"Growing Evidence of Auto Pilot" blah, blah, blah

[101101]

Auto pilot gets better all the time on a steeper and steeper curve!!! So all the shill media BS doesn't apply but they want to lie and exaggerate because autonomy drives BEVs like nothing else and is bad for their petrol masters. They know it means not needing a garage or a charger or even having to buy a car or charge it. They know of the 90% drop in kids getting drivers licenses in CA because of general lack of interest because the new generation of kids would rather rather run transportation from a phone. So there are endless articles about someone who supposedly complained about 7-8x about their X swerving toward the same k-rail divider and then on right on top of a phony credit down grade of Tesla by the ratings agencies, simultaneous with a ton of negative articles by the usual suspects and where the divider safety protector had been curiously removed and where 280,000 people had passed the same divider with auto pilot on, in this case the person supposedly manages with hands off the wheel, while receiving warnings for 5 seconds with at least 150 meters of unobstructed view(in proximity to the area of concern) likely with the much better new auto pilot upgrade and with a background in programming and with a love of the Model X- manages to run into k rail but also get into the worst accident Tesla ever saw with an X with the vehicle sawed in half and a big fire to trigger an investigation by an advisory body. And then all the inane copy cat videos.

Auto pilot is a technology that makes Tesla vehicles that use it apparently already 4x safer and will ultimately save countless lives but also radically important help put an end to petrol fuel energy. So all the phony bought and paid for bribery based sponsored media is paid to lie about auto pilot like crazy. Its always all the shill outlets like Ars Technica and Jalopnik and more and more NBC and ABC. Its foolish Machiavellian stuff again- typically back fires.

 

[Martin Williams]

The belief that self-driving cars will be safer than human drivers is just that. Belief.

I am sceptical. I don't think its yet possible to write software that will handle the completely unexpected, and a great deal of driving involves just that.

 

[101101]

All it has to do is avoid collisions. Will be running on stuff millions of frames a second spare capacity in the not so distant future.

 

[Martin Williams]

All it has to do is avoid collisions.

True, and so far, a pretty lousy job they are making of it. There have been a number of deaths already and - by now - probably many thousands of events where human drivers have had to take over to avoid more.

There is, also, the question of who wants this anyway? Polls have shown little enthusiasm for it from the general population and I'm not surprised. Many people enjoy driving, and most of us would prefer to drive than to sit there looking at the scenery and wondering how safe the car really is.

 

[Charles Hall]

I'm with Martin. The idea of a totally self-driving car doesn't seem feasible. Artificial Intelligence fan-boys rear their heads with some wacky prediction every 10 years or so. This just seems like the latest nonsense.

But don't get me wrong, there are a ton of driver assistance things I do want. If my car's about to slam into a stationary or slow-moving object, for Pete's Sake apply the brakes for me! Adaptive Cruise Control? Count me in! My Volt gives me a bump in the steering when I drift over a lane marker above 45MPH without a turn signal. I love it.

But I suspect the death toll as they try to perfect the completely self-driving car will pretty much doom it.

 

[Martin Williams]

Yes, driver assistance is fine. but even then you have to be careful not to overload the driver with information.

But I think we are decades, if not centuries, away from the sort of machine intelligence required to drive safer than people. I suspect the people attempting to deploy it now have failed to understand the problem, let alone its solution.

Let's hope not too many people will die before common sense prevails.

 

[101101]

Those are petrol shill opinions. What self driving does is unlock electric and help it kill petrol so much faster because it addresses people without garages. If that doesn't take then what Lilium offers will take but that is basically cheap reliable electric vtol jets demonstrated already- 200 miles range 200mph, makes a 30 min tax trip into a 5 min trip for $5.

The opinions offered above are so ignorant as to seem paid for. The current wreck case going against Tesla looks like more BS designed to protect petro- did someone actually die? Car cut in half- come on this is an Enron style BS scam.

