It isn't a "recall" in common English. So, the title and story are wrong. Very disappointing on the part of Reuters. This is not quality journalism.
Since they wrote it the way they did, I would guess there is some regulatory document that causes this to be classified a a "recall" for legal purposes. But it's incorrect to substitute legal language for common English language when there is a conflict between the two, except in legal contexts. That rule goes for technical language in general.
Is this practice more common in British English? I feel that it seems to appear more often in writing by British people, but that's anecdotal and could be incorrect.
Sorry to hear that. This practice degrades the signal to noise ratio of the language and in my view is absolutely indefensible. It's possible for languages to evolve in ways that make them objectively better or worse; we should strongly resist the latter. If we are sloppy and lazy, we make the language sloppy.
It is literally a recall, though. A recall is a defined process with the NHTSA (and similar processes with other government safety agencies) to track vehicles that are somehow unsafe, and need some kind of service to be made safe again. There's a website that lists them: https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls
That can be anything from "these airbags might not open when they're supposed to", like the Takeda problem, or "if water splashed just right on the bottom of the open door, you would have water next to electrical wires which could maybe start a fire" (an issue my car had a few years ago).
Tesla met with the NHTSA and agreed to issue a recall. How is it possibly bad journalism to call it what it is?
What you are describing is a recall in a regulatory and legal sense, but not in a common English sense. In common English, a recall is when the product has to be returned to the manufacturer or taken to a dealer for a fix. In other words, "recall" implies physical movement of a product. I guess you won't agree with me on what "recall" means in common English, and that's fine. And we probably have a deeper disagreement on where words get their meanings from. But I would maintain that a software update is not a "recall." If it is, Microsoft performs a "recall" every time it issues a security patch for Windows.
The update is not the "recall". The update is the remediation. The "recall" is the notification that the product may contain a safety defect in its current configuration, that those products require diagnosis and, potentially, remediation before they are safe again, and that Tesla is legally required to make reasonable efforts to diagnose and remediate safety defects in those products for free [1]. To fix your analogy, a "recall" is more like Microsoft releasing a security advisory or notifying users of a security vulnerability.
As for semantic arguments, obviously the current colloquial usage of the term "recall" means to call for products in use to be removed from use and potentially for remediation. However, the usage of the term in the article is the precise, legal, technical usage of the term meaning what I stated above. This usage and definition by NHTSA predates the colloquial definition and was thus not confusing at the time it was defined, and is both precise and has been precisely used by NHTSA for duration of its usage of the term so their usage of the term has not materially changed in the interim. Therefore, it is both technically, semantically, and culturally correct to use the term "recall" in this specific instance even though the colloquial usage of the term has changed underneath them. This is in contrast with Tesla's usage of the term Autopilot which does correspond with your concerns as it was coined after the colloquial usage had already shifted, and limited effort was made to precisely define and inform potential stakeholders of any differences in terminology with respect to the colloquial usage.
> This usage and definition by NHTSA predates the colloquial definition
I don't think that's right, because countries could "recall" ambassadors, or parliament could be "recalled." Essentially, "recall" means "to bring back." If you aren't bringing something back, it isn't a recall. I don't have time to do the etymological research, so this could be wrong, but it isn't likely. (IIRC I used to be able to access the Oxford English Dictionary for free online, but I'm finding that now I can't.)
For some context: California allows “rolling stops” in which the driver is not required to come completely to 0mph (fully stopped) at a stop sign. Most US states require a complete stop at stop signs.
Strangely, Tesla exported this rolling stop behavior everywhere, despite it being illegal in many (maybe most) states.
It’s strange that this was allowed to get so far. This violation should have been obvious.
Because based on my experience most people don’t yield at yield signs in ca, and prefer to try and outgun whoever is not letting them in than back off. Sounds like a good way to me to increase the number of accidents at 4 way stops.
California isn’t OK with it. Police routinely ticket vehicles which perform a rolling stop. The police aren’t everywhere, so you could get away with it for a while, but eventually you’ll probably do it in front of a police car and be cited.
I'm not sure why it's rational or desirable to let companies violate the law until they get a letter that says "the law applies to you too". Let's fine Tesla for rolling a stop sign times a large multiple based on their data of how often it happened.
We can use the national average fine or use the GPS to match it to the proper jurisdiction. I don't care which.
Unless something changed in the 30 years since I learned to drive--in California-- the "California Rolling Stop" is a pejorative and is not at all legal. In California, and every other US state, a stop sign means come to a full and complete stop.
