In the piece — titled “Can You Fool a Self Driving Car?” — Rober found that a Tesla car on Autopilot was fooled by a Wile E. Coyote-style wall painted to look like the road ahead of it, with the electric vehicle plowing right through it instead of stopping.

The footage was damning enough, with slow-motion clips showing the car not only crashing through the styrofoam wall but also a mannequin of a child. The Tesla was also fooled by simulated rain and fog.

  • comfy
    link
    fedilink
    English
    6115 days ago

    I hope some of you actually skimmed the article and got to the “disengaging” part.

    As Electrek points out, Autopilot has a well-documented tendency to disengage right before a crash. Regulators have previously found that the advanced driver assistance software shuts off a fraction of a second before making impact.

    It’s a highly questionable approach that has raised concerns over Tesla trying to evade guilt by automatically turning off any possibly incriminating driver assistance features before a crash.

    • @endeavor@sopuli.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      English
      10
      edit-2
      15 days ago

      It’s a highly questionable approach that has raised concerns over Tesla trying to evade guilt by automatically turning off any possibly incriminating driver assistance features before a crash.

      That is like writing musk made an awkward, confused gesture during a time a few people might call questionable timing and place.

    • @LemmyFeed@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      915 days ago

      Don’t get me wrong, autopilot turning itself off right before a crash is sus and I wouldn’t put it past Tesla to do something like that (I mean come on, why don’t they use lidar) but maybe it’s so the car doesn’t try to power the wheels or something after impact which could potentially worsen the event.

      On the other hand, they’re POS cars and the autopilot probably just shuts off cause of poor assembly, standards, and design resulting from cutting corners.

      • @FiskFisk33@startrek.website
        link
        fedilink
        English
        1715 days ago

        if it can actually sense a crash is imminent, why wouldn’t it be programmed to slam the brakes instead of just turning off?

        Do they have a problem with false positives?

        • @Whelks_chance@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          215 days ago

          I’ve been wondering this for years now. Do we need intelligence in crashes, or do we just need vehicles to stop? I think you’re right, it must have been slamming the brakes on at unexpected times, which is unnerving when driving I’m sure.

        • @endeavor@sopuli.xyz
          link
          fedilink
          English
          115 days ago

          if it was european made, it would slam the brakes or swerve in order to at least try and save lives since governments attempt to regulate companies to not do evil shit. Since it american made it is designed to maximise profit for shareholders.

          • @FiskFisk33@startrek.website
            link
            fedilink
            English
            2
            edit-2
            15 days ago

            I don’t believe automatic swerving is a good idea, depending on what’s off to the side it has the potential to make a bad situation much worse.

            I’m thinking like, kid runs into the street, car swerves and mows down a crowd on the sidewalk

            • @endeavor@sopuli.xyz
              link
              fedilink
              English
              115 days ago

              Its the cars job to swerve into a less dangerous place.

              Can’t do that? Oops, no self-driving for you.

      • @skuzz@discuss.tchncs.de
        link
        fedilink
        English
        515 days ago

        Normal cars do whatever is in their power to cease movement while facing upright. In a wreck, the safest state for a car is to cease moving.

      • Krzd
        link
        fedilink
        English
        515 days ago

        Wouldn’t it make more sense for autopilot to brake and try to stop the car instead of just turning off and letting the car roll? If it’s certain enough that there will be an accident, just applying the brakes until there’s user override would make much more sense…

      • @T156@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        415 days ago

        Rober seems to think so, since he says in the video that it’s likely disengaging because the parking sensors detect that it’s parked because of the object in front, and it shuts off the cruise control.

      • 74 183.84
        link
        fedilink
        English
        315 days ago

        I see your point, and it makes sense, but I would be very surprised if Tesla did this. I think the best option would be to turn off the features once an impact is detected. It shutting off before hand feels like a cheap ploy to avoid guilt

        • FuglyDuck
          link
          fedilink
          English
          215 days ago

          … It shutting off before hand feels like a cheap ploy to avoid guilt

          that’s exactly what it is.

    • 74 183.84
      link
      fedilink
      English
      3
      edit-2
      15 days ago

      It always is that way; fuck the consumer, its all about making a buck

    • @PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      015 days ago

      Yeah but that’s milliseconds. Ergo, the crash was already going to happen.

      In any case, the problem with Tesla autopilot is that it doesn’t have radar. It can’t see objects and there have been many instances where a Tesla crashed into a large visible object.

      • @sudo@programming.dev
        link
        fedilink
        English
        -115 days ago

        That’s what’s confusing me. Rober’s hypothesis is without lidar the Tesla couldn’t detect the wall. But to claim that autopilot shut itself off before impact means that the Tesla detected the wall and decided impact was imminent, which disproves his point.

        If you watch the in car footage, autopilot is on for all of three seconds and by the time its on impact was already going to happen. That said, teslas should have lidar and probably do something other than disengage before hitting the wall but I suspect their cameras were good enough to detect the wall through lack of parallax or something like that.

