This is exactly why the mass delusion propagated by Elon that Tesla's have full self driving is terrifying, and why "self driving" in general is a sinister lie that endangers the public.
Say what? Is this some kind of industry joke that I'm not getting?
> The Romans were aware that lead could cause serious health problems
https://archive.epa.gov/epa/aboutepa/lead-poisoning-historic...
Asbestos, likewise, was being used 80 years after the discovery of ill effects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_asbestos_disease_medic...
Radium's danger was known 2 years after its discovery according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium#Hazards
I think your examples support the thesis that we're actually decent at discovering harmful effects, but we don't mind them.
But they don't support the thesis that we might find something unpleasant about power electronics that we don't yet know about.
I think it's less that we don't mind them, and more that it unfortunately is a slow process to go from first research realising there's a problem to general scientific consensus to then one or both of public awareness becoming big enough that companies have to respond and stop choosing profit over safety, or government concern needs to become great enough to enforce it through regulation.
I think we're seeing it with plastics at the moment, it seems very likely that in 50 years we'll a) know much more about the harm micro-plastics do and b) look back at now and think "there was enough evidence, why didn't they ban it immediately?" Well, because it's really convenient and cheap, companies don't want to give up profits, people like me don't want to give up convenient packaging etc, and governments don't want to piss off consumers and businesses at the same time by banning it too fast. Similar story for the climate crisis.
Otherwise I agree with what you say, and I'd say it agrees with what I said: we're pretty good at detecting harmful effects, and good at not taking them into account.
But that's not what the parent implied.
And then you have an entire car’s worth just strapped to the bottom of your chassis.
As is standard fuel used in combustion engines (which you know) so how does the argument of flammability hold stronger here?
Ford Pinto blew up due to tank puncture during an accident.
Current fire fighter directives for putting out BEVs is either dump a loader bucket of sand on it (which most don't have yet), or drag it some place safe and let it burn out.
Also gasoline just sits there until ignited. Lithium battery packs can have various failure modes which send them into thermal runaway. Chevy Bolt EVs are being recalled en masse and owners told not to charge overnight or in a garage, least it go off unattended.
I'm very pro EV but lithium is spicy.
Material science improvements won’t overcome the fundamental fact that the third atomic element on the periodic table just really wants to light things on fire.
It's not far removed from flatearthers/qanon/911-truthers/moonhoax people defending theie stance by naming conspiracies thought false at the time but later revealed as true. Such events, and your speculations, are merely examples of the fact that we're sometimes wrong. Not that we should live our lives expecting that every accepted fact is wrong.
If it’s good enough for us (two small cameras and two microphones all mounted right next to each other) why is it inherently infeasible for a computer?
Saying it's just cameras and microphones vastly over simplifies what driving involves for a human.
A fellow named Planck knew, when he used the expression E=hv to describe the difference between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation. You just missed class that day, I imagine. Fortunately it's never too late to learn.
Think of how silly this is though. You offload driving to a car, then...demand passenger give absolute attention every second that car operates itself. For one, this is a pointless tool if you have to monitor it all the time. For another, it is impossible that humans will be able to focus their attentions fully when they aren't really doing anything to drive the car. The better self-driving gets (say, safe and effective 99.999% or any incremental level higher), the less the human monitor will actually be watching. Thus the more likely any error will be catastrophic.
I would hope not. :)
Even the failures you see in the beta of Tesla FSD, aren’t catestrophic. The worst I’ve seen is a curb strikes in terms of actual “accidents”
Tesla FSD has many deaths and countless serious accidents under it's belt. Which doesn't necessarily have to be that bad, but as expected a computer doesn't make the same kind of mistakes that a human does and the kind of mistakes that tesla does doesn't inspire confidence (but rather nightmare fuel that you just can't wake up from).
They should be banned until they have level 4 and take responsibility for their cars actions. Blaming it on a human driver and calling it a day is ludicrous.
I think this is particularly problematic because with other humans, we can at least develop a sense of what types of mistakes they tend to make and try to adjust our driving accordingly. Things like not driving in another person's blind-spot, etc. but also more subtle stuff. I feel like there a sort of hive-mind that develops amongst drivers and probably makes things safer than they would otherwise be.
There have been 0 deaths from FSD and as far as I’m aware only 1 crash. Do you mean autopilot? Or navigate on auto pilot?
The car also features a yoke instead of a wheel. Which makes holding the yoke while autopilot is driving almost impossible.
Autonomous driving is a mess.
“Nearly accident” is the same as “not an accident” and definitely not: catastrophic .
This is because drivers are giving 100% attention to monitoring the car in these scenarios. So again, this means the tool is useless (right now it is), or if the driver stops paying attention and becomes an unfocused passenger (the actual point of self-driving) then the tool becomes absurdly deadly.
Everywhere along this spectrum, as attention declines, catastrophic risk goes up. Self driving is vapor ware at best, a scandal at worst. It's not going to end well.
Just like bumping into someone while walking is way less serious than bumping into another car while driving.
Is crashing your car at 50km/h not potentially deadly or dangerous? Of course it is. So, what are you talking about?
When planes typically fly in the air, how many other planes are nearby? 0
When cars drive on the road, how many other cars or pedestrians are nearby? Often many
Just because planes get completely obliterated at the speeds they travel doesn't mean cars going much slower in accidents come out unscathed. This is like elementary school stuff here.
I agree that there is a lot more going on with cars, as traffic and road conditions vary more than air traffic and sky conditions.
But my response is the failures aren’t that bad in the car world. Autopilot (ie lane keep and cruise control) have been probably safer than human drivers. Navigate on autopilot is very stable, but limited to highway… that’s why I referred to the lower speed, because high speed is closer to solved. The hard part of full self driving, is city streets, which is typically lower speeds. The failure mode of FSD is typically for it to just stop… I have never seen a single failure where it full speeds into another object. This did seem to happen sometimes in autopilot in the past, but not FSD
What do you make of this near-miss posted recently? Allegedly, FSD was on when the car veered into the lane of an oncoming car.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/re7vxr/fsd...
As an aside, it seems strange to me that the high beams switch Off as they approach the oncoming car. Seems the driver disabled them… auto disabled would have meant they detected the car, which then seems unlikely they’d move into it’s path. But very hard to judge off camera alone… they might not even be on FSD. Shrug.
of course, in a large sense, the one that hits from behind is at fault, but brake-checking is problematic
The car behind is always responsible for maintaining distance.
Realistically, if the tesla felt squeezed by a car it was passing, going a bit onto the shoulder would have been what I would have expected from a human driver. But no auto steering, tesla or otherwise, is going to do that.
I don't know where you live, but where I live (Denmark) brake-checking is a serious traffic offense which can lead to loss of license. While the driver behind has to keep distance, you cannot brake for non-traffic reasons. I.e. you cannot simply brake-check someone on the freeway because you think the driver behind you is driving too close (also a serious offense).
I don’t know where/why you are attributing sinister motives here… it seems a very understandable motive to make transport better.