Who whats it? Every city planner and every educated person would want it. Are you kidding. Gets rid of traffic, radically cuts transportation costs, radically reduces deaths and accidents. Radically lowers insurance fees. Resolves urban sprawl issue. Reduces stress of commutes. Cuts down on road wear and tear and maintenance. Eliminates parking problems. Even if some idiots try petrol first in the US it won't stop it from happening globally. Google already has the tech working. It makes it possible for the elderly and people with disabilities to have a much higher quality of life. Makes it possible to drink more responsibly and gets drunks off the roads. Reduces policing costs. Cuts pollution and greatly reduces emissions. This will be radically important for all night driving and logistics. Gives people who are stressed over not having enough time more time.

Also soon the machines will be beating the best human race car drivers at the track- no question. Machines beat the best chess players, Go players and jeopardy players. And again it just has to avoid collisions, and a lot of that is pressing the break a the the right time- the reflexes and awareness and response times will be radically better than humans. Cars will clearly have other ways to be aware of each other that are more active possibly including lifi and wireless connections also connections to traffic lights- don't even need traffic lights with them if its all machine- or lights can be moved into the cars vice the street corners for assisted driving. Prediction is 10x better than a human pretty quickly. Again it will be like it has 1000 years to consider each second that rolls by. We are on the edge of systems that can solve Hamiltonians so path finding will be amazing.

I've seen Google maps without being linked to lights change the estimation of route ETA in real time in response to a red light a long string of lights and get it exactly right because its software is that calibrated.

 

[galderdi]

Tesla's current Auto-pilot is a Driver's aide. Like a cruise control on steroids. It is not currently intended to be fully autonomous in the cars currently sold to the public. When used correctly, under driver supervision, they are already reducing the number and severity of crashes. They are not perfect but even at their current point in development they are still much better than nothing. There are also an increasing range of other cars (both EVs and ICE) with all sorts of comparible driver aides like impact avoidance/aut braking systems. I am certainly an advocate for increasing these safety features along side the driver. But I am a long way off a point in time where I would trust an autonomous system without driver supervision.

 

[Martin Williams]

It turns out that systems where the car drives itself, but under driver supervision and the driver has to take over when necessary are likely to be the most dangerous of all. (I think this is called 'Level 3' or somesuch)

This has been expensively (in human life) discovered in railway and aircraft systems. Sadly, humans are not good at responding appropriately after long periods of doing nothing. The mind wanders, and when called to action it is very ill-prepared for doing the right thing.

In many years of using software of all sorts, I have yet to encounter a bug-free program of any complexity. The sad truth about software development is that it is in practice impossible to make it bug-free. Standard practice allows a level of 'tolerable' faults because curing them would possibly introduce other faults. So although your word processor program seems pretty good, it is very likely that with a very long document containing lots of cross-references, indices, footnotes etc. it will be very likely to misbehave.

This is at worst a nuisance in a word processor package, but in the software for autonomous vehicles, it could be disastrous. As these systems are likely to be a lot more complex than word processor packages they are likely to be a lot less reliable.

These are 'implementation' problems and minor compared to the real obstacle to driverless vehicles. Nobody yet knows how to write software that can handle the unexpected, and it is computationally infeasible to be able to accommodate ALL POSSIBLE permutations and combinations of the millions of pixels per second flooding in from a multi-camera, multi-sensor array.

There is no way of doing this and no prospect of it arriving soon or even ever.

Another approach is to use neural networks or similar 'learning' techniques, by subjecting them to thousands of possible scenarios and thereby 'training' them to behave in an acceptable fashion. This 'sort of' works in many cases, but means that the 'trainer' has no idea of how the network is doing it. Given something unexpected, you have an even poorer idea of how it is likely to behave.

Basically what it all boils down to is that we lack sufficient skills to do the job properly if at all.

I can't understand 101101's post at all. As autonomous driving systems - such as they are - are applicable equally to petrol, diesel, battery and hydrogen cars I can't for the life of me see how criticising them in any way can be ascribed to the alleged evil motives of the petrol industry.

 

[Domenick]

I can't understand 101101's post at all. As autonomous driving systems - such as they are - are applicable equally to petrol, diesel, battery and hydrogen cars I can't for the life of me see how criticising them in any way can be ascribed to the alleged evil motives of the petrol industry.

Please feel free to make use of our ignore user feature. Just click on the user's avatar, and there should be an ignore option.