    • NιƙƙιDιɱҽʂ
      link
      fedilink
      English
      -215 days ago

      I’ve heard that too, and I don’t doubt it, but watching Mark Rober’s video, it seems like he’s deathgripping the wheel pretty hard before the impact which seems more likely to be disengaging. Each time, you can see the wheel tug slightly to the left, but his deathgrip pulls it back to the right.

    • Animal
      link
      fedilink
      English
      1415 days ago

      Holy shit, I knew I’d heard this word before. My Chinese robot vacuum cleaner has more technology than a tesla hahahahaha

    • @rumba@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      English
      -1416 days ago

      Vacuum doesn’t run outdoors and accidentally running into a wall doesn’t generate lawsuits.

      But, yes, any self-driving cars should absolutely be required to have lidar. I don’t think you could find any professional in the field that would argue that lidar is the proper tool for this.

      • @rmuk@feddit.uk
        link
        fedilink
        English
        15
        edit-2
        16 days ago

        …what is your point here, exactly? The stakes might be lower for a vacuum cleaner, sure, but lidar - or a similar time-of-flight system - is the only consistent way of mapping environmental geometry. It doesn’t matter if that’s a dining room full of tables and chairs, or a pedestrian crossing full of children.

        • @rumba@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          English
          -20
          edit-2
          16 days ago

          I think you’re suffering from not knowing what you don’t know.

          Let me make it a but clearer for you to make a fair answer.

          Take a .25mw lidar sensor off a vacuum, take it outdoors and scan an intersection.

          Will that laser be visible to the sensor?

          is it spinning fast enough to track a kid moving in to an intersection when you’re traveling at 73 feet per second?

          • Forbo
            link
            fedilink
            English
            18
            edit-2
            16 days ago

            You’re mischaracterizing their point. Nobody is saying take the exact piece of equipment, put it in the vehicle and PRESTO. That’d be like asking why the vacuum battery can’t power the car. Because duh.

            The point is if such a novelty, inconsequential item that doesn’t have any kind of life safety requirements can employ a class of technology that would prevent adverse effects, why the fuck doesn’t the vehicle? This is a design flaw of Teslas, pure and simple.

            • @rumba@lemmy.zip
              link
              fedilink
              English
              -1615 days ago

              But they do, there are literally cars out there with lidar sensors.

              The question was why can’t I have a lidar sensor on my car if my $150 vacuum has one. The lidar sensor for a car is more than $150.

              You don’t have one because there are expensive at that size and update frequency. Sensors that are capable of outdoor mapping at high speed cost the price of a small car.

              The manufacturers suspect and probably rightfully so that people don’t want to pay an extra 10 - 30 grand for an array of sensors.

              The technology readily exists rober had one in his video that he used to scan a roller coaster. It’s not some conspiracy that you don’t have it on cars and it’s not like it’s not capable of being done because waymo does it all the time.

              There’s a reason why waymo doesn’t use smaller sensors they use the minimum of what works well. Which is expensive, which people looking at a mid-range car don’t want to take on the extra cost, hence it’s not available

              • @Lemmyoutofhere@lemmy.ca
                link
                fedilink
                English
                13
                edit-2
                15 days ago

                Only Tesla does not use radar with their control systems. Every single other manufacturer uses radar control mixed with the camera system. The Tesla system is garbage.

                • bountygiver [any]
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  715 days ago

                  The self driving system uber was working on also went downhill after they went full visual only.

                • @rumba@lemmy.zip
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  215 days ago

                  yeah, you’d think they’d at least use radar. That’s cheap AF. It’s like someone there said I have this hill to die on, I bet we can do it all with cameras.

              • Echo Dot
                link
                fedilink
                English
                715 days ago

                Good God it’s like you’re going out of the way to intentionally misunderstand the point.

                Nobody is saying that the lidar on a car should cost the same as a lidar on a vacuum cleaner. What everyone is saying is that if the company that makes vacuum cleaners thinks it’s important enough to put lidar on, surely you’re not the company that makes cars should think that it’s important enough to put lidar on.

                Stop being deliberately dense.

                • @A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  115 days ago

                  Stop being deliberately dense.

                  Its weaponized incompetence.

                  I bet they do the same shit with their partner when it comes to dishes, laundry, and the garbage.

                • @Miaou@jlai.lu
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  015 days ago

                  Whether lidars are reliable enough to run on autonomous cars has nothing to do with whether they are cost efficient enough to run on vacuum cleaners though. The comparison is therefore completely irrelevant. Might as well complain that jet fighters don’t allow sharing on Instagram your location, because your much cheaper phone does.

                • @AA5B@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  -1
                  edit-2
                  15 days ago

                  It’s a cost-benefit calculation.

