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410 points jjulius | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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bastawhiz ◴[] No.41889192[source]
Lots of people are asking how good the self driving has to be before we tolerate it. I got a one month free trial of FSD and turned it off after two weeks. Quite simply: it's dangerous.

- It failed with a cryptic system error while driving

- It started making a left turn far too early that would have scraped the left side of the car on a sign. I had to manually intervene.

- In my opinion, the default setting accelerates way too aggressively. I'd call myself a fairly aggressive driver and it is too aggressive for my taste.

- It tried to make way too many right turns on red when it wasn't safe to. It would creep into the road, almost into the path of oncoming vehicles.

- It didn't merge left to make room for vehicles merging onto the highway. The vehicles then tried to cut in. The system should have avoided an unsafe situation like this in the first place.

- It would switch lanes to go faster on the highway, but then missed an exit on at least one occasion because it couldn't make it back into the right lane in time. Stupid.

After the system error, I lost all trust in FSD from Tesla. Until I ride in one and feel safe, I can't have any faith that this is a reasonable system. Hell, even autopilot does dumb shit on a regular basis. I'm grateful to be getting a car from another manufacturer this year.

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thomastjeffery ◴[] No.41889323[source]
It's not just about relative safety compared to all human driving.

We all know that some humans are sometimes terrible drivers!

We also know what that looks like: Driving too fast or slow relative to surroundings. Quickly turning every once in a while to stay in their lane. Aggressively weaving through traffic. Going through an intersection without spending the time to actually look for pedestrians. The list goes on..

Bad human driving can be seen. Bad automated driving is invisible. Do you think the people who were about to be hit by a Tesla even realized that was the case? I sincerely doubt it.

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bastawhiz ◴[] No.41890207[source]
> Bad automated driving is invisible.

I'm literally saying that it is visible, to me, the passenger. And for reasons that aren't just bad vibes. If I'm in an Uber and I feel unsafe, I'll report the driver. Why would I pay for my car to do that to me?

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1. wizzwizz4 ◴[] No.41890261[source]
GP means that the signs aren't obvious to other drivers. We generally underestimate how important psychological modelling is for communication, because it's transparent to most of us under most circumstances, but AI systems have very different psychology to humans. It is easier to interpret the body language of a fox than a self-driving car.