When the self-driving car killed a pedestrian several years ago, the initial sentiment on this site for the first few hours was essentially "those dastardly pedestrians, darting into traffic at the last second, how are you supposed to avoid them?" It took several hours for enough information to percolate through to make people realize that the pedestrian had been slowly and quite visibly crossing the road and the self-driving car (nor the safety driver) never did a thing to react to it.
Another thing to keep in mind is that video footage is much lower quality than what we can see with our human eyeballs. At no point in the video can I clearly identify what the debris is, but it's clearly evident that the humans in the car can, because they're clearly reacting to it seconds before it's even visible to us in the dash-cam-quality footage. I will freely accept that many drivers are in fact bad drivers, but a carcass (I think?) on a lane visible for >10 seconds away is something that anyone who can't avoid needs to have their license revoked.
(Assuming I know which accident you're referring to) The car that killed the pedestrian in Florida wasn't using supervised full self driving, he was using autopilot (which was basically adaptive cruise control at the time).
Well, I have to admit that your friend has a point. Humans are bad at reacting quickly and correctly to unexpected situations, and some debris large enough to damage your car showing up from out of nowhere after several hours of boring driving along a largely straight highway with little traffic is definitely one of these situations. But a self-driving system worth its salt should always be alert, scanning the road ahead, able to identify dangerous debris, and react accordingly. So, different pair of shoes...
I'm not convinced. The debris is clearly visible to the humans a long way off and the adjacent lane is wide open. Avoiding road debris is extremely common even in more congested and treacherous driving conditions. Certainly it's possible that someone texting on their phone or something might miss it, but under normal circumstances it could have been easily avoided.
Do they? "Many humans" would hit that? The humans in the car spotted the debris at least 8s before the impact. I don't think any humans would hit that in broad daylight unless they were asleep, completely drunk, or somehow managed to not look at the road for a full 10s. These are the worst drivers, and there aren't that many because the punishment can go up to criminal charges.
The argument that "a human would have made that mistake" backfires, showing that every Tesla equipped with the "safer than a human driver" FSD is in fact at best at "worst human driver" level. But if we still like the "humans also..." argument, then the FSD should face the same punishment a human would in these situations and have its rights to drive any car revoked.
> Well, I have to admit that your friend has a point. Humans are bad at reacting quickly and correctly to unexpected situations, and some debris large enough to damage your car showing up from out of nowhere
I read this comment before seeing the video and thought maybe the debris flies in with the wind and falls on the road a second before impact, or something like that.
But no, here we have bright daylight, perfect visibility, the debris is sitting there on the road visible from very far away, the person in the car doing commentary sees it with plenty of time to leisurely avoid it (had he been driving).
Nothing unexpected showed up out of nowhere, it was sitting right there all along. No quick reaction needed, there was plenty of time to switch lanes. And yet Tesla managed to hit it, against all odds! Wow.
My impression of Tesla's self driving is not very high, but this shows it's actually far worse than I thought.
> Well, I have to admit that your friend has a point. Humans are bad at reacting quickly and correctly to unexpected situations,
This was not one of those situations.
and some debris large enough to damage your car showing up from out of nowhere after several hours of boring driving along a largely straight highway with little traffic is definitely one of these situations.
Again, this was definitely not one of those situations. It was large, it was in their lane, and they were even yapping about it for 10 seconds.
> But a self-driving system worth its salt should always be alert, scanning the road ahead, able to identify dangerous debris, and react accordingly. So, different pair of shoes...
This is what humans already (and if we didn't do it, we'd be driving off the road). Based on what you're saying, I question that you're familiar with driving a car, or at least driving on a highway between cities.
Literally the passenger saw it and leaned it, the driver grabbed the steering wheel to brace himself it seems. That object on the road was massive, absolutely huge as far as on road obstacles go. The camera does not do any justice - it looks like it's 3 feet long, over a foot wide, and about 6 or 7 inches high laying on the road. Unless a human driver really isn't paying attention, they're not hitting that thing.
Bullshit. Some humans might hit thay because they werent paying attention, but most people would see that, slow down and change lanes. This is a relatively scenario that humans deal with. Even the passenger here saw it in time. The driver was relying on FSD and missed it
I dont think FSD has the intelligence to navigate this
I don't love Tesla (though I would like an electric car). I don't think it's unlikely that someone driving could have hit that or caused an even worse accident trying to avoid it.
However, I'm sure a human driver in the loop would have reacted. The driver sitting there watching a machine do it's thing 99% of the time and being expected to step in to save that situation though is a horrific misreading of human nature.
