782

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.”

(page 2) 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] breadsmasher@lemmy.world 146 points 1 week ago

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 -

[-] conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works 86 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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.

load more comments (6 replies)
[-] expatriado@lemmy.world 69 points 1 week ago

if he was truthful: "the cost of adding lidar cuts in my profits"

[-] III@lemmy.world 29 points 1 week ago

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.

[-] normanwall@lemmy.world 24 points 1 week ago

Honestly though, I'm a fucking idiot and even I can tell that Lidar might be needed for proper, safe FSD

[-] RandomStickman@fedia.io 25 points 1 week ago

You'd think "we drive with our eyes, cameras are eyes." is an argument against only using cameras but that do I know.

[-] Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works 25 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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.

[-] helenslunch@feddit.nl 19 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The whole "we drive with our eyes" thing is such bullshit. Humans are terrible drivers. Autonomous driving should be better than humans.

That goes for OpenPilot too. They actually openly advertise that their software makes the same mistakes as humans, as if it's some sort of advancement. Like if I could plug Lidar into my brain, I totally would.

How Can Cameras Be Real If Our Eyes Aren't Real?

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (8 replies)
[-] fluxion@lemmy.world 116 points 1 week ago

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

[-] lurker8008@lemmy.world 94 points 1 week ago

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.

[-] vxx@lemmy.world 28 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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"

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] FiskFisk33@startrek.website 90 points 1 week ago

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" ?

[-] ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 26 points 1 week ago

"I freely admit that the refreshing sparkling water I sell is poisonous and should not be consumed."

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] kiku@feddit.org 17 points 1 week ago

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.

load more comments (4 replies)
[-] postmateDumbass@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago

It drives your full self, it doesn't break you into components and ship those seperately.

[-] krashmo@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago

That's pretty clearly just a disclaimer meant to shield them from legal repercussions. They know people aren't going to do that.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[-] jlh@lemmy.jlh.name 62 points 1 week ago

Humans know to drive more carefully in low visibility, and/or to take actions to improve visibility. Muskboxes don't.

[-] hannesh93@feddit.org 48 points 1 week ago

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

[-] mindaika@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 1 week ago

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

[-] WheelcharArtist@lemmy.world 19 points 1 week ago

Muskboxes

like that

load more comments (8 replies)
[-] Etterra@lemmy.world 62 points 1 week ago

Tesla: Why would we need lidar? Just use visual cameras.

[-] DerArzt@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

~~Tesla~~ Musk: Why would we need lidar? Just use visual cameras

FTFY

[-] rsuri@lemmy.world 60 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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.

[-] SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone 45 points 1 week ago

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 week 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.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] sue_me_please@awful.systems 16 points 1 week 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!

[-] blady_blah@lemmy.world 22 points 1 week ago

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.

[-] WoodScientist@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago

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.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[-] Moah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 18 points 1 week ago

Humans move with only feet so cars should be limited to using feet. And only 2 of them.

[-] rsuri@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago

Well building battlemechs does seem like the obvious next step on Elon's progression

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[-] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 34 points 1 week ago

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

load more comments (4 replies)
[-] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 32 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Full Self Driving shipping ~~2025~~ ~~2026~~ ~~2027~~ ~~3098~~ ~~4484~~ 1e+156

                       ^

                   You are here
[-] elgordino@fedia.io 24 points 1 week ago

If anyone was somehow still thinking RoboTaxi is ever going to be a thing. Then no, it’s not, because of reasons like this.

[-] testfactor@lemmy.world 26 points 1 week ago

It doesn't have to not hit pedestrians. It just has to hit less pedestrians than the average human driver.

[-] ContrarianTrail@lemm.ee 21 points 1 week ago

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.

load more comments (8 replies)
[-] elgordino@fedia.io 13 points 1 week ago

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.

load more comments (11 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[-] KonalaKoala@lemmy.world 22 points 1 week ago

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.

[-] PeroBasta@lemmy.world 21 points 1 week ago

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.

load more comments (6 replies)
load more comments (16 replies)
[-] JIMMERZ@lemm.ee 18 points 1 week ago

The worst way to die would be getting hit by a shitbox Tesla. RIP.

[-] magic_smoke@links.hackliberty.org 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I mean I'll take it over being burned alive or brutally eaten alive by a pack of ravenous wolves.

load more comments (4 replies)
[-] Buffalox@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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?

[-] mars296@fedia.io 16 points 1 week ago

Assisted full self driving is an oxymoron.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (14 replies)

To be fair its marketed as full self driving, not full self no crashing

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›
this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2024
782 points (98.4% liked)

Technology

58884 readers
3626 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS