Autonomous Car Problems

This is an example of Tesla's full self driving beta software from a few days ago. Not quite there yet but it's amazing how much it can do in a challenging downtown environment. Having data collection from over 3 million in-service vehicles helps them quite a bit.

 
Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe said:
Nobody makes that decision - particularly if it is based on AI. The car is not going to be able to know how old someone is.

But, who makes that decision now? The chances that a driver will be prepared are somewhere between slim and none. Most likely a human driver will just slam on the brakes and kill everybody. Not a very high bar to reach.
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Nonsense. You drive through an intersection in crappy weather and suddenly you realize there is no clear path. You have 3 choices and can't possibly stop before hitting one of them: A woman with a baby stroller, an old dude on a Harley or a semi truck coming your direction at 50mph.

Harley, every time.
 
Got a chuckle out of this thread after my car just drove me (with no interventions) from my house to the turn off to the parking lot. 1 hour 45 minutes. Morning drive, Hudson Valley to Newark, NJ.

But yeah, it’s not for everyone. I probably pay more attention when it’s on than when driving manually.
 
aftCG said:
Nonsense. You drive through an intersection in crappy weather and suddenly you realize there is no clear path. You have 3 choices and can't possibly stop before hitting one of them: A woman with a baby stroller, an old dude on a Harley or a semi truck coming your direction at 50mph.

Harley, every time.
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Yeah, a HD, sure. But if he’d been on a Triumph, Ducati, Bimota,....? Baby stroller eight days a week.
 
Kent Wien said:
Got a chuckle out of this thread after my car just drove me (with no interventions) from my house to the turn off to the parking lot. 1 hour 45 minutes. Morning drive, Hudson Valley to Newark, NJ.

But yeah, it’s not for everyone. I probably pay more attention when it’s on than when driving manually.
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So a clear day with no rain or snow and on the highway. Got it.
 
EdFred said:
So a clear day with no rain or snow and on the highway. Got it.
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My Cadillac occasionally auto-brakes when backing out of the garage due to shadows or leaves on the ground, lol. Not that's the same as self-driving technology, but the tech isn't there for anything but clear roads and standard road layouts.
 
I would hate to be in a self-driving car on some of the logging roads I've driven on. :eek2:
 
SoonerAviator said:
My Cadillac occasionally auto-brakes when backing out of the garage due to shadows or leaves on the ground, lol. Not that's the same as self-driving technology, but the tech isn't there for anything but clear roads and standard road layouts.
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Yeah, I get the audio alerts for non-existent objects as well in the Chevy. I will say the adaptive cruise is pretty nice, though.
 
flyingron said:
It's already happened. Not sure there was any tremendous payday.˜
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The first one was an Uber test. The backup driver was charged with homicide and Uber settled privately out of court. The family could have taken them to the cleaners, there is a very strong anti-autonomous sentiment.

Waymo has been testing in the Phoenix area, but they have had no fatal accidents. "Testing" does not necessarily mean on a public street.
 
Kent Wien said:
Got a chuckle out of this thread after my car just drove me (with no interventions) from my house to the turn off to the parking lot. 1 hour 45 minutes. Morning drive, Hudson Valley to Newark, NJ.

But yeah, it’s not for everyone. I probably pay more attention when it’s on than when driving manually.
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I recently had a courtesy car that had all the fancy lane assist functions, auto braking, and auto distance functions. It was fine on the straight sections of highway, but it kicked off on all the curvy sections (84 from Waterbury to Hartford at rush hour) after oscillating from one side of the lane to the other. It was a horribly uncomfortable ride, but I had to try it out. My general reaction was that the technology didn’t seem to be there yet for my commute.

The NY Thruway, on the other hand, is comparatively straight and lightly travelled. Did you take the Parkway or 95 in NJ? I’d be curious how it would handle some of the Northern portions of the Parkway.
 
skier said:
I recently had a courtesy car that had all the fancy lane assist functions, auto braking, and auto distance functions. It was fine on the straight sections of highway, but it kicked off on all the curvy sections (84 from Waterbury to Hartford at rush hour) after oscillating from one side of the lane to the other. It was a horribly uncomfortable ride, but I had to try it out. My general reaction was that the technology didn’t seem to be there yet for my commute.

