up too...

Typed by Mr88cet’s dancing thumbs

 

the auto companies will have to keep the road lines painted if that's what their tech is dependent on, the government will never do it, that's for sure.