                  • For a vacuum at the speeds they travel and the range it needs to go, LiDAR is cheap, worth doing. Meanwhile computing power is limited.
                  • my phone is much more expensive than the robot vacuum, and its LiDAR can range to about a room, at speeds humans normally travel. It works great for almost instant autofocus and a passable measurement tool.
                  • For a car, at the speeds they travel and range it needs to go, LiDAR is expensive, large and ugly. Meanwhile the car already needs substantial computing power

                  So the question is whether they can achieve self-driving without it: humans rely on vision alone so maybe an ai can. I’m just happy someone is taking a different approach rather than the follow the pack mentality: we’re more likely to get something that works

                  Edit: everyone talks about the cost-benefit, but I imagine it makes things simpler for the ai when all sensors can be treated and weighted identically. Whether this is a benefit or disadvantage will eventually become clear

                • @rumba@lemmy.zip
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  -115 days ago

                  I’m not being deliberately dense it just a seriously incomplete analogy. At worst I’m being pedantic. And if that’s the case I apologize.

                  I agree with the premise that the cars need lidar radar whatever the f*** they can get.

                  Saying if a vacuum company can see that a vacuum needs lidar (which is a flawed premise because half the f****** vacuums use vslam/cameras) then why doesn’t my car have lidar, none of the consumer car companies are using it (yet anyway). It’s great to get the rabble up and say why are vacuum companies doing it when car companies can’t but when nobody’s doing it there are reasons. Ford Chevy BMW f***, what about Audi what about Porsche? What about these luxury brands that cost an arm and three fucking legs.

                  Let’s turn this on its head, why do people think they’re not including it in cars. And let’s discount musk for the moment because we already know he’s a fucking idiot that never had an original idea in his life and answer why it isn’t in any other brand.

                  Is it just that none of these companies thought about it? Is it a conspiracy? What do people think here. If I’m being so dense tell me why the companies aren’t using it.

                • @rumba@lemmy.zip
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  -115 days ago

                  Shit that’s pretty decent. That looks like a ready fit car part, I wonder what vehicle it’s for. Kind of sucks that it only faces One direction but at that price four them would not be a big deal

                • @KlausWintergreen@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  -1
                  edit-2
                  15 days ago

                  So that one sensor is $700. Waymo has 4 LIDAR sensors (all of which are physically larger and I would imagine fancier than the Alibaba ones, but that’s speculation), so just in the scanner hardware itself you’re looking at $2,800. Plus the computer to run it, plus the 6 radar receivers, and 13 cameras, I could absolutely see the price for the end user to be around $10k worth of sensors.

                  But to be clear, I don’t think camera only systems are viable or safe. They should at minimum be forced to use radar in combination with their cameras. In fact I actually trust radar more than lidar because it’s much less susceptible to heavy snow or rain.

          • @rmuk@feddit.uk
            link
            fedilink
            English
            5
            edit-2
            16 days ago

            I think you’re suffering from not knowing what you don’t know.

            and I think you’re suffering from being an arrogant sack of dicks who doesn’t like being called out on their poor communication skills and, through either a lack of self-awareness or an unwarranted overabundance of self-confidence, projects their own flaws on others. But for the more receptive types who want to learn more, here’s Syed Saad ul Hassan’s very well-written 2022 paper on practical applications, titled Lidar Sensor in Autonomous Vehicles which I found also serves as neat primer of lidar in general..

            • @racemaniac@lemmy.dbzer0.com
              link
              fedilink
              English
              -415 days ago

              Wow, what’s with all the hostility against him.

              It’s maybe because i also know a bit about lidars that his comment was clear to me (“ha, try putting a vacuum lidar in a car and see if it can do anything useful outside at the speeds & range a car needs”).

              Is it that much of an issue if someone is a bit snarky when pointing out the false equivalence of “my 500$ vacuum has a lidar, but a tesla doesn’t? harharhar”.

              • @octopus_ink@slrpnk.net
                link
                fedilink
                English
                315 days ago

                (“ha, try putting a vacuum lidar in a car and see if it can do anything useful outside at the speeds & range a car needs”).

                Because no one suggested that.

                • @racemaniac@lemmy.dbzer0.com
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  -115 days ago

                  So someone saying “why does my 500$ vacuum have a lidar but not the car” isn’t suggesting that?

                  I guess in some technical way you’re right, but it for sure is the implication…

              • @rmuk@feddit.uk
                link
                fedilink
                English
                1
                edit-2
                15 days ago

                But, yes, any self-driving cars should absolutely be required to have lidar.

                So they think self-driving cars should have lidar, like a vacuum cleaner. They agree, and think it’s a good idea, right?

                I don’t think you could find any professional in the field that would argue that lidar is the proper tool for this.

                …then in the next sentence goes on to say that lidar is not the correct tool. In the space of a paragraph they make two points which directly contradict one-another. Hence my response:

                What is your point here, exactly?

                They could have said “oops, typo!” or something but, no, instead they went full on-condescending:

                I think you’re suffering from not knowing what you don’t know.

                I stand by my response:

                arrogant sack of dicks

                And while I’m not naive enough to believe that upvotes and downvotes are any kind of arbiter of objective truth, they at least seem to suggest, in this case, that my interpretation is broadly in line with the majority.

            • @rumba@lemmy.zip
              link
              fedilink
              English
              -1115 days ago

              Well look at you being adult and using big words instead of just insulting people. Not even going to wastime on people like you, I’m going to block you and move on and hope that everyone else does the same so you can sit in your own quiet little world wondering why no one likes you.

