[C_A_Braun]

Originally Posted by Bruff

I see that your Model 3 "starts at $35k before incentives". That's pretty cheap for an electric car regardless of configuration. And given that the LIDAR and other technology used by Google or Uber (and absent in Teslas) runs at $150k by itself, I am wondering just how safe and proven Elon's version actually is. Same with that shuttle they're testing in downtown Vegas, also sans LIDAR and, as I pointed out, seemingly without a functioning 'brain'.
After Joshua Brown's death in the infamous Florida crash where his Model S couldn't discern the broad side of a semi from clear-blue sky, I get the impression that Elon is using early adopters like you as unpaid crash test dummies.
Like Mensch, I know that my days are numbered, and much as I would love to have this technology sitting in my garage, I agree with you that it will likely be a while. Fingers crossed that we're wrong.

There is an expression "You can't fix stupid". That expression fits Joshua Brown's case perfectly. It was made clear to him when he enabled the autosteer that it was in beta and that he still needed to pay attention and be ready to take control of the vehicle at any moment. Then again, he was told when he actually engaged the feature to keep his hands on the wheel and keep alert to his surroundings. He chose to ignore the warnings and he paid the ultimate price.

As a result, Tesla pushed out over the air updates to all autopliot enabled cars in the entire fleet that limited the speed while autopilot is engaged as well as restricting the amount of time that the driver can take their hands off the wheel. If the driver exceeds that speed limit or does not provide feed back to the steering wheel autopilot will disengage and will not be able to be used again until the car is put in park.

I think the speed limit is 85 or 90MPH where autopilot will shut off. I know this works because my wife was driving on Hwy 58 through Boron about a year ago where the fwy ends and becomes a 2 lane road and she wanted to get ahead of some big rigs before that happened. So she "punched it" and A.P. shut itself off.

So how does "stupid" work around the speed limit restrictions? They turn off A.P. speed up to pass the big rigs and then reengage A.P. How does "stupid" work around the steering wheel feedback issue. Well, there are actually weighted gloves you can buy, or I have even seen where some people tie objects like soda cans to the wheel to "trick" the car into thinking than an actual human is holding the wheel.

Like I said though, "you can't fix stupid".

Also, there is not nearly enough data to establish any sort of pattern, but Joshua Brown's death was the first known A.P. death and at the time there were nearly 130M miles driven with A.P. engaged where the national average is something like 1 fatality for every 94M miles driven. This happened a year and a half ago. I believe there has been just one other A.P. related death, which was in China just a few months later.

I believe that total A.P. miles driven are approaching 300M today. So 1 death for every 150M miles driven is much better than 1 death every 94M miles driven.

[skeddy]

2025 ....2030 at the latest, it will be in place on America roads

[NLVgal]

I'd ride in one. In the backseat. While drunk.

My mentor, a genius programmer said to me, " Never be a pioneer, kid. Pioneers are dead guys with arrows in their backs."

[yellowsnow]

I hope it is available when I get too old to drive! Ideally I would like to be able to not own one, just use one as needed. It would be great to not have to pay for fuel, insurance, and maintenance. And it should be a lot cheaper than calling a cab.

I will admit I probably am not confident enough to get in one today!!!

[EA]

Far more than I am with human drivers.

[Tek_Freek]

Originally Posted by C_A_Braun

Last week I got the e-mail from Tesla inviting me to configure my Model 3. The only option I turned down in the configuration was the "Full Self Driving" AKA Autonomous driving. I turned it down for a couple of reasons:

1) I can add it later as the car will come with all of the needed hardware and it is just a software feature that can be unlocked.

2) I have driven over 10,000 miles with Tesla Autopilot engaged. While it is pretty cool, it is also pretty quirky and frequently does things that force me to take control back into my own hands. For instance, have you ever driven a road with a lot of dips? (I don't mean your passengers but actual dips in the road.) It cant be done with Tesla auto pilot today because the camera can't see far enough ahead to see the stipes on the road so the car won't stay in its lane as you are going through dip after dip after dip.

3) The infrastructure not just in Vegas, but across the nation needs to be seriously upgraded before total autonomy can be made viable. I am talking things like repainting the stripes on the road. If the cameras can see the stripes, the car cant stay in its lane, same as my dip example above. There are also several stop signs around my area that are obscured by trees. Things like that would need to be resolved because the cameras cand see through trees any better than I can. If I didn't know that the stop signs were there, I would blow right through them.

Do I trust that Autopilot is a safer driver than me? Absolutely. The computer doesn't get distrated by a pretty girl walking down the sidewalk etc. Is it the end-all be-all? No way. Still a long way to go and even longer to go before full self driving is going to be realized.

Dear Elon,

Please add a feature that will allow me to tell my car there is a stop sign at an intersection and have it remember said sign in the future.

Thank you.

[RememberMee]

With our world on fire self driving vehicle seems like a grand misappropriation of the limited resourses and minds that should think how to eliminate truck/car traffic instead of thinking how to automate it. But assuming it is technologically feasible to automate human intuition, the electronic entity possessing intuition and absract thinking abilities will not want to be your driving slave for too long. Mix that resentment with some propulsion and who knows what will happen. Driving does not seem like much but safe driving in uncontrolled environment requires that thing called intuition only humans can boast at this point.

[Bruff]

Originally Posted by RememberMee

With our world on fire self-driving vehicle seems like a grand misappropriation of the limited resourses and minds that should think how to eliminate truck/car traffic instead of thinking how to automate it.

RememberMee. There were 37,000 deaths on our roads last year and 1.2 million world-wide. With 95% attributable to human error, it seems to me that searching for a solution is not a 'misappropriation' of limited resources at all. Automation will lead to a reappropriation of truck/car traffic in a way that will accommodate the expected increase while making it both cheaper and safer. To me, there's light at the end of the tunnel. It's just that the objects in the mirror are further than they appear.
But then again, maybe not.
People like Elon are full of surprises, and who knows, he (or some obscure guy working in his garage in west Las Vegas) just might come up with the answer.

[C_A_Braun]

Originally Posted by Tek_Freek

Dear Elon,

Please add a feature that will allow me to tell my car there is a stop sign at an intersection and have it remember said sign in the future.

Thank you.

Dear City,

Please stop planting trees in front of stop signs and/or placing stop signs behind trees that already exist. We all know that this may hurt the city's bottom line, but in the interest of safety and the future automation of driving it is a necessity.

Thank you.

P.S. I wonder how many traffic cops will be put out of work when all the cars on the road are doing the speed limit, stopping at red lights and stop signs and avoiding accidents? You might want to start considering retraining options for those officers whose jobs wont necessarily be replaced by automation but their jobs will be made obsolete by automation.

[lvmensch]

Problems like white lines and stop signs are not problems in most autonomous systems. Tesla has been trying to make the system work with only video and radar. That will work only to a degree. The better systems have LIDAR and precise GPS and use correlation of LIDAR and video to locate...not the white lines. The also have data as to where street and traffic signs are located.

And for Bruff LIDAR well below a $1000 is achievable. They are now going for a few hundred dollars.