Rolling stops are illegal in California and you will get ticketed if the cops catch you doing it, even if it was perfectly safe.
This seems to be an example of Tesla “pushing the boundaries” in a way that puts their customers at risk. I’m all for small-l libertarianism, but they could spend effort where it actually mattered instead of this childish petulance.
>For some context: California allows “rolling stops”...
False. I present to you California Vehicle Code #22450:
>The driver of any vehicle approaching a stop sign at the entrance to, or within, an intersection shall stop at a limit line, if marked, otherwise before entering the crosswalk on the near side of the intersection.
It is NOT legal to do a rolling stop in California. Like everywhere else in the nation, you must (legally speaking) come to a complete stop at sign/light. Failure to do so will result in a ticket (if you're caught).
It is not legal to speed to pass in most states. I've only found Wyoming, Idaho, Minnesota and Washington have such a law on the books, up to 10mph over the posted speed limit.
For sure in Colorado it's not legal to exceed the speed limit to pass. But it is illegal to drive below the speed limit while in the passing lane on a highway with a speed limit 65 mph or higher. There's exceptions for safety and congestion, but otherwise the left lane is considered a passing lane. If you're not passing, you're not supposed to be in that lane.
It is? That is a surprise. In germany and most countries I drove, it was definitely illegal. Of course, it is common and it makes sense, but the law is that the speed limit is absolute.
Only a couple of states have laws allow speeding to pass and the vast majority of states have an absolute speed limit rule disallowing speeding in any situation. A handful of states won't give you points due to a speeding ticket <6 mph though.
Of course these are the laws, not the practice, which is what I think GP was trying to say.
For what it's worth, in Ohio I've never been stopped by a cop for going 5 miles above the speed limit on or off the interstate, despite doing so in the presence of cops many times. I got my only ticket for going 15 miles over, though.
I've gotten a ticket on US 24 (going Fort Wayne to Toledo) for doing 69 in a 65. I've went through there probably nearing a hundred times by then (both family and work out that way) but only been pulled over for it that once. Ever since One of two tickets I've ever gotten, the other was also in Ohio but that one was much more obvious - I missed the speed change on a normal road when I was younger and was doing 45 in a 35. Cop knocked that one down quite a bit though, can't remember what actually got put on the ticket.
Of all of the places I've been Chicago was probably the worst at speeding, especially in the dead of night when the roads are "too" open. Recently they got a bit stricter with the speed cameras though https://www.illinoispolicy.org/chicagos-speed-cameras-ticket...
That's...preposterous. There are a great many illegal acts that are so rarely enforced that the act is normalized, with enforcement surprising the culprits - speeding and rolling stops being the primary examples. Such are normalized because individual enforcement is practically impossible; it's when the behavior gets codified by a business as/in a product that gov't has a chance to crack down on it.
I would strongly discourage you from trying that line of argument with the cops when you're pulled over for speeding. I'm certain that a court of law with decent standards does not interpret speeding "at least a little" as anything except a binary.
The "argument" is tried against cops when you pass them while driving faster than the speed limit. In the vast majority of cases, if you're going less than 10 over, they will ignore you.
A thing is not legal just because law enforcement lets you get away with it, but I don't think this is a good example. It's silly to have this conversation without at least acknowledging the way driver behavior expands into "grey areas" and gaps in enforcement, and I don't think it's trivially obvious that "self driving" cars should rigidly follow the letter of the law even if that means they'll be the only cars on the road doing so.
Why does the autopilot need to speed to be safe? When does “speeding to be safe” become “unsafe speeding”? 10 miles faster than the the one that you’re trying to overtake? What if they’re speeding by 10 already? Why is the speed limit not 10 higher than it is, if that’s the actual safe speed? How can Tesla unilaterally decide that exceeding the speed is perfectly good and safe?
Nobody is saying autopilot "needs" to speed to be safe at all times. But it needs the ability to be able to go faster than the posted speed limit. I.e if the speed limit is 45mph, going 47mph shouldn't be a problem that the car freaks out over. For a while, on city streets if you were using Autopilot you'd be able to go up to 5mph over the posted limit without issue. I think in the FSD Beta, you can go more.
The car already has a ruleset for when to not obey speed limits. If you're on the highway and your lane is going 65mph but the other lanes are moving very slowly, the car will slow down accordingly. Similarly, this could be implemented for the inverse to an extent.
