Comment by foepys | Hacker News Reader

Comment by foepys | Hacker News Reader

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> People will die today because a driver was drunk/distracted/suicidal/rode raged or had a medical problem.

That's a straw man argument. Mandatory breathalyzer tests before every engine start and yearly medical and psychological check-ups would solve a lot of these problems as well.

> It gets safer overtime.

There is no evidence of this happening yet. It's still trying to drive people into concrete pillars. Remember that you only need to drive into a pillar once to die. Passing it 10,000 times before doesn't help when an update suddenly decides that the pillar is now a lane.

I'd be totally fine with Tesla testing this with trained drivers in suitable areas but giving this into the hands of amateurs is pure "move fast and break things", with "break" meaning ending lives.

The worst thing is: all of these videos feature sunny weather. How bad would it be in the rain? Ever tried to take picture in the dark with even light rain? Cameras are very bad at this.

What are you proposing? If someone is overweight with high blood pressure and a higher risk for a heart attack we should take away their license?

These drivers are vetted and their usage is monitored, many are employees. In the long run automated driving will save many more lives than it takes. Just like automated elevators.

https://www.npr.org/2015/07/31/427990392/remembering-when-dr....

> What are you proposing? If someone is overweight with high blood pressure and a higher risk for a heart attack we should take away their license?

This does not seem like an important nit to pick, so I'm wondering why you're picking it. The number of people killed or injured because a driver had a heart attack at the wheel is vanishingly small compared to drunk or distracted driving.

So let's reframe your question as you should have asked it:

"If someone is driving drunk or distracted we should take away their license?"

Yes. Absolutely.

Clearly it's not that simple, otherwise we'd have done it already.

We… already have? Drunk driving is grounds for license suspension, heavy fines and jail time in (I’m pretty sure) every US state. We may still have drunk drivers, but it seems odd to suggest that we aren’t doing anything about it. Cops, judges and juries take it super seriously. If you get caught drunk driving in America: Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200.

> It's still trying to drive people into concrete pillars.

That in itself doesn't constitute evidence that it isn't getting safer. After all humans occasionally drive into concrete pillars too.

What matters is that the distance traveled without incident goes up in a super-linear fashion over time. It would be nice if someone had hard numbers on that.

I’d say if we compare Tesla self driving numbers with human drivers driving similar cars, and count every disengagement as an accident, it would be a fair comparison. Tesla wouldn’t come out looking very good with those numbers though.

These rules seem quite stacked, we could also count every human crossing a red light or texting while driving as an accident.

But that's besides the point. I was arguing about the trend line. It may seem silly now, but if the error rate is roughly a straight line on a logarithmic graph then we'll get there soon enough. If it isn't then tesla at very least would have to admit they have a problem and explain how they'll get out of it.

Local maximums exist. If ML models were guaranteed to improve over time we would have no more problems to solve.

>> It gets safer overtime.

> There is no evidence of this happening yet.

With aircraft any crash or near-crash is investigated and then the software and procedures for all similar aircraft are updated. Over the decades this has resulted in a huge reduction in the rate of accidents. Isn't it likely that the same thing will happen with self-driving cars?

>Mandatory breathalyzer tests before every engine start

We don't do that today and we are still allowing people to drive on the road today.

Exactly. That's why Tesla's approach is bad. There is no rush to let this technology out on the streets before testing it rigorously for flaws. But Tesla promised FSD for all current models with FSD hardware, so they have to move or they will potentially be on the hook for fraud. I call this irresponsible and dangerous.

Disagree, Tesla approach is the right approach. You want to test the technology as early as possible in real situation as much as possible.

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