Those humans saw the debris. What happens next when a human is actively at the wheel is that the driver should look at all mirrors, decide whether to change lane or brake, execute. Or anything else that could lead to a movie like multiple car accident. Hitting the debris is the least dangerous line of conduct if there are cars all around. That looked like an empty road but who knows.
By the way, playing a lot of racing videogames is a great training for dealing with that sort of stuff, except maybe getting good at mirrors. I've been in a few dangerous situations and they were only the 10th thousand averted crash. Nothing to think, only reflexes.
I highly recommend people take a high performance/race driving course if they can. I did a single day one which involved high speed maneuverability trials designed to be useful in emergency scenarios (swerving, braking, hard turns) followed by a few laps around a racetrack.
It's one of the best ways to figure out what it feels like to drive at the limits of your car and how you and it react in a very safe and controlled environment.
Did you friend make any mention that the passenger saw it hundreds of feet away and even leaned in as they headed directly towards it? The driver also recognized it and grabbed the wheel as if to say "brace for impact!".
Obviously, in this particular case the humans wouldn't be hitting that. The people in the video have clearly seen the object, but they didn't want to react because that would have ruined their video.
Even if they did not understand what it is, in the real world when you see something on the road you slow down or do a maneuver to avoid it, no matter if it is a harmless peace of cloth or something dangerous like this. People are very good at telling if something is off, you can see it in the video.
Yes. Humans would. Which is why the car should be able to handle the impact. My honda civic has had worse without issue. The suspension should be beefy enough to absorb the impact with, at worst, a blown tire. That the car has broken suspension says to me that teslas are still too fragile, biuld more like performance cars than everyday drivers.
With millions of Teslas on the road one would think if that was true we would have heard something by now. My absolute worst car quality wise ever was a Honda Accord. And I owned shitty cars including a Fiat. My most reliable car was a Honda Civic before I “upgraded” to a brand new Accord. I abuse my Tesla and so far no issues driving in one of the worst roads in the country. I must hit 100 potholes per month and blew a tire already. It’s not a fun car to drive like a GTI (which I own as well) but it’s definitely a solid car.
> A friend of mine who loves Tesla watched this video and said "many humans would have hit that".
The very same video demonstrates this is not true, since the human in the video sees the debris from far away and talks about it, as the self-driving Tesla continues obliviously towards it. Had that same human been driving, it would've been a non-issue to switch to the adjacent lane (completely empty).
But as you said, the friend loves Tesla. The fanboys will always have an excuse, even if the same video contradicts that.
I would counterpoint my little cheap Civic has hit things like that and hasn't broken a thing. HEH.
The best time was a very badly designed speed bump that I didn't even hit at high speed but one side was ridiculously inclinded vs. the other so the entire civic's frontend just smashed right into the pavement and dragged for 3 feet. I wouldn't be surprised if I went into a body shop and find the frontend tilted upwards by a few centimeters. lol
Timestamp 8:00-8:30. Your Civic is not hitting that and surviving any better than the Tesla. It just got luckier. It may be easier to get lucky in certain vehicles, but still luck based.
That's laughable. Any human who couldn't avoid a large, clearly-visible object in the middle of an empty, well-lit road should not be operating a vehicle.
That's not to say that there aren't many drivers who shouldn't be driving, so both can be true at once, but this is certainly not a bar against which to gauge autonomous driving.
Question - isn't P(Hitting | Human Driving) still less than P(Hitting | Tesla FSD) in this particular case [given that if this particular situation comes up - Tesla will fail always whereas some / many humans would not]?
The question is if avoiding the obstacle or breaking was the safest thing to do. I did not watch the entire test, but they are definitely cases where a human will suddenly break or change lanes and cause a very unsafe condition for other drivers. Not saying that was the case here, but sometimes what a human would do is not a good rule for what the autonomous system should do.
An enormous part of safe driving is maintaining a mental map of the vehicles around you and what your options are if you need to make sudden changes. If you are not able to react to changing conditions without being unsafe, you are driving unsafely already.
