Hacker News Reader

Comment by bagels | Hacker News Reader

Agree, it didn't hit anything, even though it might've without intervention. "into" is the misleading part.

Right, and it didn't "veer" either, it performed a normal turn.

The pedestrians had just started crossing, so it was in the wrong, but barely. It's the sort of manoeuvre that you see human drivers do all the time.

If you look at the blue track on the screen, the car is indicating it's going to go straight, not that it plans to turn right. I think the word veer is applicable because it is sudden and unexpected. If this was only a mistimed right turn, I might feel differently.

I mean it does look like it got lost, but the blue line in the "this is what I'm sensing and going to do in the next 30 seconds" view started indicating a full turn the instant it started turning.

I'm talking about on the right-hand-side, where it shows the route it's going to take. There's no indication on there it should turn right at this location. It looks like it should go straight through the intersection.

I see the display on the left side, which shows the car's trajectory, and it shows it's going to continue going straight and then suddenly switches to a turn. I would expect it to show that the turn is going to happen sooner, not suddenly switch from straight to turning.

what good is a blue line of what it’s planning, if the blue line changes the instant a new plan is made, such that the driver is surprised their car is making a right turn?

> so it was in the wrong, but barely

when it comes to hitting pedestrians, i dont think you can shade that in terms of "barely". either it is or isnt

It fundamentally didn't hit pedestrians though, and wasn't on a course to.

It was on a course to illegally cut off some pedestrians.

The entire talking point of FSD is that it's supposed to be better than human drivers. This ain't it.

>it didn't "veer" either, it performed a normal turn.

The definition of veer is "to change direction". This did that. Stop arguing semantics.

>The pedestrians had just started crossing

I fail to see how this matters at all. Even if the pedestrians hadn't started crossing yet, and were still on the sidewalk, it would have been wrong for the Tesla to make the turn without yielding to the peds.

> The entire talking point of FSD is that it's supposed to be better than human drivers. This ain't it.

the entire point of a beta is that it's supposed to be production grade software?

> I fail to see how this matters at all.

Contrast it to "running into the pedestrians"...

The Twitter user is located in MA, and the driver handbook says (https://www.mass.gov/doc/drivers-manual/download, page 85):

"You must yield to pedestrians entering or using a crosswalk in your travel path."

At least one pedestrian was unambiguously "using a crosswalk" in the car's travel path, and the other one was entering the crosswalk as well. I wouldn't consider this a marginal case.

I think Teslas are otherwise great cars but I would never use FSD in a million years. I think it should be banned on public streets until it's gone through testing that is far more rigorous.

The video is from Seattle, but the same yield-to-pedestrians-in-crosswalks applies here, too.

By the way, the "safer than the mean human driver" bit is irrelevant when you consider the distribution of human drivers. They need to be safer than (say) the 95th percentile of human drivers, which is a far higher bar to clear than the mean.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com