this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2024
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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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[–] awholenewworld@leminal.space 1 points 38 minutes ago (1 children)
[–] interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 3 points 21 minutes ago

The government for letting tesla get away with false advertising. They let them do it because they swallowed the hype along with Musk climate saviorism.

[–] billwashere@lemmy.world 25 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Makes you wonder if removing the lidar and using fucking cameras isn’t part of the problem… cheap bastards.

[–] BottleOfAlkahest@lemmy.world 2 points 57 minutes ago (1 children)

Was that cause of the cost? Didnt Elon come out claiming lidar was a "crutch" or something?

[–] interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 2 points 17 minutes ago

It's an extra 60k.

[–] raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 20 points 6 hours ago

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....

[–] KonalaKoala@lemmy.world 22 points 20 hours ago (3 children)

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.

[–] Psythik@lemmy.world 3 points 47 minutes ago

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.

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 34 points 10 hours ago (3 children)

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.

[–] fne8w2ah@lemmy.world 7 points 5 hours ago

Public transport is the way to go, just need to get break the cycle of six decades of automobile addiction.

[–] beanlink@lemmy.world 6 points 9 hours ago

Lets install adaptive headlights to stop blinding people or allowing manufacturers to install chrome accents on the rear of a vehicle to again stop blinding people or even just maybe make a smaller truck that isn't lifting ego and instead actual building materials.

NHSTA:

[–] Fuzzy_Red_Panda@lemm.ee -3 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Fuck Musk and all that, but some number of people are always going to get killed.

That's easy to say, but do you want to be one of the people who gets killed? I don't.

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 12 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah, it's that easy to say and yeah, I don't want to be one of the people killed, driverless or not. Cars are fucking deadly. 20 pedestrians die every day to cars. If we can get that number down but have them die to FSD vehicles, that's better. I don't care who or what is driving.

I'd rather not have cars everywhere, but if we do I want them to be as safe as possible (for everyone, not just the driver). If that includes FSD we should do it, even if the number of pedestrian deaths doesn't hit zero (it never will) because the alternative is well above zero.

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk -2 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

If I'm get killed by a driver on their phone, I want them to go to prison.

If I'm killed by a Waymo or whatever, who goes to jail then?

If we really must have self driving cars, limit their speed to 20mph in built up areas.

[–] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 3 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Number of people killed by Waymos self driving: 0? Number of people appear to think Waymo's self driving has killed: hundreds?

Tesla's don't have the tech to make it safe enough, but Waymo hasn't been the ones at fault for all this fear mongering.

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 4 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

If you're dead, why the fuck do you care who goes to jail? Shouldn't we care more about people dying than revenge after?

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk -2 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

I wouldn't care. I hope my wife and family would.

"He died for a good cause: Tesla's stock price" is not what they want to hear.

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

I don't like Tesla, but no one is dying to support FSD. They're dying because multi-ton vehicles driving down the road next to fleshy meatbags sometimes ends up with them colliding. It doesn't really matter who, if anyone, is behind the wheel. I'd rather them not come into contact. I'm in favor of everything that reduces that. I don't really care if it ruins someone's revenge fetish.

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 0 points 3 hours ago

OK, we'll make it simple then.

If you make a self driving car and it kills a pedestrian, then you give the family of the victim $50 million, and a seat on the board. Forever. Every decision you make from then on will be looking into the faces of the people whose lives you destroyed, while they turn down your bonuses.

Also, I don't believe for one second that a self driving car is safer than somebody who should legally be behind the wheel of a car. If the sun is in your eyes, you slow down. If you can't see the conditions ahead, you slow down.

[–] PeroBasta@lemmy.world 20 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

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.

[–] ano_ba_to@sopuli.xyz 2 points 5 hours ago

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.

[–] DillyDaily@lemmy.world 5 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

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.

[–] rsuri@lemmy.world 56 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (9 children)

Musk has said that humans drive with only eyesight, so cars should be able to drive with just cameras.

This of course assumes 1) that cameras are just as good as eyes (they're not) and 2) that the processing of visual data that the human brain does can be replicated by a machine, which seems highly dubious given that we only partially understand how humans process visual data to make decisions.

Finally, it assumes that the current rate of human-caused crashes is acceptable. Which it isn't. We tolerate crashes because we can't improve people without unrealistic expense. In an automated system, if a bit of additional hardware can significantly reduce crashes it's irrational not to do it.

[–] blady_blah@lemmy.world 21 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

This is directly a result of Elon's edict that Tesla cars don't use lidar. If you aren't aware Elon set that as a requirement at the beginning of Tesla's self driving project because he didn't want to spend the money on lidar for all Tesla cars.

His "first principles" logic is that humans don't use lidar therefore self driving should be able to be accomplished without (expensive) enhanced vision tools. While this statement has some modicum of truth, it's obviously going to trade off safely in situations where vision is compromised. Think fog or sunlight shining in your cameras / eyes or a person running across the street at night wearing all black. There are obvious scenarios where lidar is a massive safety advantage, but Elon made a decision for $$ to not have that. This sounds like a direct and obvious outcome of that edict.

[–] notacat@lemmy.today 2 points 4 hours ago

My vacuum robot uses lidar. How expensive could it be??

[–] WoodScientist@lemmy.world 16 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

His “first principles” logic is that humans don’t use lidar therefore self driving should be able to be accomplished without (expensive) enhanced vision tools.

This kind of idiocy is why people tried to build airplanes with flapping wings. Way too many people thought that the best way to create a plane was to just copy what nature did with birds. Nature showed it was possible, so just copy nature.

[–] Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org 7 points 10 hours ago

To be fair, we achieved flight by copying nature. Once we realized the important part was the shape of a wing more than the flapping.

[–] SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone 45 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Also, on a final note...

Why the fuck would you limit yourself to only human senses when you have the capability to add more of any sense you want??

If you have the option to add something that humans don't have, why wouldn't you? As an example, humans don't have gps either, but it's very useful to have in a car

[–] xthexder@l.sw0.com 28 points 1 day ago

Unfortunately the answer to that is: Elon's cheap and Radar is expensive. Not so expensive that you can't get it in a base model Civic though, which just makes it that much more absurd.

[–] sue_me_please@awful.systems 16 points 23 hours ago

Because a global pandemic broke your sensor supply chain and you still want to sell cars with FSD anyway, so cameras-only it is!

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[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 33 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Really fucking stupid that we as a society intentionally choose to fuck around and find out rather than find out before we fuck around.

[–] raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

You got one part wrong. The people fucking around aren't the ones having to do the "finding out" part.

[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 0 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Are you victim blaming the ~~killed~~ murdered pedestrians?

[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago

I am speaking about societal problems in context of society as a whole, as I have been the entire time.

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