          • @PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            015 days ago

            The price of lidar sensors has dropped by like 50 times since musk decided to cut costs by eliminating theny from their cars.

            • @rumba@lemmy.zip
              link
              fedilink
              English
              015 days ago

              Yeah looks like it, chinese sensors are down to 700 a pop. Even if it’s a few grand, it’s decent, looks like chevy offers it on 7 models.

  • @TommySoda@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    2316 days ago

    Notice how they’re mad at the video and not the car, manufacturer, or the CEO. It’s a huge safety issue yet they’d rather defend a brand that obviously doesn’t even care about their safety. Like, nobody is gonna give you a medal for being loyal to a brand.

    • @can@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      716 days ago

      These people haven’t found any individual self identity.

      An attack on the brand is an attack on them. Reminds me of the people who made Stars Wars their meaning and crumbled when a certain trilogy didn’t hold up.

      • Billiam
        link
        fedilink
        English
        516 days ago

        An attack on the brand is an attack on them.

        Thus it ever is with Conservatives. They make $whatever their whole identity, and so take any critique of $whatever as a personal attack against themselves.

        I blame evangelical religions’ need for martyrdom for this.

        • @mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          215 days ago

          “Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.” ― Barry Goldwater

        • @CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          116 days ago

          You pretty much hit the nail on the head. These people have no identity or ability to think for themselves because they never needed either one. The church will do all your thinking for you, and anything it doesn’t cover will be handled by Fox News. Be like everyone else and fit in, otherwise… you have to start thinking for yourself. THE HORROR.

    • @merc@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      215 days ago

      To be fair, and ugh, I hate to have to stand up for these assholes, but…

      To be fair, their claim is that the video was a lie and that the results were manufactured. They believe that Teslas are actually safe and that Rober was doing some kind of Elon Musk takedown trying to profit off the shares getting tanked and promote a rival company.

      They actually do have a little bit of evidence for those claims:

      1. The wall changes between different camera angles. In some angles the wall is simply something painted on canvas. In other angles it’s a solid styrofoam wall.
      2. The inside the car view in the YouTube video doesn’t make it clear that autopilot mode is engaged.
      3. Mark Rober chose to use Autopilot mode rather than so-called Full Self Driving.

      But, he was interviewed about this, and he provided additional footage to clear up what happened.

      1. They did the experiment twice, once with a canvas wall, then a few weeks later with a styrofoam wall. The car smashed right into the wall the first time, but it wasn’t very dramatic because the canvas just blew out of the way. They wanted a more dramatic video for YouTube, so they did it again with a styrofoam wall so you could see the wall getting smashed. This included pre-weakening the wall so that when the car hit it, it smashed a dramatic Looney-Tunes looking hole in the wall. When they made the final video, they included various cuts from both the first and second attempts. The car hit the wall both times, but it wasn’t just one single hit like it was shown in the video.

      2. There’s apparently a “rainbow” path shown when the car is in Autopilot mode. [RAinbows1?!? DEI!?!?!?!] In the cut they posted to YouTube, you couldn’t see this rainbow path. But, Rober posted a longer cut of the car hitting the wall where it was visible. So, it wasn’t that autopilot was off, but in the original YouTube video you couldn’t tell.

      3. He used Autopilot mode because from his understanding (as a Tesla owner (this was his personal vehicle being tested)), Full Self Driving requires you to enter a destination address. He just wanted to drive down a closed highway at high speed, so he used Autopilot instead. In his understanding as a Tesla owner and engineer, there would be no difference in how the car dealt with obstacles in autopilot mode vs. full self driving, but he admitted that he hadn’t tested it, so it’s possible that so-called Full Self-Driving would have handled things differently.

      Anyhow, these rabid MAGA Elon Fanboys did pick up on some minor inconsistencies in his original video. Rober apprently didn’t realize what a firestorm he was wading into. His intention was to make a video about how cool LIDAR is, but with a cool scene of a car smashing through a wall as the hook. He’d apparently been planning and filming the video for half a year, and he claims it just happened to get released right at the height of the time when Teslas are getting firebombed.

    • @rtxn@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      116 days ago

      The styrofoam wall had a pre-cut hole to weaken it, and some people are using it as a gotcha proving the video was faked. It would be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic.

      • @TommySoda@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        216 days ago

        Yeah, but it’s styrofoam. You could literally run through it. And I’m sure they did that more as a safety measure so that it was guaranteed to collapse so nobody would be injured.

        But at the same time it still drove through a fucking wall. The integrity doesn’t mean shit because it drove through a literal fucking wall.

      • scops
        link
        fedilink
        English
        116 days ago

        For more background, Rober gave an interview and admitted that they ran the test twice. On the first run, the wall was just fabric, which did not tear away in a manner that was visually striking. They went back three weeks later and built a styrofoam wall knowing that the Tesla would fail, and pre-cut the wall to create a more interesting impact.

        • @Confused_Emus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          216 days ago

          Particularly disappointing part of that interview was Rober saying he still plans to buy a new Tesla. Safety issues aside, why would anyone want to do that?

