The U.S. government’s road safety agency is again investigating Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” system, this time after getting reports of crashes in low-visibility conditions, including one that killed a pedestrian.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says in documents that it opened the probe on Thursday with the company reporting four crashes after Teslas entered areas of low visibility, including sun glare, fog and airborne dust.

In addition to the pedestrian’s death, another crash involved an injury, the agency said.

Investigators will look into the ability of “Full Self-Driving” to “detect and respond appropriately to reduced roadway visibility conditions, and if so, the contributing circumstances for these crashes.”

  • rsuri@lemmy.world
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    18 days ago

    Musk has said that humans drive with only eyesight, so cars should be able to drive with just cameras.

    This of course assumes 1) that cameras are just as good as eyes (they’re not) and 2) that the processing of visual data that the human brain does can be replicated by a machine, which seems highly dubious given that we only partially understand how humans process visual data to make decisions.

    Finally, it assumes that the current rate of human-caused crashes is acceptable. Which it isn’t. We tolerate crashes because we can’t improve people without unrealistic expense. In an automated system, if a bit of additional hardware can significantly reduce crashes it’s irrational not to do it.

      • rsuri@lemmy.world
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        18 days ago

        Well building battlemechs does seem like the obvious next step on Elon’s progression

        • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝@sopuli.xyz
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          18 days ago

          You mean promising to build battlemechs, and fucking around for 5 years while grifting his stock valuation sky-high, then coming forward with a cheap robot that can’t even walk?

          • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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            17 days ago

            Not only that, specifically doing it to fuck the momentum of another project that would have competed with his entire market but would have been better for pretty much everyone (including those who stayed in the market he was targeting).

    • SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      18 days ago

      Also, on a final note…

      Why the fuck would you limit yourself to only human senses when you have the capability to add more of any sense you want??

      If you have the option to add something that humans don’t have, why wouldn’t you? As an example, humans don’t have gps either, but it’s very useful to have in a car

      • xthexder@l.sw0.com
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        18 days ago

        Unfortunately the answer to that is: Elon’s cheap and Radar is expensive. Not so expensive that you can’t get it in a base model Civic though, which just makes it that much more absurd.

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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          15 days ago

          Lidar isn’t that expensive, it’s more expensive than the cameras but it’s probably more useful than the cameras so perhaps you could install less cameras and more Lidar. Also the cost will go down as production rates go up, currently it’s high price has a lot to do with its limited applications and thus limited customer base. The more cars that have lidar, the more customers there will be, and the less each individual unit will cost.

    • blady_blah@lemmy.world
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      18 days ago

      This is directly a result of Elon’s edict that Tesla cars don’t use lidar. If you aren’t aware Elon set that as a requirement at the beginning of Tesla’s self driving project because he didn’t want to spend the money on lidar for all Tesla cars.

      His “first principles” logic is that humans don’t use lidar therefore self driving should be able to be accomplished without (expensive) enhanced vision tools. While this statement has some modicum of truth, it’s obviously going to trade off safely in situations where vision is compromised. Think fog or sunlight shining in your cameras / eyes or a person running across the street at night wearing all black. There are obvious scenarios where lidar is a massive safety advantage, but Elon made a decision for $$ to not have that. This sounds like a direct and obvious outcome of that edict.

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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          15 days ago

          You need slightly more advanced lidar for cars because you need to be able to see further ahead then 10 ft, and you need to be able to see in adverse weather conditions (rain, fog, snow), that I assume you don’t experience indoors. That said, it really isn’t as expensive as he is making it out to be.

      • WoodScientist@lemmy.world
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        18 days ago

        His “first principles” logic is that humans don’t use lidar therefore self driving should be able to be accomplished without (expensive) enhanced vision tools.

        This kind of idiocy is why people tried to build airplanes with flapping wings. Way too many people thought that the best way to create a plane was to just copy what nature did with birds. Nature showed it was possible, so just copy nature.

        • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
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          17 days ago

          To be fair, we achieved flight by copying nature. Once we realized the important part was the shape of a wing more than the flapping.