 

[101101]

@martin Didn't the British Aerospace lose about 9 jet airliners before they finally submerged one to learn how to do the rivets correctly.
Your argument is like suggesting that shouldn't have done jet liners because some would crash. Or we shouldn't do trains because there are occasional accidents. Ignores the admittedly utilitarian argument of of how many lives have been saved. I'd argue we still should have done petrol (not question- it was completely vital) even thought the last 50 years of it have been an unmitigated disaster in a way that was completely foreseeable and it is currently putting our survival at serious risk.

 

[101101]

Two Telsa accidents under investigation looking as phony as 911

Its like with NIST insisted burning lawn chairs felled building 7.

In the first big accident the car sheared off at the neck and shoulders of the driver which brings to mind the MO of the phony war (petrol bailout driver) known as ISIS.

In the 2nd accident the car shown through the media is literally cut in half- same type of indicator.

This is a very easy story to understand. Petrol over the last 5 decades has destroyed the US economy and standard of living. It is is so bad now that defensive tariffs are needed because other countries with green energy will be achieving a much lower cost of goods. Petrol has been holding our financial and retirement systems hostage as well and its helped rig elections to keep this destruction going. And as we know its engaged in more than 10 phony wars to bailout the perpetual bad and long obsolete economics of petrol that have undermined the US. Petrol cannot be fixed or salvaged.

What is happening here is every easy to see. Self-driving vehicles will destroy the petrol retailer ICE makers they can't take the hit in the reduction of cars on the road without going bankrupt and liquidating- its a predicted 18x reduction. More importantly and even more necessary is it will destroy petrol as it fully solves the charging infrastructure issue tomorrow not years from now for those people without garages who for instance live in garages. Its key to helping us get quickly to 100% petrol elimination from transport markets (also including shipping and air transport) which will catalyze the elimination of petrol fuel/energy all together (even in heating) and hand the proper economic losses to those who have destroyed the US economy and destroyed the nation's good will and corrupted its governance. A functioning FBI would stop this BS almost instantly but instead its necessary to rely on
the Loose Change people and white hat hackers and Tesla itself to push back get non FUD out. Maybe the Blue Wave and the apparently pending removal of the T. Admin will help.

On the other hand you have an FBI director in the middle of the controversy releasing a book and notice which party that director came from.

 

[Domenick]

Two Telsa accidents under investigation looking as phony as 911

Its like with NIST insisted burning lawn chairs felled building 7.

In the first big accident the car sheared off at the neck and shoulders of the driver which brings to mind the MO of the phony war (petrol bailout driver) known as ISIS.

In the 2nd accident the car shown through the media is literally cut in half- same type of indicator.

This is a very easy story to understand. Petrol over the last 5 decades has destroyed the US economy and standard of living. It is is so bad now that defensive tariffs are needed because other countries with green energy will be achieving a much lower cost of goods. Petrol has been holding our financial and retirement systems hostage as well and its helped rig elections to keep this destruction going. And as we know its engaged in more than 10 phony wars to bailout the perpetual bad and long obsolete economics of petrol that have undermined the US. Petrol cannot be fixed or salvaged.

What is happening here is every easy to see. Self-driving vehicles will destroy the petrol retailer ICE makers they can't take the hit in the reduction of cars on the road without going bankrupt and liquidating- its a predicted 18x reduction. More importantly and even more necessary is it will destroy petrol as it fully solves the charging infrastructure issue tomorrow not years from now for those people without garages who for instance live in garages. Its key to helping us get quickly to 100% petrol elimination from transport markets (also including shipping and air transport) which will catalyze the elimination of petrol fuel/energy all together (even in heating) and hand the proper economic losses to those who have destroyed the US economy and destroyed the nation's good will and corrupted its governance. A functioning FBI would stop this BS almost instantly but instead its necessary to rely on
the Loose Change people and white hat hackers and Tesla itself to push back get non FUD out. Maybe the Blue Wave and the apparently pending removal of the T. Admin will help.

On the other hand you have an FBI director in the middle of the controversy releasing a book and notice which party that director came from.

