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Comment by BoorishBears | Hacker News Reader

Working in the AV space, it's really frustrating how confidently people who have no idea about what's hard and what isn't go off about Tesla right now.

Mercedes has soundly beaten the last decade of Tesla efforts by reaching L3.

I've personally watched FSD go off the rails and into a crash situation within 60 seconds of being turned on three times this month (I have a friend who loves to try it in San Francisco)

Had it crashed it'd be on my friend, not Tesla. The fact Mercedes is taking responsibility puts it in an entirely different level of effectiveness.

People also don't seem to understand Mercedes has a separate L2 system that works above 45 mph that already scores better than AP by consumer reports

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> go off about Tesla right now.

People don't go off on Tesla because of its lack of technical prowess. People go off on Tesla because their marketing department is a bunch of pathological liars.

It will be poetic justice if the marketing department is the first thing at Tesla to be completely automated.

That is so unkind to the Tesla marketing department...:-) Where do they get their orders from?

https://youtu.be/zhr6fHmCJ6k

https://youtu.be/5cFTlx68itk

This FUD is insane.

You make it sounds like Tesla's with FSD on are crashing all the time. This makes no sense at all, because... they aren't?

FUD is an interesting term. Why do you use it here? Are you implying GP’s message is part of a broader campaign?

Not op but there are several groups that are independent but essentially aligned on anti-Tesla motivation that have reasons to support campaigns against Tesla: TSLAQ, union supporters, oil producers, legacy auto, to name just a few. There are more. And FUD is well known and easy enough that even individuals can practice it, so I wouldn’t read too much into that.

I’m not convinced FUD is a real thing.

Right, I fear there is doubt and uncertainty, I see what you did there.

I can understand anti-Tesla motivation considering that Tesla doesn't act in a responsible way: they call their system "Autopilot" when it really isn't that; and they don't take responsibility in case of a crash. Both of these things should imho be illegal but somehow they get away with it.

There you go. With people believing this stuff of course they face some opposition.

I was thinking hedge funds paying troll-farms to bash anything TSLA related when they're short the stock (yes I actually believe that is a real thing that happens all the time), but sure those too.

I'm not sure what the track record for FSD is so far but Autopilot's isn't great and inspires little confidence: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/06/10/tesla-a...

17 fatalities, 736 crashes.

And yet it’s been used on several orders of magnitude more miles than any other offering. Check the numbers for general driver crashes and fatalities.

> And yet it’s been used on several orders of magnitude more miles than any other offering.

Based on what? ACC/LKAS has been a feature since before Tesla even existed as a corporation. You might be confusing their claims about FSD with AP (which they very much would like you to)

Similarly, they love for people to compare AP to all driver crashes and fatalities when AP only works in the situations that are otherwise least dangerous to drivers, in cars that are newer than the average car, driven by a demographic with higher than average safety records, etc... which means AP would need to kill a lot of people to not have better numbers than average

Those are crashes WITH, not crashes BECAUSE.

Without knowing the usual amount of no fault crashes given the number of driving miles the number is meaningless

$TSLA speaking?

I have no financial involvement in Tesla, owning neither shares nor shorts.

And even if I did, my motivation for speaking up does not affect the fact that a crash happening does not mean autopilot was at fault.

If anything, Tesla was found to be deactivating the autopilot mode at the second before a crash [1], embellishing the statistics of miles driven between crashes...

[1] PDF https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/inv/2022/INOA-EA22002-3184.PDF

Teslas with FSD are disengaging all the time. And even worse, it's not always FSD initiating: often times it's FSD not realizing it's about to do something wrong, the humans take over, and then them brushing it off as "well it's a beta" or "I bet it would have gotten it but I wasn't so sure".

Getting to a point where Mercedes can guarantee their system will correctly initiate disengagements and do so with a 10 seconds of response time while putting the liability on themselves is a massive leap of anything Tesla has ever put out.