    • TheKMAP@lemmynsfw.com
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      18 days ago

      If the camera system + software results in being 1% safer than a human, and a given human can’t afford the lidar version, society is still better off with the human using the camera-based FSD than driving manually. Elon being a piece of shit doesn’t detract from this fact.

      But, yes, a lot of “ifs” in there, and obviously he did this to cut costs or supply chain or blahblah

      Lidar or other tech will be more relevant once we’ve raised the floor (everyone getting the additional safety over manual driving) and other FSDs become more mainstream (competition)

  • billwashere@lemmy.world
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    17 days ago

    Makes you wonder if removing the lidar and using fucking cameras isn’t part of the problem… cheap bastards.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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        15 days ago

        Well he said all sorts to try and justify it but really it was a cost-cutting exercise, of course it was a cost cutting exercise, why else would they do it?

        Anyway that explanation doesn’t make sense, if using lidar was a crutch then surely that’s a good solution right. It’s a bit like going, no you shouldn’t use wings on your aircraft that’s a crutch, you should be using the antigravity tech that we don’t have yet.

        In the long run there probably are going to be better solutions (that’s how civilizations advance), but those better solutions don’t exist yet, so… maybe we should use what we have.

  • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world
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    17 days ago

    Charge the stupid fuck Tesla chain of decision making with murder. This bullshit “self driving” advertising is premeditated, that’s no longer manslaughter.

    And charge the driver(s) with manslaughter under aggravating circumstances.

    But oh no, muh profts, hurr-durrr…

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      15 days ago

      Wouldn’t it be death by negligence rather than pre-meditated murder. After all I don’t think anyone at Tesla actually wanted this particular person to die, they just didn’t really care to take any action to prevent it.

      • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world
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        15 days ago

        “I aimed my rifle at that person’s head and pulled the trigger, but I swear I didn’t want them to die”

        Tesla should be broken up and reassembled with zero overlap in management.

        And yes, legally it won’t stick, but the shitty south african oligarch should absolutely be tried for murder.

  • breadsmasher@lemmy.world
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    18 days ago

    Eyes can’t see in low visibility.

    musk “we drive with our eyes, cameras are eyes. we dont need LiDAR”

    FSD kills someone because of low visibility just like with eyes

    musk reaction -

      • III@lemmy.world
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        18 days ago

        Correction - Older Teslas had lidar, Musk demanded they be removed because they cut into his profits. Not a huge difference but it does show how much of a shitbag he is.

    • conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works
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      18 days ago

      It’s worse than that, though. Our eyes are significantly better than cameras (with some exceptions at the high end) at adapting to varied lighting conditions than cameras are. Especially rapid changes.

      • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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        17 days ago

        Not only that, when we have trouble seeing things, we can adjust our speed to compensate (though tbf, not all human drivers do, but I don’t think FSD should be modelled after the worst of human drivers). Does Tesla’s FSD go into a “drive slower” mode when it gets less certain about what it sees? Or does its algorithms always treat its best guess with high confidence?

      • jerkface@lemmy.ca
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        18 days ago

        Hard to credit without a source, modern cameras have way more dynamic range than the human eye.

        • magiccupcake@lemmy.world
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          18 days ago

          Not in one exposure. Human eyes are much better with dealing with extremely high contrasts.

          Cameras can be much more sensitive, but at the cost of overexposing brighter regions in an image.

          • conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works
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            18 days ago

            They’re also pretty noisy in low light and generally take long exposures (a problem with a camera at high speeds) to get sufficient input to see anything in the dark. Especially if you aren’t spending thousands of dollars with massive sensors per camera.

            • jerkface@lemmy.ca
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              17 days ago

              I dunno what cameras you are using but a standard full frame sensor and an F/4 lens sees way better in low light than the human eye. If I take a raw image off my camera, there is so much more dynamic range than I can see or a monitor can even represent, you can double the brightness at least four times (ie 16x brighter) and parts of the image that looked pure black to the eye become perfectly usable images. There is so so so much more dynamic range than the human eye.

    • Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works
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      18 days ago

      He really is a fucking idiot. But so few people can actually call him out… So he just never gets put in his place.

      Imagine your life with unlimited redos. That’s how he lives.