Yes many human drivers would hit it. The bad ones. But we should want driverless cars to be better than bad drivers. Personally, I expect driverless cars to be better than good drivers. And no, good drivers would not hit that thing.
jcranmer|5 months ago
Another thing to keep in mind is that video footage is much lower quality than what we can see with our human eyeballs. At no point in the video can I clearly identify what the debris is, but it's clearly evident that the humans in the car can, because they're clearly reacting to it seconds before it's even visible to us in the dash-cam-quality footage. I will freely accept that many drivers are in fact bad drivers, but a carcass (I think?) on a lane visible for >10 seconds away is something that anyone who can't avoid needs to have their license revoked.
guywithahat|5 months ago
rob74|5 months ago
root_axis|5 months ago
agildehaus|5 months ago
close04|5 months ago
Do they? "Many humans" would hit that? The humans in the car spotted the debris at least 8s before the impact. I don't think any humans would hit that in broad daylight unless they were asleep, completely drunk, or somehow managed to not look at the road for a full 10s. These are the worst drivers, and there aren't that many because the punishment can go up to criminal charges.
The argument that "a human would have made that mistake" backfires, showing that every Tesla equipped with the "safer than a human driver" FSD is in fact at best at "worst human driver" level. But if we still like the "humans also..." argument, then the FSD should face the same punishment a human would in these situations and have its rights to drive any car revoked.
tptacek|5 months ago
jjav|5 months ago
I read this comment before seeing the video and thought maybe the debris flies in with the wind and falls on the road a second before impact, or something like that.
But no, here we have bright daylight, perfect visibility, the debris is sitting there on the road visible from very far away, the person in the car doing commentary sees it with plenty of time to leisurely avoid it (had he been driving).
Nothing unexpected showed up out of nowhere, it was sitting right there all along. No quick reaction needed, there was plenty of time to switch lanes. And yet Tesla managed to hit it, against all odds! Wow.
My impression of Tesla's self driving is not very high, but this shows it's actually far worse than I thought.
palmotea|5 months ago
This was not one of those situations.
and some debris large enough to damage your car showing up from out of nowhere after several hours of boring driving along a largely straight highway with little traffic is definitely one of these situations.
Again, this was definitely not one of those situations. It was large, it was in their lane, and they were even yapping about it for 10 seconds.
> But a self-driving system worth its salt should always be alert, scanning the road ahead, able to identify dangerous debris, and react accordingly. So, different pair of shoes...
This is what humans already (and if we didn't do it, we'd be driving off the road). Based on what you're saying, I question that you're familiar with driving a car, or at least driving on a highway between cities.
JimmaDaRustla|5 months ago
ape4|5 months ago
samrus|5 months ago
I dont think FSD has the intelligence to navigate this
VBprogrammer|5 months ago
However, I'm sure a human driver in the loop would have reacted. The driver sitting there watching a machine do it's thing 99% of the time and being expected to step in to save that situation though is a horrific misreading of human nature.
mynameisvlad|5 months ago
pmontra|5 months ago
By the way, playing a lot of racing videogames is a great training for dealing with that sort of stuff, except maybe getting good at mirrors. I've been in a few dangerous situations and they were only the 10th thousand averted crash. Nothing to think, only reflexes.
mynameisvlad|5 months ago
It's one of the best ways to figure out what it feels like to drive at the limits of your car and how you and it react in a very safe and controlled environment.
JimmaDaRustla|5 months ago
mrtksn|5 months ago
Even if they did not understand what it is, in the real world when you see something on the road you slow down or do a maneuver to avoid it, no matter if it is a harmless peace of cloth or something dangerous like this. People are very good at telling if something is off, you can see it in the video.
underdeserver|5 months ago
sandworm101|5 months ago
tedggh|5 months ago
jjav|5 months ago
The very same video demonstrates this is not true, since the human in the video sees the debris from far away and talks about it, as the self-driving Tesla continues obliviously towards it. Had that same human been driving, it would've been a non-issue to switch to the adjacent lane (completely empty).
But as you said, the friend loves Tesla. The fanboys will always have an excuse, even if the same video contradicts that.
lawgimenez|5 months ago
cozzyd|5 months ago
delfinom|5 months ago
The best time was a very badly designed speed bump that I didn't even hit at high speed but one side was ridiculously inclinded vs. the other so the entire civic's frontend just smashed right into the pavement and dragged for 3 feet. I wouldn't be surprised if I went into a body shop and find the frontend tilted upwards by a few centimeters. lol
potato3732842|5 months ago
mooxie|5 months ago
That's not to say that there aren't many drivers who shouldn't be driving, so both can be true at once, but this is certainly not a bar against which to gauge autonomous driving.
2OEH8eoCRo0|5 months ago
guywithahat|5 months ago
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sanp|5 months ago
tedggh|5 months ago
mooxie|5 months ago
moi2388|5 months ago
rkomorn|5 months ago
dmix|5 months ago
ModernMech|5 months ago