Again, this is what happens when you have literally no clue how the space works (and then turn around and accuse people of FUD.)

Yup Mercedes should be applauded for accepting liability.

Tells me what I want to know about which system is safer.

Tesla's with the FSD option (with or without FSD engaged) are crashing less than any other car.

Yet, according to you that is somehow a bad thing (dangerous?) or worse han some other brand. Which again, is factually untrue afaik.

This reasoning still makes no sense at all.

I agree, the Fucked Up Deaths are insane.

For point of comparison, the entire rest of the auto industry, worldwide has fewer advanced driver deaths than Tesla, despite millions more cars on the road with advanced driving functionality.

On an absolute, and relative, basis Tesla advanced driving is the most dangerous advanced driving system in the world.

I'd love to know the numbers on this. How many crashes with advanced drivers enabled are there and how many miles of driving have they done?

They might be mislead by articles like this one: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/15/business/self-driving-car...

Where in the first few paragraphs it gives the impression Tesla has 5:1 deaths, but later you learn that they are including simple lane keeping and cruise control in the comparison, and

> None of the cars using the automated systems were involved in fatal accidents

None of the cars using the automated systems were involved in fatal accidents

If you mean Tesla, that is definitely false. Mostly famously, the Bay Area crash where autopilot was conveniently disabled seconds before the car crashed into a barrier, killing the driver. In the aftermath, the driver's family, and other Tesla drivers noted that a recent update to FSD had caused a regression, whereby Teslas would swerve toward the divider instead of away from it.

simple lane keeping and cruise control in the comparison

Some of Tesla AP's worst fatalities are instances where the car was just replicating simple lane keeping functionality and yet the car still crashed into a big rig or emergency vehicle the Tesla didn't see but which any other carmaker's system would have seen.

Notably, in instances where the Tesla was at fault Musk refuses to discuss the accident, even though he otherwise has no issues releasing information about the driver when the driver is at fault. It's telling that Musk rarely (but still) does this, which means that every time he doesn't it's very strong circumstantial evidence that the car was at fault.

At some point you need to stop making excuses for Tesla's atrocious safety practices and abysmal safety record and just except that they're fundamentally dangerous cars.

It's a review of a particular 10-month dataset. I'm making a comment about the framing of the article vs reality which might lead to misleading conclusions. Not claiming that Tesla (or any automated driving system) has never had fatal crashes, which is obviously not the case.

You said that "the entire rest of the auto industry, worldwide has fewer advanced driver deaths than Tesla, despite millions more cars on the road", what are your sources for that? Do you have numbers on non-Tesla L2 cars on the road to compare?

> This FUD is insane.

What are you talking about? The real FUD is Tesla not taking responsibility when "Autopilot" crashes into something.

An there are no official investigations into Tesla crashes either?

https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/inv/2022/INOA-EA22002-3184.PDF

> People also don't seem to understand Mercedes has a separate L2 system that works above 45 mph that already scores better than AP by consumer reports

Isn't Mercedes' L2 system non-upgradable, though? i.e. people with Merc's L2 system today won't be able to upgrade to L3+ later on, they'll need to buy a whole new car - right?

I bring this up only because I bought my X in 2018 with FSD prepaid - it's 5 years old now, and thanks to the gratis retrofitted computer upgrades it has the same level of FSD functionality as a factory-new Model Y purchased today - and I value that level of commitment to their carbuyers - whereas all the other carmakers I've ever dealt-with are the type that gladly charg $lots just for annual updates to the navigation maps SD card.

(I don't want to be seen defending Tesla, let alone Elon Musk here, but Tesla has avoided plenty of the worst practices of traditional automakers (okayokay, excepting the heated-seats thing).

Drive Pilot uses their MB.OS which is updatable so assume it also will be.

Unless you have some source that suggests otherwise.

And it uses LiDAR which in my opinion is mandatory for FSD.

According to Elon HW V2/2.5 was going to be FSD solved in 2016. Now HW V4 will be FSD solved. There've been multiple paid upgrades along that path that depending on exactly how Elon convinced a given buyer to pay for FSD previously.