          • @hovercat@lemmy.blahaj.zone
            link
            fedilink
            English
            116 days ago

            Knowing the insanity of die-hard Tesla fans, it’s likely to try and protect himself.

            “I love my Tesla, but” has been a meme for years now because if you ever went on forums to get help or complain what a giant heap of shit the car was, and didn’t bookend it with unabashed praise, you’d have people ripping you to shreds calling you a FUDster and Big Oil shill who’s shorting the stock and trying to destroy the greatest company the world has ever known.

            People have learned over the years that even with the most valid of criticism for the company, the only way to even attempt to have it received is by showing just how much you actually love Tesla and Daddy Elon, and your complaints/criticism are only because you care so much about the company and want them to do better. Yes, it’s fucking stupid and annoying, but sadly this is the reality we’ve created for ourselves.

      • @booly@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        116 days ago

        Kinda depends on the fact, right? Plenty of factual things piss me off, but I’d argue I’m correct to be pissed off about them.

  • FuglyDuck
    link
    fedilink
    English
    1116 days ago

    As Electrek points out, Autopilot has a well-documented tendency to disengage right before a crash. Regulators have previously found that the advanced driver assistance software shuts off a fraction of a second before making impact.

    This has been known.

    They do it so they can evade liability for the crash.

    • @bazzzzzzz@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      216 days ago

      Not sure how that helps in evading liability.

      Every Tesla driver would need super human reaction speeds to respond in 17 frames, 680ms(I didn’t check the recording framerate, but 25fps is the slowest reasonable), less than a second.

      • @orcrist@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        216 days ago

        They’re talking about avoiding legal liability, not about actually doing the right thing. And of course you can see how it would help them avoid legal liability. The lawyers will walk into court and honestly say that at the time of the accident the human driver was in control of the vehicle.

        And then that creates a discussion about how much time the human driver has to have in order to actually solve the problem, or gray areas about who exactly controls what when, and it complicates the situation enough where maybe Tesla can pay less money for the deaths that they are obviously responsible for.

        • @jimbolauski@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          -216 days ago

          They’re talking about avoiding legal liability, not about actually doing the right thing. And of course you can see how it would help them avoid legal liability. The lawyers will walk into court and honestly say that at the time of the accident the human driver was in control of the vehicle.

          The plaintiff’s lawyers would say, the autopilot was engaged, made the decision to run into the wall, and turned off 0.1 seconds before impact. Liability is not going disappear when there were 4.9 seconds of making dangerous decisions and peacing out in the last 0.1.

          • FuglyDuck
            link
            fedilink
            English
            215 days ago

            The plaintiff’s lawyers would say, the autopilot was engaged, made the decision to run into the wall, and turned off 0.1 seconds before impact. Liability is not going disappear when there were 4.9 seconds of making dangerous decisions and peacing out in the last 0.1.

            these strategies aren’t about actually winning the argument, it’s about making it excessively expensive to have the argument in the first place. Every motion requires a response by the counterparty, which requires billable time from the counterparty’s lawyers, and delays the trial. it’s just another variation on “defend, depose, deny”.

          • @michaelmrose@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            116 days ago

            They can also claim with a straight face that autopilot has a crash rate that is artificially lowered without it being technically a lie in public, in ads, etc

      • FuglyDuck
        link
        fedilink
        English
        216 days ago

        It’s not likely to work, but them swapping to human control after it determined a crash is going to happen isn’t accidental.

        Anything they can do to mire the proceedings they will do. It’s like how corporations file stupid junk motions to force plaintiffs to give up.

    • @fibojoly@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      1
      edit-2
      16 days ago

      That makes so little sense… It detects it’s about to crash then gives up and lets you sort it?
      That’s like the opposite of my Audi who does detect I’m about to hit something and gives me either a warning or just actively hits the brakes if I don’t have time to handle it.
      If this is true, this is so fucking evil it’s kinda amazing it could have reached anywhere near prod.

      • @Red_October@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        316 days ago

        The point is that they can say “Autopilot wasn’t active during the crash.” They can leave out that autopilot was active right up until the moment before, or that autopilot directly contributed to it. They’re just purely leaning into the technical truth that it wasn’t on during the crash. Whether it’s a courtroom defense or their own next published set of data, “Autopilot was not active during any recorded Tesla crashes.”

      • FuglyDuck
        link
        fedilink
        English
        1
        edit-2
        15 days ago

        even your audi is going to dump to human control if it can’t figure out what the appropriate response is. Granted, your Audi is probably smart enough to be like “yeah don’t hit the fucking wall,” but eh… it was put together by people that actually know what they’re doing, and care about safety.

        Tesla isn’t doing this for safety or because it’s the best response. The cars are doing this because they don’t want to pay out for wrongful death lawsuits.

        If this is true, this is so fucking evil it’s kinda amazing it could have reached anywhere near prod.

        It’s musk. he’s fucking vile, and this isn’t even close to the worst thing he’s doing. or has done.

