+1
My favourite aspect on long drives. Even with partial autonomous. It's is a rest time vs driving time.

That's the problem with level 2,3 automation, it's still driving time and very good partial autonomous functionality lulls people into thinking it is rest time.

 

I have been in contact with the "Big 3" US manufacturers. They are spending more time and effort simply figuring out how to make sure the driver is paying attention than they are on the adaptive cruise control/self drive features. These manufacturers know they have to save the driver from their own stupidity by near-IR driver monitoring systems thst track the driver's pupils, capacitive touch steering wheels and forced feedback of the steering wheel to make sure the driver is engaged. We are only at level2 and level3, the driver must be engaged and not get overly confident in the car's "intelligence".. Tesla doesn't seem to be worried about monitoring the driver and there are plenty of examples of driver's offing themselves with stupidity by believing in the "Full self driving" function of a Tesla.

 

It's not stupidity really, it's human nature because of how we evolved to handle possible danger by filtering threats using the power of our brains to predict the future using our senses. When the threat is low our brains seek other stimulus or we shutdown our high state of awareness because of "cognitive offloading" to automation.
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14652

 

It's not stupidity really, it's human nature because of how we evolved to handle possible danger by filtering threats using the power of our brains to predict the future using our senses. When the threat is low our brains seek other stimulus or we shutdown our high state of awareness because of "cognitive offloading" to automation.
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14652

True - and the "big 3" manufacturers know this while Tesla is letting that human nature control their company.

 

Super Bowl ad showed Elon Musk's Tesla cars mowing down child mannequins

​

Although Tesla requires technology users to remain in the driver's seat and control of the car at all times, the company claims that it is reaching maturity by the end of the year. O'Dowd, though isn't convinced and has conducted these tests on the Tesla cars that he owns. He wants next for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to run them again and validate his findings in an official report, he said in a tweet after the advert was aired.

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/16/tes...-driving-beta-software-may-cause-crashes.html
Tesla recalls 362,758 vehicles, says Full Self-Driving Beta software may cause crashes

https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2023/RCLRPT-23V085-3451.PDF

 

Amazing what a super bowl ad can accomplish!

 

Amazing what a super bowl ad can accomplish!

If only it was that simple.

 

https://apnews.com/article/technology-business-injuries-fires-59d22dced75ec1ce6929c9dfb094524c
Tesla driver killed after plowing into firetruck on freeway

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating how Tesla’s Autopilot system detects and responds to emergency vehicles parked on highways. At least 14 Teslas have crashed into emergency vehicles while using the system.

Dutter said the truck had its lights on and was parked diagonally on northbound lanes of the freeway to protect responders to an earlier accident that did not result in injuries.

 

https://www.thedrive.com/news/futur...hemselves-and-drive-away-if-you-miss-payments

Future Fords Could Repossess Themselves and Drive Away if You Miss Payments
Alternatively, the car could drive itself to a junkyard if it costs too much to repossess it. Yes, really.

 

"self driving cars" is a bit wide expression. In grand scale it will not happen in 50 years.
Even the easiest tasks there are still problems, cameras think the moon is a traffic sign, cars try to go under semi trucks etc... Then we have extremely difficult road conditions like snow, fog, ice, different obstacles...
This is just big hype around it and is needed to boost the development.

 

Hello again,

For the more general aspect it's mostly about AI, and AI needs to get much more advanced.
In fact, AI 'training' will never be enough, it has to learn how to learn. That means that it has to be able to discover new problems and find solutions all by itself. That in turn means it has to have some reasonable idea of what the world is made of. For example, it should be able to learn whatever kids learn up to high school senior year. It has to have that basic knowledge so that it can figure things out and make reasonable decisions all by itself. It also has to be able to take in images and process them beforehand, and have an idea how 3d space is approximated using 2d space as it can not rely on measurements of 3d space alone simply because it will not be able to do a complete scan of anything that is really 3d. It has no access to what the back side looks like or measures so it has to be able to infer from the 2d space view. It also has to know how those things can change and how fast. Is the kid walking down the sidewalk or running.
Perhaps internet access while it is parked can help where it can study problems from the internet and compile results it can use later. It should be able to at least read news articles about other self driving vehicles and the problems that came up, and be able to solve them and store that for use when the situation comes up.

I think it may still be a long road ahead before this all comes out perfectly.

 

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/innova...waymo-cruise-uber-hit-run-accidents-rcna76857
San Francisco’s self-driving cars have a hit-and-run problem. Usually, they’re the victims.

Roger McCarthy, an engineering consultant in Palo Alto, California who has studied the collision reports of autonomous vehicles, said that human drivers are “overwhelmingly at fault” when there’s a collision between them and a driverless car such as a Cruise or Waymo. Many of the collisions are rear-end crashes, where the human driver misjudged whether the autonomous vehicle would proceed, he said.

“AVs don’t behave in an intuitive manner,” he said. For example, the vehicles don’t roll through stop signs and they obey speed limits.

But McCarthy said he’s sympathetic to the human drivers who are part of a real-world experiment — one that state regulators OK’d, but that drivers didn’t consent to. Last year, the San Francisco Examiner published a guide on what to do if you get in a collision with a driverless car, but the hit -and-run incidents have gone on.

 

https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/08/m...a-with-hands-free-eyes-off-automated-driving/

Mercedes first to sell vehicles in California with hands-free, eyes-off automated driving

Mercedes' system is only available at speeds of up to 40 miles per hour, during daylight hours on certain highways. The system will not engage on city or county roads, in construction zones, during heavy rain or heavy fog, on flooded roads and during weather conditions that are determined to impact performance of the system, according to the DMV.

One of the certain highways is I-15, the minimal speed is 45 but there is a narrow window where this 40 miles per hour max could be useful, on that Vegas Trip. Perfect for Level 3 driving automation.

The hands-off, eyes-off system can be used on designated California highways, including Interstate 15, under certain conditions without the active control of a human driver. This means drivers can watch videos, text or talk to a passenger (or even mess around with any number of third-party apps coming to new Mercedes models) without watching the road ahead or having their hands on the wheel.

 

Driver assistance is getting better, sometimes.

 

There is a list of success stories. How about the ratio of successes to failures?

 

I have read now that new cars will soon be required to have automatic braking systems. That's going to be just great when people become reliant on that and then it doesn't work one day.

I have to wonder what new regulations are there for. It appears that they are there more for the manufacturer and insurance companies than the consumer.
Not only that, but the cost to repair these things is just going to keep going up with all the new contraptions that become "required" by law.

Maybe it is true about what else I read, that in maybe 10 years most people will not own cars anymore but will rely on ride services. I tend to start to believe that when the total cost of ownership keeps going up.

 

I drove a loaner with automatic braking for about 3 days. It scared the s*** out if me by hard braking when there was no hazard in sight. If this is the way they work I would disable it.

 

https://metro.co.uk/2023/07/07/protesters-are-disabling-robotaxis-with-traffic-cones-19086081/

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1676695665278337024

Unicorns can't drive?

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/tech...wheel-weights-to-drive-hands-free/ar-AA1dyG3s

The Post reported last month that the number of fatalities and serious injuries involving Tesla’s Autopilot has surged over the past year, likely due to wider availability of the features. Among those incidents was the North Carolina crash.

It was not clear from the incident reports and summaries from that crash or the police chase in Germany how the drivers obtained the weights and what form they took. In both cases, police say the steering wheel weights were intended to trick Autopilot.

The weights are not illegal, although federal regulators have cracked down on one such device, deeming it “unsafe.”