Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/10/23/this-guy-tries-out-telsas-new-full-self-driving-beta.html
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I love movie interfaces. 
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Would you want one of these to drive through the school zone where you and all the other parents are dropping off their kids in the morning?
I am very, very ready for a driver that is actually paying attention to every single thing on the road at all times even if it is a robot, since human drivers have day-by-day, hour-by-hour, and minute-by-minute demonstrated that they have neither the ability nor the interest in actually piloting their automobiles.
however, this video tells me very little.
wake me when it recognizes kids playing in the street, or navigates safely up Edgewood with all the cyclists, drunk and high people, and motorized wheelchairs in the street.
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FTFY
He just added commentary to somebody else’s video.
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From the UK, today.
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Pretty cool, but might be more persuasive if the driver and passengers weren’t such fan boys.
And I say that as a Tesla owner.
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Level 3 autonomous is The cake is a lie in car form. Humans can’t do attentive inactivity reliably. They definitely can’t when you call the car “fully autonomous wink” in marketing.
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The name is false advertising that will only lead to tragedy.
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no wonder.
the lack of views out the windshield seemed off, but I just attributed it to poor video-making skills.
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That’s ok. Humans (myself included) have also proven they can’t do attentive activity reliably, either.
Having recently done not one but two Austin ↔ Toronto roadtrips, I welcome any tech that will help reduce driver fatigue.
Not to mention it would be really freaking nice if my disabled partner and elderly parents could continue to drive without people someday, so that personal mobility isn’t so much a privilege for the abled.
If this helps us get there, I am 100% all for it.
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Well the squealing fanboy reaction is a bit offputting, but the technology is impressive. Now I’m waiting for the real hard-core trip: from Napoli to Sorrento at 5PM on a weekday, for example. Or downtown New Delhi, I’d settle for that too.
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Now with fewer decapitations!
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The guy was amazed the car’s computer detected the parked cars? I would think that would be a minimum given.
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That’s the thing- this level-2 system most definitely does NOT reduce driver fatigue if used as intended. It requires constant monitoring by the human driver, and even says right there in the disclaimer ”It may do the wrong thing at the worst time, so you must always keep your hands on the wheel and pay extra attention to the road. Do not become complacent.”
As people who study this stuff will tell you, humans are not very good at the task of maintaining vigilance and looking for rare events. Any system that does all the driving until something goes wrong, then requires a human to take over at a moment’s notice in order to stay safe is fundamentally flawed. Engineers need to recognize the real limitations of human beings and design with real-world people in mind, not some theoretical person who can remain vigilant and alert for hours at a time even though they aren’t controlling the car.
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Mostly I have Tesla skepticism, Musk dislike, worries about safety, thoughts about liability and lawsuits and potential death of innocent pedestrians when people are trying out beta software, but it’s actually good to push that out for a moment and say “this is actually really cool.”
It was only a few years ago (ok, actually 15, which is insane to me) that the DARPA Grand Challenge went from zero cars being able to autonomously drive across a featureless desert to all of them crossing the finish line, before the test moved up to very easy simulated urban environments.
If this is going live, I could imagine finally biting the bullet and getting one. From the other end, maybe I should finally go to college and try to land a job in the field.
Will it go 100mph swerving wildly? Then yes.
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Sorry, I disagree. That is the description of driving right there - keep your hands on the wheel and pay extra attention to the road.
Even the humble lane-keeping and speed-management of my current vehicle make a HUGE difference in road fatigue on long drives. updating that already impressive level of automation further will only decrease fatigue further, as now I am more about waiting for the car to react to the vehicle in front of me rather than doing so myself. I went from an RX8 with simple cruise control to where I am today on loooooooong road trips and I can say unequivocally I am a safer driver now than I was before because of this.
Now, this may also be because I’m not about to sneak in a movie or otherwise behave differently because of the automation. But all of these studies about how humans are bad at paying attention seem to fail to realize the baseline driver isn’t the person paying attention all the time while driving to begin with - it’s the driver who didn’t get enough sleep because their toddler kept them up all night, who has to drive in anyway because they have no job security and have to be on the road no matter what.
Try putting those people into your equations on road safety before blanket statements like “more automation = bad” mean anything to me. Because I’ve been one of those long-haul road trip drivers who shouldn’t have been driving but did anyway because my hotel reservation was only 45 minutes further up the road and if I kept the window open, surely I can stay awake until then…