And again, I don't think the car should speed by default, but a car going 2-3mph over the posted limit should be acceptable rather than an error state because the world is not black and white.
Because people passing you is very slightly more dangerous than people following you. It’s not a big deal most of the time, but when everyone passes you across thousands of hours it adds up to a significant risk.
Why would anyone want to pass you when you’re moving at the speed limit? You are at the speed limit and everyone passing you would be beyond the speed limit.
I honestly can't tell if you're trolling or not. They would want to pass you because human drivers aren't rigidly law abiding machines. Is there a large portion of people that go exactly the speed limit, or even lower? Sure. Is there also a large portion of people that speed virtually every moment they're behind the wheel? Yes, absolutely. And I wouldn't be surprised if that were the larger population in most areas. No one who actually drives with any regularity would ever be surprised that people are speeding to pass them.
But we want the flow of traffic to be at the speed limit, that’s why there is a speed limit. So more cars need to go slower, not more cars need to go faster.
You're like this close to the the heart of the issue.
If you can determine in real-time whether the maneuver your about to perform or the speed you're going is safe then why even have speed limits? The speed limit for highways is still 65 whether it's a a bone dry, pitch dark, pouring rain, or completely iced over. "Any speed under 65" can't possibly be a safe speed for all these conditions while allowing for the highest safe speeds possible in ideal, or even average, conditions. And this doesn't even being to take into account the huge vehicle variance and tire ware. The safe operating speeds for a top-heavy Honda Fit with narrow tires vs a low-to-the-ground wide-tired Corvette are going to be wildly different.
And then you have to deal with other drivers. If traffic is going 75 you're gonna have a hell of a time merging capped at 65. And in an ideal world nobody would pass on the right making it possible to get off the highway without increasing speed but real life hits hard.
If you can create an all-knowing AI that can predict your the road conditions around a corner or beyond the crest of a hill, maybe. Remember, we are not discussing individual decisions made by people based on a current situation, but the defaults encoded into the software of thousands of cars. And if that default is lax, it will end up in lax behavior.
> Why does the autopilot need to speed to be safe?
For the same reason driving below average speed is dangerous. If you drive 10km/h slower than everyone else you are a problem, even if everyone else is driving at or slightly above the speed limit (very common in Germany).
You are arguing that everyone should be moving faster. But we want everyone moving at the speed limit - building cars that intentionally break the speed limit will make the effective speed creep up. It needs to creep down.
With respect to speed limits (and not stop signs, so this is explicitly a bit of a digression), it's also worth noting that sometimes you have to choose between "safe" and "legal" since most municipalities set speed limits which are not safe (the safest speed being the speed at which traffic naturally flows). So should a self-driving car (or human, for that matter) drive safely or legally?
Illegal isn't binary - just look at speed limits. Everyone speeds at least a little, and FSD/AP had to be allowed to speed to be safe.
Illegal is binary for most driving laws (especially 'do what this sign says' rules), but some things fall into an ambiguous category of illegal-but-rarely-enforced. The problem is that computers don't do well with ambiguous rules. I strongly suspect that when most cars are using FSD the rule of being allow to drive a little over the speed limit will be removed, and cars will have to stick to the limits. Hopefully the limits will be raised.
It's not the default, you have to turn it on in a menu. It's arguably not even "shipped", as it's part of the must-qualify-in FSD beta program. And most beta users probably didn't know it existed.
It also engages only when approaching an empty intersection. Any obstacles/pedestrians or moving vehicles cause a full stop. To be perfectly honest: I turned it on when I saw it, but haven't seen it actually do it yet. And at this point I guess I never will.
I mean, speeding is equally illegal and inarguably more dangerous. Yet no one is upset that the car lets you speed.
"FSD beta" refers to the specific autonomy-in-all-circumstances product in testing. You have to request it, then prove you can win a game vs. the car's Safety Score feature for a few weeks or months, then wait to be upgraded. It's available to the public, but only in limited release.
"Full Self Driving" is the name of the vehicle option that you can purchase or license, which includes a bunch of different features (light/sign recognition, autonomous navigation on highways, lane changes, stuff like that).
> You have to request it, then prove you can win a game vs. the car's Safety Score feature for a few weeks or months, then wait to be upgraded. It's available to the public, but only in limited release.
Or have enough social media clout (in the appropriately Tesla-positive direction).