  • FiskFisk33@startrek.website
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    18 days ago

    Tesla, which has repeatedly said the system cannot drive itself and human drivers must be ready to intervene at all times.

    how is it legal to label this “full self driving” ?

    • kiku@feddit.org
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      18 days ago

      If customers can’t assume that boneless wings don’t have bones in them, then they shouldn’t assume that Full Self Driving can self-drive the car.

      The courts made it clear that words don’t matter, and that the company can’t be liable for you assuming that words have meaning.

        • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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          17 days ago

          Now go after Oscar Meyer and Burger King. I am not getting any ham in my burger or dog in my hot’s. They are buying a product which they know full well before they complete the sale that it does not and is not lawfully allowed to auto pilot itself around the country. The owners manuals will give them a full breakdown as well I’m sure. If you spend thousands of dollars on something and don’t know the basic rules and guidelines, you have much bigger issues. If anything, one should say to register these vehicles to drive on the road, they should have to be made aware.

          If someone is that dumb or ignorant to jump through all the hoops and not know, let’s be honest: They shouldn’t be driving a car either.

  • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    18 days ago

    Fuck Elon musk.

    But self-driving is one of the most needed technologies to aim for in the near future. And it’s a shame that as American space industry it has , apparently, let be in the hands of a lunatic.

    The potential to reduce road mortality. And to give back to humans thousands of hours back of their time (you can do other things while not driving).

    I don’t really care about the philosophical question on who is to blame if a self driving car run over one person if road mortality got statistically reduced by a big value thanks to the technology.

    The anti technology I see on some supposedly progressive people nowadays really scares me. Bad omen. It’s like having a choice between rich conservatives and poor conservatives, but only conservatives nonetheless.

    • ChapulinColorado@lemmy.world
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      18 days ago

      That’s just a train/bus with extra steps and far more risk. Cities with cars as the main mode of transport are still ugly places to live.

      • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        18 days ago

        I live in what is supposedly taught as the better mobility solution. A dense european city.

        It’s true, I can go everywhere walking and by public transport… and it sucks.

        Such density to allow for good public transport means living in apartments like ants, instead of houses.

        I like walking but in winter or summer it can be miserable. Buses you get really tired of very quickly, crowded, crazy people, smells, having to be on foot because no seats, dizziness, and in big cities pickpocketing. It’s a lot of misery IMHO.

        I’ve live like this many decades and I cannot see the time I can move out of the city, well knowing I’ll need a car for everything because lower densities does not allow for walking/good public transport. But I find higher densities just miserable to live in.

        As such I would love to have self driving cars. Seems such a life quality improvement.

          • dh34d@lemmynsfw.com
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            17 days ago

            Man, this is Lemmy in a nutshell. Someone offers a well thought-out and well-written view to give some perspective on the other side of a popular Lemmy opinion, and the first response is just straight up ignoring the opportunity to have a real conversation and attacking the commenter as a person.

            This place fucking sucks.

            • yetiftw@lemmy.world
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              11 days ago

              they were complaining about things that are only unpleasant because of their own feelings toward the situation

    • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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      18 days ago

      Why is it the most needed though?

      I’m not really sold on the importance of it anymore tbh. It was a cool scifi dream but driving is not even at the top 1000 issues we need solving right now.

  • elgordino@fedia.io
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    18 days ago

    If anyone was somehow still thinking RoboTaxi is ever going to be a thing. Then no, it’s not, because of reasons like this.

    • testfactor@lemmy.world
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      18 days ago

      It doesn’t have to not hit pedestrians. It just has to hit less pedestrians than the average human driver.

      • elgordino@fedia.io
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        18 days ago

        It needs to be way way better than ‘better than average’ if it’s ever going to be accepted by regulators and the public. Without better sensors I don’t believe it will ever make it. Waymo had the right idea here if you ask me.

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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          18 days ago

          But why is that the standard? Shouldn’t “equivalent to average” be the standard? Because if self-driving cars can be at least as safe as a human, they can be improved to be much safer, whereas humans won’t improve.