    • @NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      1
      edit-2
      15 days ago

      Any crash within 10s of a disengagement counts as it being on so you can’t just do this.

      Edit: added the time unit.

      Edit2: it’s actually 30s not 10s. See below.

      • FuglyDuck
        link
        fedilink
        English
        015 days ago

        Where are you seeing that?

        There’s nothing I’m seeing as a matter of law or regulation.

        In any case liability (especially civil liability) is an absolute bitch. It’s incredibly messy and likely will not every be so cut and dry.

        • @NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          2
          edit-2
          15 days ago

          Well it’s not that it was a crash caused by a level 2 system, but that they’ll investigate it.

          So you can’t hide the crash by disengaging it just before.

          Looks like it’s actually 30s seconds not 10s, or maybe it was 10s once upon a time and they changed it to 30?

          The General Order requires that reporting entities file incident reports for crashes involving ADS-equipped vehicles that occur on publicly accessible roads in the United States and its territories. Crashes involving an ADS-equipped vehicle are reportable if the ADS was in use at any time within 30 seconds of the crash and the crash resulted in property damage or injury

          https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/2022-06/ADAS-L2-SGO-Report-June-2022.pdf

          • FuglyDuck
            link
            fedilink
            English
            115 days ago

            Thanks for that.

            The thing is, though the NHTSA generally doesn’t make a determination on criminal or civil liability. They’ll make the report about what happened and keep it to the facts, and let the courts sort it out whose at fault. they might not even actually investigate a crash unless it comes to it. It’s just saying “when your car crashes, you need to tell us about it.” and they kinda assume they comply.

            Which, Tesla doesn’t want to comply, and is one of the reasons Musk/DOGE is going after them.

            • @NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              1
              edit-2
              15 days ago

              I knew they wouldn’t necessarily investigate it, that’s always their discretion, but I had no idea there was no actual bite to the rule if they didn’t comply. That’s stupid.

      • @NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        1
        edit-2
        15 days ago

        AEB braking was originally designed to not prevent a crash, but to slow the car when a unavoidable crash was detected.

        It’s since gotten better and can also prevent crashes now, but slowing the speed of the crash was the original important piece. It’s a lot easier to predict an unavoidable crash, than to detect a potential crash and stop in time.

        Insurance companies offer a discount for having any type of AEB as even just slowing will reduce damages and their cost out of pocket.

        Not all AEB systems are created equal though.

        Maybe disengaging AP if an unavoidable crash is detected triggers the AEB system? Like maybe for AEB to take over which should always be running, AP has to be off?

      • @GoodLuckToFriends@lemmy.today
        link
        fedilink
        English
        116 days ago

        Because even braking can’t avoid the crash. Unavoidable crash means bad juju if the ‘self driving’ car image is meant to stick around.

      • @Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        116 days ago

        Breaks require a sufficient stopping distance given the current speed, driving surface conditions, tire condition, and the amount of momentum at play. This is why trains can’t stop quickly despite having breaks (and very good ones at that, with air breaks on every wheel) as there’s so much momentum at play.

        If autopilot is being criticized for disengaging immediately before the crash, it’s pretty safe to assume its too late to stop the vehicle and avoid the collision

        • @filcuk@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          English
          116 days ago

          This autopilot shit needs regulated audit log in a black box, like what planes or ships have.
          In no way should this kind of manipulation be legal.

    • @Simulation6@sopuli.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      English
      016 days ago

      If the disengage to avoid legal consequences feature does exist, then you would think there would be some false positive incidences where it turns off for no apparent reason. I found some with a search, which are attributed to bad software. Owners are discussing new patches fixing some problems and introducing new ones. None of the incidences caused an accident, so maybe the owners never hit the malicious code.

      • FuglyDuck
        link
        fedilink
        English
        115 days ago

        if it randomly turns off for unapparent reasons, people are going to be like ‘oh that’s weird’ and leave it at that. Tesla certainly isn’t going to admit that their code is malicious like that. at least not until the FBI is digging through their memos to show it was. and maybe not even then.

  • u/lukmly013 💾 (lemmy.sdf.org)
    link
    fedilink
    English
    816 days ago

    I wondered how the hell it managed to fool LIDAR, well…

    The stunt was meant to demonstrate the shortcomings of relying entirely on cameras — rather than the LIDAR and radar systems used by brands and autonomous vehicle makers other than Tesla.

    • @Weirdfish@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      816 days ago

      If I could pass one law, requiring multiple redundant scanning tech on anything autonomous large enough to hurt me might be it.

      I occasionally go to our warehouses which have robotic arms, autonomous fork lifts, etc. All of those have far more saftey features than a self driving Tesla, and they aren’t in public.

    • @thesohoriots@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      716 days ago

      The tl;dr here is that Elon said that humans have eyes and they work, and eyes are like cameras, so use cameras instead of expensive LIDAR. Dick fully inside car door for the slam.

      • @BetaBlake@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        216 days ago

        This is the same energy as blizzard saying “you’ve got phones don’t you?”

