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Tesla took the opposite approach of what I described (the Subaru approach).

Tesla took the approach that the machine is in control and the human has to detect and take over when the machine makes a mistake. That is known to be a very problematic strategy, it's easy for the human to get distracted.

What Subaru has done is to leave the human in control, the machine only steps in when it sees a problem.

It's totally different safety outcomes. In fact, not even the same problem - one is "self driving", the other is "crash prevention".

Yes they are different. They are also WILDLY different value propositions. Crash prevention is nice, just getting safer and safer is nice--though I personally wouldn't stop driving ~$5k cars for even "really good" crash protection.

But a car that can drive me while I sleep and become a Taxi while I work is something I would go into debt for.

But a car that can drive me while I sleep and become a Taxi while I work is something I would go into debt for.

I don't think most regular people will actually own fully autonomous cars to rent them out. Big players will do the capital expenditure to buy a fleet, and rent out transportation service. Renting in uber style will be basically the price of owning, but without the up-front capital expenditure, and it will provide the convenience of choosing the type of car for the specific transport needs of the moment. The margins of these rent-a-fleet services will be low, so you won't have a hope as individual car owner of actually buying a car and renting it out without turning it into a loss compared to just renting.

Certainly if most people owned them, there wouldn't be a market to rent them out.

I would go into debt for that also!

> Tesla took the approach that the machine is in control

That's not really accurate. Tesla says the driver is ultimately responsible. That holds unless a court determines otherwise. The same is true for Toyota/Subaru. They're all SAE level 2 systems.

The opposite approach from this would be Waymo/Volvo who intend to take responsibility for decisions made by their vehicles. Those are SAE level 4 or 5 systems.

Perhaps a portion of Tesla's problem was with marketing? Autopilot gives very different cues than something like LKAS (lane keep assist).

And it's also called "Autopilot" which sets an extremely different tone and expectation than other driver-assistance/safety technologies.

> And it's also called "Autopilot" which sets an extremely different tone and expectation than other driver-assistance/safety technologies.

Only to those not familiar with autopilot systems in aircraft.

It's like the use of "hacker" - here on this site it still (probably) has most of it's original meaning. To the rest of the world it means a guy in a ski-mask with a russian/chinese accent who's after your bank account.

Unfortunately most of the world thinks pilots in commercial aircraft turn on the autopilot and can then go for a sleep, so when they see "Autopilot" on a Tesla, they think they can do the same.

> most of the world thinks pilots in commercial aircraft turn on the autopilot and can then go for a sleep

They can go to sleep and the plane will continue to fly itself. However, if anyone found out they were sleeping heads would roll.

Autopilot electronics on a plane is trivial. Autopilot for a car is damn hard.

> Only to those not familiar with autopilot systems in aircraft.

Isn’t that most people?

>Unfortunately most of the world thinks pilots in commercial aircraft turn on the autopilot and can then go for a sleep

They can go for a sleep though.

Only if you're happy waking up to find you're about to plow into another large object at a high rate of speed.

The Pilot in Command is expected to sit in their seat and monitor the aircraft, surrounding airspace and the radios, and be ready to take control at a moments notice.

They can't go for a snooze without handing that over to another pilot first.

The same expectation applies to drivers of Tessa's Autopilot.

> That's the approach we know won't work. That was Tesla's first-round autopilot, the self-crashing car.

I think OP was talking about "crash avoidance" systems. Not systems that claim to drive the car but not really.

You're always driving, the car is just silently observing. If the car sees you're about to crash, it steps in and takes over. The opposite of Tesla's approach where you play the role of observer taking over when things go wrong.

The first approach is safe. The second approach isn't safe until full autonomy due to cognitive load and task switching delays.

There are many automotive "auto-brake" systems, usually controlled by a radar. Those are useful. They're usually programmed to act only when a collision is inevitable. They prevent some slow-speed collisions, and reduce the damage in some faster ones.

What they don't do is take over steering. A last-second takeover of steering would make things worse some of the time.

The next Volvo model will take over steering for collision avoidance.

http://www.leftlanenews.com/volvo-xc60s-collision-avoidance-...

> What they don't do is take over steering. A last-second takeover of steering would make things worse some of the time.

I have a Honda. While its lane-keeping system won't steer during a crash, it definitely does steer to keep you centered in the lane (when it's able). That could help avoid all kinds of crashes due to inattentive lane-drifting.

Is it less fatiguing?

Yes. You still have to pay attention, but there's not as much pressure and fewer startling surprises.

I really don't want those on in stop and go rush-hour traffic. They're very likely to cause someone /behind/ the automated car to have an accident. (Yeah yeah, following distances; trying building enough capacity for everyone to do the proper following speed and keep distance.)

Can you elaborate?

Assuming for example the car is fitted with solid state lidar on the four corners and ESR on the four sides or even LIDAR.

What are your thoughts on crash prevention if the car has the same hardware as a a Waymo car?

(edit: to clarify, would you consider autosteering at the last minute safer than a human driver in that scenario?)

Don’t Volvo and Mercedes do obstacle avoidance? Or is that still in research? I think I remember seeing videos.

Yes they do. They take over steering, automatically drive around obstacles, etc. And this is already deployed in production vehicles today.

Interesting. The three of them show the car being hit from the left side when driving on a high-way. It seems that the autopilot is bad at recognizing objects that suddenly appear on that side.

More like, if you are not a car on the left lane, then you are not. Bam, you got an accident.

Edit: Is the last video in the US? Is it normal for other drivers not to stop when they see an accident?

Right. Tesla's round 1 "autopilot" used Mobileye's car recognizer for obstacle detection. If it didn't look like a car, it didn't get recognized as an obstacle.

I wrote a previous YC posting on this, on why you need to use geometry first, then object recognition.

Whether or not it "works" it has the overwhelming benefit of being an incremental approach. Incremental (evolutionary) change tends to work while revolutionary is more tricky. e.g. video phones were demonstrated in the 1960s but are still not really widely used. Also no need for Star Trek - level AI, which is a significant advantage.

> but are still not really widely used

Seriously? All smartphones are video phones. I fail to see how they could be more widely used.

You may mean that people choose to make audio-only calls... but just because people choose to do that, it doesn't mean the technology isn't here & fully available in affordable, commercial, "good enough" form.