      • ContrarianTrail@lemm.ee
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        18 days ago

        Exactly. The current rate is 80 deaths per day in the US alone. Even if we had self-driving cars proven to be 10 times safer than human drivers, we’d still see 8 news articles a day about people dying because of them. Taking this as ‘proof’ that they’re not safe is setting an impossible standard and effectively advocating for 30,000 yearly deaths, as if it’s somehow better to be killed by a human than by a robot.

        • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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          18 days ago

          But they aren’t and likely never will be.

          And how are we to correct for lack of safety then? With human drivers you obvious discourage dangerous driving through punishment. Who do you punish in a self driving car?

    • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
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      17 days ago

      The government for letting tesla get away with false advertising. They let them do it because they swallowed the hype along with Musk climate saviorism.

      • awholenewworld@leminal.space
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        15 days ago

        What about the people for letting the government get away with bad governing. They let them do it because they swallowed the hype.

        • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
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          14 days ago

          Still governement’s fault for brainwashing the population with neoliberal governemental donothing-ism which fedback into the system as paralysis and letting liars lie for clout and money (Yes, I mean the Musky one)

  • Konala Koala@lemmy.world
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    17 days ago

    Every time I hear something about pedestrian being killed by something self-driving, it begins to irk me as to why are we pushing for such and such technology.

    • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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      17 days ago

      The bad news is people hitting and killing pedestrians is so common you don’t hear about it. Fuck Musk and all that, but some number of people are always going to get killed. Even the FSD system that was as close to perfect as possible would still occasionally kill someone in large enough numbers, because there’s too many variables to account for. If the numbers are lower than a human driving, it’s a positive.

      We should be trying to move away from cars though ideally. Fuck electric cars, FSD cars, and all other cars. A bus, train, bike, or whatever else would be safer and better for the environment.

      • FuzzyRedPanda@lemm.ee
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        17 days ago

        Fuck Musk and all that, but some number of people are always going to get killed.

        That’s easy to say, but do you want to be one of the people who gets killed? I don’t.

    • Psythik@lemmy.world
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      17 days ago

      Because self-driving cars are safer than human drivers, when implemented properly. A proper one is absolutely loaded with sensors, radar, laser, sonar; not just some cameras like Tesla’s system.

      If you ever get the chance to, hop in a Waymo and you’ll become a believer too (currently available only in Cali and AZ). These little robotaxis see everything at all times, not just what’s in front of them like humans. I trust them more than I’d trust any human driver. They can avoid accidents that you and I would never see coming. Witnessed this first-hand.

        • Psythik@lemmy.world
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          16 days ago

          Again, ride in one yourself when you get the chance and I promise you you’ll change your mind immediately.

          • Konala Koala@lemmy.world
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            15 days ago

            Again, not only no valid proof they are safe, but they are being used to put people out of work like Taxi and Uber drivers.

            • Psythik@lemmy.world
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              9 days ago

              It’s for the better. They will find other jobs. You sound like the people crying about coal mines being closed down.

    • PeroBasta@lemmy.world
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      17 days ago

      Because it is generally proven to save lifes. You’ll never hear of “thanks for the auto-brake system no one got injured and everything was boring as usual” but it happened a lot (also to me in first person).

      I don’t like Musk but in general its a good thing to push self driving cars IMO. I drive 2 hours per day and the amount of time where I see retarded people doing retarded stuff at the wheel is crazy.

      • Konala Koala@lemmy.world
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        16 days ago

        No, it is not generally proven to save lives, you are listening to lies somewhere. Its not a good thing to push self-driving cars and Musk is the one being retarded. Plus he supports Trump and not Harris.

        • PeroBasta@lemmy.world
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          15 days ago

          The technology behind it is proven to save lifes. The reaction time of a full brake to stop a car crash i had the “luck” of experiencing on a Volkswagen was outstanding.

          Same thing for the lane assist function if you are sleepy

          • Konala Koala@lemmy.world
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            15 days ago

            Same thing for the lane assist function if you are sleepy

            If you are sleepy behind the wheel, you need to pull over, get off the road, and take a rest.

            • PeroBasta@lemmy.world
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              14 days ago

              Thanks mom. I brought cases to prove my point I’m not saying you should go on a road trip while sleepy.