Please don't insult our collective intelligence with some ridiculous conspiratorial notion that these two Tesla accidents were faked. It's also extremely disrespectful to the victim's families and friends. You might disagree with the specific circumstances around how or why they occurred, but it's a tragic fact that they did occur. Thank you.

 

[DonDeeHippy]

True, and so far, a pretty lousy job they are making of it. There have been a number of deaths already and - by now - probably many thousands of events where human drivers have had to take over to avoid more.

There is, also, the question of who wants this anyway? Polls have shown little enthusiasm for it from the general population and I'm not surprised. Many people enjoy driving, and most of us would prefer to drive than to sit there looking at the scenery and wondering how safe the car really is.

I think the biggest thing ppl forget when talking about this stuff is just how bad drivers are, texting while driving or late for work or I have the biggest car so I can do what I want.
Everyday driving in the city I see ppl doing really dangerous stuff on purpose, tailgating in pouring rain, we all know the stories.
if autonomous driving is better than a texting fool weaving through traffic because he slept in, we have a winner
1200 deaths a year in Australia and a 3rd of accidents just because they are to close to the car in front

 

[Pushmi-Pullyu]

Not to suggest in any way that I agree with the over-the-top allegations made by our resident forum eccentric ("101101") -- I almost never actually read his posts any more -- but much of the opposition to Tesla AutoSteer is emotional and unreasonable, rather than rational or reasonable. It's just the perfectly normal human fear of the unfamiliar, and human fear of giving up control, expressing themselves.

Some things you really do have to experience for yourself. Some years back -- I wish I had a link to it -- there was an article on a prototype self-driving car. The reporter was allowed to "drive" the self-driving car in an empty parking lot. He reported he was afraid to let the car take over when driving, but a few minutes after he did, he was able to relax and actually found it more enjoyable than driving himself. I suspect most people are going to react the same way.

And I think it's pretty short-sighted to believe that autonomous driving is not the future of automobiles. There is already strong statistical evidence that it's safer to use even the limited semi-self-driving systems found in mass produced cars today -- systems like Tesla AutoSteer -- and that safety factor is only going to get stronger over time. I don't think it will be all that many years before insurance companies offer lower rates for those who use autonomous or even semi-self-driving cars, and eventually, perhaps two or three decades from now or perhaps sooner, States and Nations are going to start restricting the use of cars without self-driving features on public roads, due to the public danger involved.

It's another expression of normal human fear to assert that we should wait until self-driving cars are "perfected" before they are allowed on public roads. No safety system works perfectly every time. For example, about 20 people have been killed in accidents related to exploding air bags. Should we stop using air bags because 20 people have been killed? Of course not! You are still far, far safer in a car with air bags than in one without them. Just a few hours ago, an InsideEVs news article reported "Elon Musk says Tesla’s autopilot system will 'never be perfect'." Good for him! That's being realistic, and it also refutes the notion that we should wait for it to be "perfected" before it's used by the public.

Fear of the unknown, and fear of giving up control of a safety-related function, have been advantageous for human evolution. It's both smart and wise to not trust your life to something that hasn't been fully tested, and trusting your life to something untested is likely going to lead to an early death. But we need to understand that humans are pretty lousy at judging relative risk. Sure, there is some risk involved in riding in a semi-autonomous vehicle. But the risk of riding in, or driving, a human-driven vehicle is even higher! We discount that risk because we have become used to it. But that's an emotional, illogical reaction, not a safe or sane reaction! We need to remember that driving a car, or riding in one, at high speeds on public roads is one of the most dangerous things that most people do on a regular basis. Anything we can do to reduce that danger should be used just as soon as we possibly can. Waiting around until such systems are "perfected" won't save lives; it will only cost lives that we could be saving right now, today!

Due to human fear of the unknown, it's hard for us to read a report of a horrible fatal accident involving a car being controlled by Tesla Autopilot+AutoSteer, and conclude "Well, despite the fact this one person died, we'd all still be safer using that type of safety feature than not using it." But that is the rational, logical, sensible conclusion. Eventually, most people are going to realize that. Or at least insurance adjusters, emergency responders, tow truck drivers, and auto body shop mechanics are going to realize that!