The fact that you're going to claim that Tesla, the company that famously discounts vehicles wholesale before unannounced upgrades, silently downgraded their CPO program to a used car program, removed ultrasonic sensors and didn't tell buyers if they'd be missing basic features like Summon temporarily (read: 4+ months) until their vehicles were delivered... is showing a commitment to their car buyers... really says something.

People who paid for the FSD package have been given the upgrades for free.

It’s painful to see your matter-of-fact tone regarding things you have absolutely no clue about. You seem to know next to nothing about the auto space in general. Every carmaker raises and lowers their prices according to supply and demand. And no, there is no driver assistance system among any of the big manufacturers that come anywhere near Tesla’s system. And yes, exploring a problem space that hasn’t been explored before will face setbacks and require many iterations. Those iterations are free for the customers, however.

Elon makes a lot of “promises”, you’re right in that. Although, he really doesn’t. He makes educated guesses that you take for promises. Once Tesla’s own website and news outlets deliver those “promises”, should you start taking them for actual ones.

I work on autonomous vehicles, what on earth do I know about LKAS or exploring new problem spaces?

It's not like a basic Corolla has had features like drowsiness detection for close to a decade.

And you seem to have forgotten that in 2016 Elon claimed _all_ Teslas had FSD capable hardware, never contingent on if you had paid for FSD. That means the upgrades to 3 and 4 were paid upgrades for people who thought they were paying for a car that could already do FSD.

Overall you're upset and barking up the wrong tree (hardly even in the right forest)

>I bring this up only because I bought my X in 2018 with FSD prepaid

Mine came as standard equipment.

> I bought my X in 2018 with FSD prepaid - it's 5 years old now, and thanks to the gratis retrofitted computer upgrades it has the same level of FSD functionality as a factory-new Model Y purchased today

i.e. neither your 2018 model X nor a factory Model Y is anywhere close to "Full Self Driving". Remember what Musk promised in 2017: "In November or December of this year, we should be able to go all the way from a parking lot in California to a parking lot in New York with no controls touched in the entire journey."

We're in 2023. You got scammed, and you're still defending the scammer.

Working in the space appears to be misleading you. It is quite obvious that Teslas can already drive themselves - the thread ancestor literally linked a video.

Your comment has complaints about an academic engineering definition/legal standard that, realistically, is probably going to be paid for in lives by delaying the roll-out and development of self driving vehicles. We know from the march of AI in other fields that the potential for cars to drive to superhuman safety standards is just on the cusp of technologically achievable and will likely be achieved with some sort of evolutionary approach of trying a bunch of things and seeing what works.

This is exactly the wrong time to be making automakers liable for experimenting. If anything, we should be lowering the standards automakers are held to to push through the last technical barriers and break into the oasis where less people kill themselves on the road. I've already lost too many tired friends to car accidents; we should be sparing no effort to get humans away from the driver's wheel. In a fair world, people advocating raising standards should be held liable for the lives they are throwing away on net.

Nobody is being forced to drive a car with autopilot if they aren't comfortable. The risks are obvious and understood. Personal liability is fine.

> Nobody is being forced to drive a car with autopilot if they aren't comfortable. The risks are obvious and understood. Personal liability is fine.

What about all the others participants on the road? Should pedestrian and cyclist also take personal responsibility for getting hit by a self driving car?

> Should pedestrian and cyclist also take personal responsibility for getting hit by a self driving car?

No. Personal liability is fine.

Whose? Drivers, cyclists or the person that made the self driving that ran in to the cyclist?

The "driver" should be responsible. They were the one with most control over what brand of car was used, what conditions it was driving in and the choice to let it drive itself. They have the power to choose cars that don't run people over. Hold them liable and the situation will sort itself out as quickly as is efficient.

The situation would be very similar to how it is now, except a lot less people would be dying in car accidents.

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