        Teslas are cheap crap, for a premium price, this has always been the case

      • @mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        1
        edit-2
        16 days ago

        The worst part is that LiDAR isn’t even expensive anymore. Hell, my phone has LiDAR. He originally said that to justify the fact that they were dealing with a component shortage and he needed to keep shipping vehicles. So he simply shipped them without the LiDAR systems that he couldn’t get ahold of, and claimed it was because he didn’t need LiDAR.

        But now LiDAR is much more advanced and cheaper. But since he refused to admit it was because of a component shortage, adding LiDAR now would require Musk to publicly admit he was wrong. And we all know that will never happen.

    • @deegeese@sopuli.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      English
      216 days ago

      They used to have it but Elmo removed it years ago as a cost cutting move.

      Now they’re the only self driving car that drives into immovable objects.

      You might remember a few years ago a guy got decapitated when his Model S drove straight into the side of a semi trailer.

    • @Joeffect@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      116 days ago

      It didn’t fool lidar… The car equipped with lidar stopped before hitting the wall because it saw the obstacle not what was on the obstacle

  • @buddascrayon@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    616 days ago

    It’s a highly questionable approach that has raised concerns over Tesla trying to evade guilt by automatically turning off any possibly incriminating driver assistance features before a crash.

    So, who’s the YouTuber that’s gonna test this out? Since Elmo has pushed his way into the government in order to quash any investigation into it.

    • @bay400@thelemmy.club
      link
      fedilink
      English
      915 days ago

      It basically already happened in the Mark Rober video, it turns off by itself less than a second before hitting

  • Banana
    link
    fedilink
    English
    516 days ago

    And the president is driving one of these?

    Maybe we should be purchasing lots of paint and cement blockades…

    • @LeninOnAPrayer@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      4
      edit-2
      16 days ago

      When he was in the Tesla asking if he should go for a ride I was screaming “Yes! Yes Mr. President! Please! Elon, show him full self driving on the interstate! Show him full self driving mode!”

    • @Chewget@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      116 days ago

      The president can’t drive by law unless on the grounds of the White House and maybe Camp David. At least while in office. They might be allowed to drive after leaving office…

      • FuglyDuck
        link
        fedilink
        English
        2
        edit-2
        15 days ago

        This isn’t true at all. I can’t tell if you’re being serious or incredibly sarcastic, though.

        The reason presidents (and generally ex presidents, too) don’t drive themselves is because the kind of driving to escape an assassination attempt is a higher level of driving and training than what the vast majority of people ever have. There’s no law saying presidents are forbidden from driving.

        In any case, I would be perfectly happy if they let him drive a CT and it caught fire. I’d do a little jib, and I wouldn’t care who sees that.

        • @Chewget@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          111 days ago

          Mostly sarcastic, but there is a secret service rule that the president is not allowed to drive on public roads. The rest is all debatable because it hasn’t been litigated. They answer to the president, but a president can not refuse secret service protection.

          The current understanding is that they can strongly suggest things, but ultimately, they have to figure it out if the president doesn’t follow.

          • FuglyDuck
            link
            fedilink
            English
            215 days ago

            you’re gonna have to drop a source for that.

            because, no, they’re not. the Secret Service provides a driver specially trained for the risks a president might face, and very strongly insists, but they’re not “prohibited” from driving simply because they’re presidents.

            to be clear, the secret service cannot prohibit the president from doing anything they really want to do. Even if it’s totally stupid for them to do that. (This includes, for example, Trump’s routine weekend round of golf at Turd-o-Lardo)

            • @alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              English
              2
              edit-2
              15 days ago

              to be clear, the secret service cannot prohibit the president from doing anything they really want to do

              Was Trump lying when he said the SS wouldn’t take him back to the capital on Jan 6?

              I could definitely see him lying about that so he doesn’t look like he abandoned his supporters during the coup, but I could also see the driver being like “I can’t endanger you, mr president” and ignoring his requests.

              • FuglyDuck
                link
                fedilink
                English
                215 days ago

                Was Trump lying when he said the SS wouldn’t take him back to the capital on Jan 6?

                Definitely not. There is no way in hell the secret service would have taken the president to that shit show. Doesn’t mean that they would have physically arrested him if he insisted going on his own, however.

      • @rumba@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        English
        116 days ago

        The real question is, in a truly self-driving car, (not a tesla) are you actually driving?

  • Eugene V. Debs' Ghost
    link
    fedilink
    English
    516 days ago

    “Dipshit Nazis mad at facts bursting their bubble is unreality” is another way of reading this headline.

    • @thistleboy@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      016 days ago

      I believe the outrage is that the video showed that autopilot was off when they crashed into the wall. That’s what the red circle in the thumbnail is highlighting. The whole thing apparently being a setup for views like Top Gear faking the Model S breaking down.

  • Flax
    link
    fedilink
    English
    516 days ago

    Why would a car that expensive not have a LiDAR sensor?

    • Dr. Moose
      link
      fedilink
      English
      116 days ago

      Cost cutting. Lidar is cheaper now but was relative expensive and increased tech debt and maintenance. Also he legit thought that “human see good - then car see good too”. Tesla is being led by a literal idiot.