Are you referencing anything in particular? It's true that the first few hundred non-Tesla-employee installs were to a bunch of known fans and inflencer types. But since September it's been a completely public thing with objective rules. They have 60k of these cars on the roads now per the linked article, it's absolutely not just a marketing thing.
> The feature, which appeared to violate state laws that require vehicles to come to a complete stop and required drivers to opt-in for what it dubbed "Assertive" mode, drew attention on social media and prompted NHTSA to raise questions with Tesla.
Emphasis mine; this apparently wasn't the default behavior. Though, it may not have been clear to users opting-in exactly what "assertive mode" changes about the system's behavior.
You make it sound like as of something just by being legal adheres to the platonic form of truth. There are so many dumb laws. For example in a certain state I can't remember it's illegal to have an ice cream in your back pocket on Sundays. There are many, many idiotic laws that one would do well to at least question, instead of shaming others or being "baffled" why others don't put up with them.
Tesla would vastly prefer a situation where the NHTSA allows it to do anything it wants, so it does just that, hoping to normalize this deviance from how the law intends highway safety to be regulated. By this action, NHTSA is trying out a more assertive mode itself.
I agree with you, for what it's worth. I'm not sure why this is at all controversial. Even if you argue that it's sometimes morally permissible to do a rolling stop, it's still baffling that Tesla would explicitly program its AI to perform illegal acts. Why open themselves up to criticism and scrutiny? Should they run red lights at empty intersections, too? Ignore speed limits in quiet residential areas? Maybe tailgate other drivers going under the speed limit?
Did anyone in Tesla's Legal Department review the rolling stop feature? This should have screamed illegal. Heck, I'm no legal expert but it screams illegal to me.
This should initiate a conversation into following the spirit of laws vs. authoritarian rigidity of law without nuance.
In high school there was only a handful of things I learned that were actually useful, outside of social experiences. One of them was a teacher who taught business and law classes. In a business class he shared with us, first saying he could probably get fired for telling us this, but that if we had good ideas, new we had a good idea for a business, then instead of going to university and getting $40,000+ into debt over 4 years - get a job and/or apprenticeship and work on your idea. At the end of that 4 years he suggested you'd be in a much better position than those who went into higher education; of course it depends on what someone's goals are. In law class he gave an example: in some states in the US there are very long stretches of road where you won't see anyone for awhile, and sometimes there are traffic lights on a straight road - with no intersection. He put forward to the question of what do you do if that traffic light is red when you come up to it? There's zero vehicles near you in either direction, there's no intersection to worry about cross-traffic, and so do you stop and wait for the light to go green, or do you go again even though it's red? I think every reasonable person would answer that they would go. E.g. A rolling stop in some circumstances isn't dangerous for anyone; and I also see police doing it all the time.
Of course AI deciding when to do it when it may not yet be accounting for the whole or an adequate enough of environment does add questions, and because it's not critical to self-driving, I believe it's a good idea to not allow it until that conversation can be thoroughly hashed out, as well as the technology much more thoroughly tested and evolved.
Edit: Lazy people downvote - find something better to do with your time, or some other form of entertainment.
> Simple, binding, easy to follow rules are important when the cost of mistakes is death or significant damage
There is nuance. Pilots are the final authority when it comes to the safety of the craft, and you're in the clear if your actions were justified. With self driving cars, we're discussing where the boundaries are and when the vehicle's decision can take precedence over coarse legal code (as occurs with human drivers every day).
Of course! And you should definitely run a red light if staying were you are would put you or other in dangers. I'm commenting about running a red light just because the road seems otherwise clear.
>This should initiate a conversation into following the spirit of laws vs. authoritarian rigidity of law without nuance.
That's why rolling stop laws don't always end up with you getting a ticket. I was pulled over a year or two after first getting my license for executing a rolling stop. The cop reminded me what I'd done, recognized that I was a dumb kid and a relatively new driver, told me to cross my heart and promise I'd never do it again, and let me go. Enforcement is circumstantial and nobody's going to follow that rule if they're not aware that they could get in trouble for it.
>In law class he gave an email: in some states in the US there are very long stretches of road where you won't see anyone for awhile, and sometimes there are traffic lights on a straight road - with no intersection. He put forward to the question of what do you do if that traffic light is red when you come up to it? There's zero vehicles near you in either direction, there's no intersection to worry about cross-traffic, and so do you stop and wait for the light to go green, or do you go again even though it's red? I think every reasonable person would answer that they would go. E.g. A rolling stop in some circumstances isn't dangerous for anyone; and I also see police doing it all the time.