The NY Thruway, on the other hand, is comparatively straight and lightly travelled. Did you take the Parkway or 95 in NJ? I’d be curious how it would handle some of the Northern portions of the Parkway.
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I often do the Taconic which it locks into nicely. My GFs Subaru kicks off on that road.
 
bflynn said:
Waymo has been testing in the Phoenix area, but they have had no fatal accidents. "Testing" does not necessarily mean on a public street.
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Waymo is running driverless on public streets. There are videos on YouTube showing how it does.

Waymo's system depends on LiDAR and having high definition maps databases on the roads that it will using. That gives it certain advantages but restricts where it can auto drive. Tesla's system is all cameras and does not depend on anything more than Google maps-level data for navigation. That removes the geographical limitations but presents a bigger challenge because the car knows a lot less about the roads on which it will be driving. Two different ways of approaching the same problem.

skier said:
I recently had a courtesy car that had all the fancy lane assist functions, auto braking, and auto distance functions. ... My general reaction was that the technology didn’t seem to be there yet for my commute.
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That's a system that was designed to be a driver assistance system, not a fully autonomous system. It does not represent the state of the art for self driving.

I’d be curious how it would handle some of the Northern portions of the Parkway.
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Did you watch the video I posted above in post #42? It gives a very good idea of where Tesla currently stands with their system. Highway driving is far less challenging that the city driving shown in that video. That channel, Dirty Tesla, has many videos of FSD Beta drives with few, if any, driver interventions going back of many revisions to the FSD software. He lives down a couple miles of dirt roads, hence the name Dirty Tesla, and the FSD Beta software handles those unmarked dirt roads very well.
 
Kent Wien said:
I often do the Taconic which it locks into nicely. My GFs Subaru kicks off on that road.
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Does it work in the NYC area, with the various parkways, areas with no visible lane markings, somewhat random rules, etc.? I'd expect not well, but I never expected voice recognition to work, either.
 
Albany Tom said:
Does it work in the NYC area, with the various parkways, areas with no visible lane markings, somewhat random rules, etc.? I'd expect not well, but I never expected voice recognition to work, either.
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Yeah, wonder how it would have worked on my road when they resurfaced and there was no markings at all. 4 lanes wide, not a stripe or solid, no fog lines, nothing.
 
EdFred said:
Yeah, wonder how it would have worked on my road when they resurfaced and there was no markings at all. 4 lanes wide, not a stripe or solid, no fog lines, nothing.
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My Tesla does a pretty darn good job of driving down my road. It's paved, but no lines or markings of any kind. Not even a curb. It does tend to drive a little too centered rather than holding the right side of the road, but it moves over when traffic comes the other way.

On the other hand, any construction, or a turn > 90 degrees it fails miserably at navigating. Sometimes it stops in the middle of an intersection. Sometimes it slams the wheel and starts to veer off the road quickly.

There's no way I would trust it to be autonomous.
 
Salty said:
My Tesla does a pretty darn good job of driving down my road. It's paved, but no lines or markings of any kind. Not even a curb. It does tend to drive a little too centered rather than holding the right side of the road, but it moves over when traffic comes the other way.

On the other hand, any construction, or a turn > 90 degrees it fails miserably at navigating. Sometimes it stops in the middle of an intersection. Sometimes it slams the wheel and starts to veer off the road quickly.

There's no way I would trust it to be autonomous.
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How does it handle dead animals in the road? There's always a deer/possum/raccoon or something splatted on the way to or from my house.
 
unless it's a very large object, it tends to ignore it and plow right over.
 
Stipulated that autonomous driving is a very hard nut to crack. And that progress has been far slower than many had predicted and hoped for. But I think what some may be missing is the power of AI and machine learning.

Tesla, for instance, has an enormous amount of computing power available. Hence, the ability to learn from the data provided by an ever growing fleet of vehicles. What works, what doesn’t work, and how to incrementally keep advancing the capabilities of its cars. It will only get better and better, but when it will be ready for widespread acceptance is anybody’s guess.
 
EdFred said:
Yeah, wonder how it would have worked on my road when they resurfaced and there was no markings at all. 4 lanes wide, not a stripe or solid, no fog lines, nothing.
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The included autopilot needs lane markings. It is only "supported" on divided highways but drives pretty well on any road with lane marking.

The Full Self Driving capability option can drive without the lane markings.
 
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