      • @NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        0
        edit-2
        16 days ago

        That’s not really true.

        He use lidar in SpaceX because he knows it’s the right tool for their specific job.

        His stance is it’s not that cameras are better, but that cameras have to be so good for a truly AV that putting effort into both means you’re not going to make your cameras good enough to do it and rely on lidar instead. That and cost.

        If the car can’t process and understand the world via cameras, it’s doomed to fail at a mass scale anyway.

        It might be a wrong stance, but it’s not that lidar is flawed.

        Tesla even uses lidar to ground truth their cameras

        Edit: just adding a late example - Waymo, Cruise, and probably everyone out there still use humans to tell the car what to do if it gets stuck. I even bet Tesla will if they ever launch a robotaxi as they need a way to somehow help the car if it gets stuck. When we see these failures with Waymo and Cruise, it’s less “is something there” and more “I don’t understand this situation”. The understanding comes from vision. Lidar just gives the something is there, but it isn’t solving their problem.

        • AugustWest
          link
          fedilink
          English
          116 days ago

          I think the bigger issue is that he is saying redundancy is not important. He thinks cameras could be good enough, well fine, but the failure results in loss of life so build in redundancy: lidar, radar, anything to failover. The fact that cutting costs OR having a belief that one system is good enough is despicable.

    • @FrChazzz@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      1
      edit-2
      16 days ago

      Read about this somewhere. Iirc, Elon felt cameras were better than LiDAR at a time when that was kinda true, but the technology improved considerably in the interim and he pridefully refuses to admit he needs to adapt. [Edit: I had hastily read the referenced article and am incorrect here; link to accurate statements is linked in a reply below.]

      • @blady_blah@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        016 days ago

        He didn’t think they were better. He thought Tesla could get away without the more expensive lidar. Basically “humans can drive with just vision, that should be enough for an autonomous vehicle also.” Basically he did it because lidar is more expensive.

        • @atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          016 days ago

          I didn’t think it was about the cost. I think he just likes to be contrarian because he thinks it makes him seem smart. He then needs to stick by his stupid decisions.

          • @blady_blah@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            016 days ago

            I’m assuming it’s a cost because it makes sense to me. His goal was to build full-self-driving (FSD) into ever car and sell the service as a subscription.

            If you add another $500 in components then that’s a lot of cost (probably a lot cheaper today but this was 10 years ago). Cameras are cheap and can be spread around the car with additional non-FSD benefits where as lidar has much fewer uses when the cost is not covered. I think he used his “first-principles” argument as a justification to the engineers as another way for him to say “I don’t want to pay for lidar, make it work with the cheap cameras.”

            Why else would management take off the table an obviously extremely useful safety tool?

            • @atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              English
              115 days ago

              Why else would management take off the table an obviously extremely useful safety tool?

              What makes you think people make rational decisions? Especially sociopaths like Musk?

      • Captain Aggravated
        link
        fedilink
        English
        016 days ago

        There was a comedy channel on Youtube aeons ago that would do “if x were honest” videos. Their slogan for Valve was “We used to make games. Now we make money.”

    • @Rob1992@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      -116 days ago

      Because commonly they use radar instead, the modern sensors that are also used for adaptive cruise control even have heaters to defrost the sensor housing in winter

  • @ZeroGravitas@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    416 days ago

    Painted wall? That’s high tech shit.

    I got a Tesla from my work before Elon went full Reich 3, and try this:

    • break on bridge shadows on the highway
    • start wipers on shadows, but not on rain
    • break on cars parked on the roadside if there’s a bend in the road
    • disengage autopilot and break when driving towards the sun
    • change set speed at highway crossings because fuck the guy behind me, right?
    • engage emergency break if a bike waits to cross at the side of the road

    To which I’ll add:

    • moldy frunk (short for fucking trunk, I guess?), no ventilation whatsoever, water comes in, water stays in
    • pay attention noises for fuck-all reasons masking my podcasts and forcing me to rewind
    • the fucking cabin camera nanny - which I admittedly disabled with some chewing gum
    • the worst mp3 player known to man, the original Winamp was light years ahead - won’t index, won’t search, will reload USB and lose its place with almost every car start
    • bonkers UI with no integration with Android or Apple - I’m playing podcasts via low rate Bluetooth codecs, at least it doesn’t matter much for voice
    • unusable airco in auto mode, insists on blowing cold air in your face

    Say what you want about European cars, at least they got usability and integration right. As did most of the auto industry. Fuck Tesla, never again. Bunch of Steve Jobs wannabes.

  • MochiGoesMeow
    link
    fedilink
    English
    116 days ago

    If you get any strong emotions on material shit when someone makes a video…you have 0 of my respect. Period.

    • @doomcanoe@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      3
      edit-2
      16 days ago

      Saw a guy smash a Stradivarius on video once. definitely had strong emotions on that one.

      Really torn up about not having your respect tho…

      • @njm1314@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        216 days ago

        I think you could argue that that’s not just material stuff though. That’s historical and significant culturally.