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Comment by kbos87 | Hacker News Reader

We keep hearing this is crazy, but is there evidence to back that up? At this point with hundreds of thousands of Tesla vehicles logging millions of miles a month, I feel like we’d be hearing non-stop reports of destruction on the highways if it really is as crazy as the average HN reader has been led to believe.

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the only reason we don't hear non-stop about destruction is that you're required to keep both hands on the wheel/yolk at ALL times while FSD is activated. comparing the current cameras on a Tesla to the human eye is just silly really, sure they cover 360 which is superior, but in almost any other way, the human eye is superior having better dynamic range, better contrast, better resolution and best of all, we have eye lids. if you would just sit down and think about it for 10 mins you'll realize that gimping your self driving car by using cameras only is just a very very silly proposition when we have all this cool tech like lidar essentially giving the car super powers.

If FSD drivers were having to constantly intervene because the car couldn’t accurately map obstacles, we’d be hearing a lot more about it. I drive with FSD all the time - I could give you a list of things it needs to improve on, but not a single one has anything to do with its accuracy of understanding its surroundings.

I do see stories about FSD seemingly trying to drive into obstacles fairly often. It’s true that it does see most obstacles, but most is not good enough for this.

>not a single one has anything to do with its accuracy of understanding its surroundings.

This has been my gripe for a long time. I feel like many in tech have conflated two problems. With current software the problem of perception (ie "understanding its surroundings") is largely solved*, but this shouldn't be conflated with the much more difficult problem of self-driving.

*for sure, there have been issues with perception. A glaring example is the Uber fatality in AZ.

This exactly. Reading the comments and understanding the huge gap between perception and reality of FSD is eye opening. There are a lot of armchair experts here who wouldn’t be caught dead driving a Tesla but are so confident in their understanding of its strengths, weaknesses, and the underlying reasons.

Accuracy of surroundings is absolutely something it could improve on. Adding a different modality (like lidar) would be like adding another sense. Seeing an 18 wheeler without under guards would be easier with an additional sense. It makes the intelligence part easier because the algorithm can be more sure about it's interpretation of the environment.

No longer true. Now they use the camera to verify you're looking at the road.

Also, we can drive just fine with two cameras and a neural net, no LIDAR.

In engineering, you don't add something unless it's necessary, not because "well we may as well have it."

you listened to Musk a bit too much.

And no, a neural net and two cameras are not "just fine". The day cameras will be as good as your eyes and your neural net will be on the level of human intelligence (AGI) then maybe it would be possible. But until then you will need to rely on extra hardware to get there.

Go check on youtube how FSD behaves in city with 1/10th the complexity of SF/Waymo. And remember the difficulty is with the long tail of unexpected events.

We don't drive just fine, we routinely kill each other, often because of poor visibility or not noticing motion. Backing into a busy street? Bam. Open your door without checking? Biker down. Passing a bus at a crosswalk? Pedestrian dead. Driving at night with heavy fog? Off the cliff.

Even your basic non-fancy non-AI car these days have a variety of sonar/radar assists to help out their cameras. Tesla is just being cheap (and getting people killed because of it).

Speeding and drunk driving are the two big ones that kill people.

>with hundreds of thousands of Tesla vehicles logging millions of miles a month, I feel like we’d be hearing non-stop reports of destruction

Why do you believe that Tesla vehicles are driving millions of miles a month on autopilot?

I suspect that autopilot accounts for a vanishingly small percentage of Tesla miles-driven. Mostly because it sucks, but also because of how hard it is to not miss a nag on a long road trip, with the result that you are locked out of autopilot until your next stop.

(Yes, even when paying attention to the road, with your hands on the wheel. Hell, autopilot locks you out if you exceed 85 mph for more than a few seconds by pressing the accelerator, such as when passing. This is true even in places where the speed limit is 85 mph, and the slower end of the flow of traffic is 95 mph.)

I love the performance of my Model S Plaid. Autopilot, however, is a joke.

"This is true even in places where the speed limit is 85 mph, and the slower end of the flow of traffic is 95 mph."

Where do you drive where the speed limit is 85 mph?

Poland? 140km/h is the motorway speed limit. Admittedly there aren't that many Teslas here. But they are extremely popular in Germany and you see people drive them at silly speeds.

"Extremely popular in Germany" is a bit of a stretch, from googling around, there are only around 40k Teslas out of 48 million cars overall in Germany (which is about 0.08%).

Well, yes - I think what I really meant was that they are extremely popular[among electric cars]. Whenever I drive through Germany and stop at an autohof all tesla chargers are always occupied, and you see quite a lot of them on the roads just driving around. But you're right, 40k is nothing in such a big country.

It's a bit of a stretch to just randomly drop some numbers... In the US in the last three Q's the marketshare of Tesla is 0,003868139%

Some German cars are driven at sillier speeds. I've been on the autobahn driving my Model S at well over 200 kph and been passed quite quickly by big German cars.

Highway 130 outside Austin, Texas has an 85 mph zone.

There are a number of highways in Texas with an 85 mph limit.

> This is true even in places where the speed limit is 85 mph, and the slower end of the flow of traffic is 95 mph.

Once traffic rules are enforced by autonomous cars that don't let you go over the speed limit, we can start raising the limit to more realistic levels. I guess currently it is priced in that everyone goes over by x km/h.

>Once traffic rules are enforced by autonomous cars that don't let you go over the speed limit, we can start raising the limit to more realistic levels. I guess currently it is priced in that everyone goes over by x km/h.

Bloody noghtmare fuel that, but it's been the inexhorable direction manufacturers and Governments have been pushing for for a while.

Stop making things that enable people more than it constrains them. The act of velvet glove societal manipulation is pretty damn obnoxious once you realize it's a thing.

Tesla reported that there were 400,000 cars in the US and Canada who had access to FSD Beta in January 2023, so I don’t think that’s at all hard to believe.

Edit: Looks like back in January they were adding 10M cumulative miles driven per month (roughly) - https://insideevs.com/news/633328/tesla-fsd-beta-now-active-...

Assuming those data are accurate, it looks like you’re right.

Surprising, but it is what it is.

I probably use AP >80% of the time on the highway. From observing comments in the local Tesla groups, I'm sure there are plenty of people who behave similarly.

Millions of miles per month doesn't surprise me at all.

Wow, I've had much more positive experiences with Autopilot on multi-hour highway trips. No shutoffs, no phantom braking in the last year or two. Autopilot on the highway is so much better than any other car I've driven with adaptive cruise. Anyway, the parent is comparing city and highway self-driving and they are completely different.

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