Many such stop lights exist because they provide a safe space to cross the road for pedestrians. In fact there are a few such lights near me in long stretches of road, among woods, that allow people walking through trails in the woods to cross the road. I stop at those lights every single time. Why? Because I don't know if someone has crossed yet. Could be that it's a family trying to cross the street, and they had to go back to the trail to corral a kid that wandered the other way and they'll be crossing the street in a second. Or, it could be a group of people - some of them have crossed, others are shortly behind and will be coming out in a second.
The point is that, often, I don't know what is or isn't there. And unless I know, I'm going to stop.
>Edit: Lazy people downvote - find something better to do with your time, or some other form of entertainment.
You're right, and it's the same with jaywalking - it's usually only enforced or a fine or charge laid if the action causes a collision or harm.
In the example I gave there wasn't pedestrian crossing as part of the example, and in it you also stop at the light first. In your scenario it sounds like there are blind spots too, whereas I guess I left out some language, like the road was in a desert with full visibility everywhere. Of course, you need to always fully stop or be rolling slowly enough, say if you're making a right-hand turn at a red light [where legal], so that you can stop quickly enough if you see past the blind spot that traffic is coming.
>... whereas I guess I left out some language, like the road was in a desert with full visibility everywhere.
I'd guess that's a speed deterrent. Long stretches of flat, open road with nothing around to crash into are very inviting for people looking to race. Get going fast enough and you risk losing control of your vehicle and crashing into other people, say an oncoming car. Those red lights, assuming I'm understanding your scenario correctly, encourage people to maintain a safer pace of travel.
>Of course, you need to always fully stop or be rolling slowly enough, say if you're making a right-hand turn at a red light...
... no. There is no "or be rolling slowly enough". Stop.
> I'd guess that's a speed deterrent. Long stretches of flat, open road with nothing around to crash into are very inviting for people looking to race. Get going fast enough and you risk losing control of your vehicle and crashing into other people, say an oncoming car. Those red lights, assuming I'm understanding your scenario correctly, encourage people to maintain a safer pace of travel.
Sure, or perhaps it makes people who maybe zoned out give them an opportunity to see how fast they're going - and slow down, and they get an opportunity to see if they slowed down fast enough to stop at the red light - before reaching the next red light which maybe is in a little town up ahead a bit, so if they didn't stop in time for the first red light then they've kind of been notified to be more careful next time. But the exercise was to ask: if it's 100% safe to go at a red light [once you've stopped at it], with zero potential for anyone getting hurt, do you go through the red light, or do you wait until it turns green?
It makes for quite the interesting psychological test seeing how different people answer, similar I suppose to the whole train track scenario - where your train is going to crash - and you have a few options; Will Smith in iRobot has related trauma as well, the robot's AI determined to save him - an adult - over the young girl, even though he was trying to command the robot to save the little girl.
> ... no. There is no "or be rolling slowly enough". Stop.
If you're at a stop sign or red traffic light, and if it's legal in your jurisdiction to turn right on, you have to start rolling forward - and are allowed to even if there's a blindspot and can't see any traffic coming yet [the road could be clear or not] - so if you're going slowly enough and there's no traffic then you continue, if you all of a sudden can see past the blindspot and there's enough time to safely go then you continue, if there isn't enough time to pull out then you stop.
>But the exercise was to ask: if it's 100% safe to go at a red light [once you've stopped at it], with zero potential for anyone getting hurt, do you go through the red light, or do you wait until it turns green?
Stop and wait. Keep those good habits a part of your second nature.
>If you're at a stop sign or red traffic light, and if it's legal in your jurisdiction to turn right on, you have to start rolling forward - and are allowed to even if there's a blindspot and can't see any traffic coming yet [the road could be clear or not...
This is true, but you are missing one very important caveat; you pull up to the stop sign, THEN YOU STOP, and then you slowly inch forward to see past the blind spot and continue on per the rest of your comment.
And you're being naive or arrogant enough at this moment to think this is "cry[ing] about internet points."
Maybe brainstorm as to what the actual implications of the dopamine hit/easy reward to downvote/suppress content is vs. simply having an upvote mechanism, and then share your thoughts and I'd be happy to get into a conversation with you. It doesn't sound like you've spent the time to actually extrapolate to the full consequences of the downvote mechanism.