“The thing to keep in mind is that self-driving cars don’t have to be perfect to change the world. They just have to be better than human beings.”
​

-- Deepak Ahuja, CFO of Tesla Inc.
-

 

[101101]

No disrespect to the families of people that were actually hurt (very likely I won't know one way or another and neither will you) but this stuff seems fake just like the 911 stuff- and people surely got hurt there as people could have been hurt here but it doesn't mean it wasn't BS or there isn't the possibility of stuff like crisis acting? Could be very wrong, but if right its important to know because we need to be rid of petrol yesterday not after its caused a nuclear 3rd world war with Russia over its client state Iran.

How many faked accidents before autonomy is derailed at least in the US- can't stop it globally but its terrible if it does delay it even in the US and it will cost countless lives? What would derailing electric cars through sabotage do to electric cars and getting rid of petrol? And with Trump in office who just brought back John Bolton how does that play in in terms of good will toward electric and getting rid of petrol? What do you think happens to insurance and petrol pork if electric autonomy succeeds, and what have these groups been willing to do in the past?

Lets look at what the father of Neoconservatism said when he was at Oil University U of C

"A leader must perpetually deceive those being ruled.
Those who lead are accountable to no overarching system of morals, only to the right of the superior to rule the inferior
Religion is the force that binds society together, and is therefore the tool by which the ruler can manipulate the masses (any religion will do)
Secularism in society is to be suppressed, because it leads to critical thinking and dissent
A political system can be stable only if it is united against an external threat, and that if no real threat exists, one should be manufactured"

Also "the rational state's only legitimate aim is the increase of its own power" more a paraphrase but in the same lineage.

These are the people claiming to be in power right now or thinking they are.

This was a week where tech and silicon valley seemed to be getting hammered possibly because the T. Admin is trying to encourage investment in tangibles meaning petrol. But these people might be being outright threatened. Zuckerberg who is being blamed for the presence of Trump looked truly rattled possibly beyond the incredibly foolish insider trading they he and other Face Book execs engaged in.

And like something out side of the twilight zone at around the same time Musk was saying there were too many robots blaming conveyor belts... which sounds like so much BS- remember that is supposedly something that Saturn suffered from but until it was an excuse it was the said to be that GM division's strongest advantage and it was successful for a while. How does Musk achieve the goals of the electric car revolution if he has just hit a speed limit- why the hell would he say this BS especially to CBS- to me it screams duress and blackmail. Why did Obama sign the NDAA riders (?)- maybe it had something to do with 4 calls on his life? A lot is going on. I think its a huge reason for celebration but why does Paul Ryan step down with out being able to state a reason? So sorry about 99% sure this car stuff is BS. Could be very wrong but really don't think I am. Its time for people to think critically.

 

[Martin Williams]

Didn't the British Aerospace lose about 9 jet airliners before they finally submerged one to learn how to do the rivets correctly.

Not to the best of my knowledge, no. I can't see how submerging an airliner would be of any use whatsoever in learning how to put rivets into the thing anyway!

I think trying to make a safe self-driving car using today's state of the art is more like trying to transform lead into gold by alchemy.

 

[bwilson4web]

The Comet was the jet that was found to suffer from metal fatigue:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Comet

http://www.yeapeople.com/Age3/avhist/Comet.html

A different airplane, similar failure mechanism:

The Boeing 737 uses a different construction method that limits how far a crack can proceed.

Bob Wilson

 

[101101]

That is that article where they use a much older version of auto pilot against a much newer version of cruise because likely as usual GM paid them to lie.

 

[Martin Williams]

There have now been three deaths of people in self-driving cars. If you compare the tiny number of miles done by these things compared to billions done every day by humans, their record of safety so far is bloody awful!

I think allowing these ill-considered machines access to public roads for testing compounds the danger. Soon they will be killing other road users too.

Time to call a halt I think.

I don't for a moment think it's fear of the unknown that worries people about these cars, as Pushmi seems to think. It is fear of the KNOWN! In particular, the unpredictable behaviour of complex machines when they go wrong, the deficiencies of software, and the bullshit spouted by the motor industry when pushing a new car.