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Comment by MereInterest | Hacker News Reader

L2/L3 is also at a point where the only reason to have a human in the control loop at all is to pass the buck for any accidents. A 2016 study found that reaction times are absolutely pitiful unless the driver is actively driving. After passing control from the automation to the human, it takes about 15-20 seconds for your reaction time to get up to the level of a drunk driver.

The human in the front seat of a L3 car isn't the driver. They're the scapegoat.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/154193121360142...

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Daimler explicitly assumes liability if something goes wrong when driving autonomously. That is the key difference to other popular automakers that market themselves as pioneers but do not assume liability for their level 2 system.

How does this work in practise? I think there must be something in the legislation as well. I don't see the driver and car manufacturer could just transfer the liabilities to the manufacturer with mutual contract. Monetary liabilities maybe, but there can be also criminal charges on the table.

Knowing past practices at Daimler (regarding emissions) I expect them to disengage the L3 system right before impact.

The same way insurance does.

Wow, didn't know this.

Polar opposite of what Tesla is doing. If they can't match this, that's the whole German fsd market gone for them, possibly whole EU, as they will harmonize the Requirements.

Tesla is going the fastest route possible to complete autonomy. What we are seeing now is the beta program to get there as fast as possible. No one is forced into buying it.

I am really happy that they have the gusto to push things forward, if it weren't for them we wouldn’t have an EV race, a autonomy race, a rocket race.

I don't see why Tesla can't do both. Production Autopilot is easily the most advanced ADAS on the market right now, why not add an L3 "mode" with the same limits (traffic jams only) and liability guarantees as Daimler?

> No one is forced into buying it.

This may be interpreted as the purchaser accepting known risks from a product, but no such consent exists from those around the car. Safety standards exist to protect people outside the car as well as inside, and may not be unilaterally waived on the part of those inside the car. Even assuming that the purchaser is fully informed about the risks when given consent, and is not misled by Tesla's erroneous use of "Full Autopilot" to describe something that requires continuous human oversight, not even that shred of consent exists from pedestrians struck/killed by self-driving cars (e.g. link below).

https://www.newsweek.com/tesla-lawsuit-model-x-autopilot-fat...

That's why Waymo decided to go all in with driverless vehicles, instead of progressively adding features and autonomy to a driver-lead car, they discovered "drivers" get complacent easily.

I like that solution much better. The assumption that most manufacturers make, that humans are capable of sustained focused attention on tasks which only require sporadic intervention, is a wildly inaccurate assumption.

From what I understand, Daimler will be liable if something happens during autonomous driving. Which is why it’s such a big deal.

L2 is much more of a scapegoat. With L3 even if your reactions aren't warmed up you can probably manage a perfectly good slow/stop.

Do you have a link that leads to that actual study?

I think it depends on how the handoff is being performed. If the automated system notices weather conditions beyond its training, then pulls over to hand off control, that is reasonable. If the automated system notices that it's getting into a dangerous and immediate situation, then the 15 seconds needed for a human to become engaged with the task are enough that the situation has already passed.

Found it, though unfortunately I couldn't find any non-paywall links.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/154193121360142...

It depends on how immediate things are, because you need a certain amount of warning to quality as level 3. A sufficiently rapid switchoff into danger puts you more in level 2 territory.

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