Your response here though is one prime example as to why downvotes for most content types shouldn't exist. That you spent the tiny effort to click downvote to react to what you perceived as my "whining" - that that was a strong enough trigger or annoyance for you emotionally says more about your emotional regulation than the content of what I said, likewise by actually commenting you outed yourself or rather shared your actual qualitative reaction/response - so now there's an opportunity for a conversation, to broaden or enhance your understand or perhaps get educated by seeing things more from my perspective.
Don't you think having a qualitative response vs. a single quantitative digit changing to suppress content in an algorithm is more valuable to you, to society?
P.S. Upvoted you for commenting. Now maybe your comment won't be at the bottom, interesting how the "worst" or less valuable or lowest quality [qualitative] comments naturally make their way to the bottom - without requiring the downvote mechanism, isn't it?
P.P.S It'd be neat if HN/dang would offer a parallel view of posts, and then in the actual thread view, have 2 columns of comments - one not influenced by downvotes, and the other as the status quo - so people can start to experience and contrast; because AFAIK downvotes/upvotes aren't available in the API, so a third-party can't develop this? I'd certainly develop this system if HN's API could facilitate it.
I agree this is worth a conversation so here is mine.
I think the law as-is is already ambiguous enough (due to its complex nature) that our society waste huge amount of energy and resources arguing about its meanings. Anything that can be "rigidly" defined (and therefore enforced) with little downside* is a win in my book, purely from a practical perspective.
* Just like in this particular case (rolling stop), the "downside" of enforcing full stop compared to a subjective "safe rolling stop" is close to none.
And about the spirit of the law, to me it's pretty simple: if an illegal practice works better in this regard than the "legal" alternative, sure, we should seriously consider if we need to punish people doing so.
But in most of cases people bringing this in, both practices are perfectly aligning with the spirit of the law. Paired with the practicality argument above, there isn't much point to allow rolling stop as it doesn't make the road "safer" than full-stop.
Also, as someone coming from a country that doesn't have stop sign, people are spoiled and don't know how genius this idea is.
In an ideal world where everyone follows traffic law and pay full attention to the road all the time, stop sign isn't really needed. However, people are not machine. The whole points of stop sign is to force these distracted drivers to pay attention at intersections, even if only out of fear of getting a ticket. This kind of "foolproof" safety technique is not as excessive as it may look like at the first glance. Therefore, I'd argue having people full stopping is exactly the spirit of stop sign.
Okay, so safety wise let's say that's figured out. People and planners also like to take into account flow of traffic, and throughput wants to be maximized, you may then conclude that there are safe circumstances where rolling stops have practically no safety concerns - and if AI can become amazing enough [let's say there are 100,000 baseline safety experiments that need to be conducted/passed] to account for and catalogue those scenarios, then we could arguably loosen restrictions in at least some contexts.
You can get away with it a hundred times, or a thousand times, but eventually you'll be tired and do it and clobber a pedestrian you didn't see because "you were tired" (so its not your fault, even though it 100% is).
Stop thinking the way you do and stop being one of the 88% of American drivers who think they're above average. Follow the goddamn rules because you're not 99.99% perfect and its the .01% that is going to hurt someone else.
And "I see the police doing it all the time" clearly isn't the right moral barometer, if you haven't been paying attention.
No, but you're attempting to put words into my mouth.
You're making assumptions too, it seems, of what scenarios I believe it's safe for rolling stops to occur - or what state a person will be in when they're doing it. For example, I don't drive when I'm very tired, and whether I am tired at all or not, if weather conditions or if traffic conditions
Maybe we shouldn't allow airplanes to been flown anymore because "you can get away with it a hundred times, or a thousand times, but eventually you'll" crash?
I wonder if you're convoluting different rules, like your assumptions, and not differentiating that different rules are more serious than others - giving the same weight to less serious rules than those that are more serious. E.g. Speeding through a red light during rush hour is different than a pedestrian jaywalking - yet both are illegal.
And before someone comes in to say a jaywalker can't do the same damage as a vehicle, here's my personal story: I was riding my bicycle, going a normal speed, vehicles parked along the side as they were allowed to - and the perfect scenario for a collision occurred: a tall, strong man walked out into the street - looking the opposite direction first - from behind a box van with no windows, and stepped right into my path with no time for me to put my breaks on. I crashed into him - he didn't actually move - and I had whiplash, my jaw slammed shut, I bite the right side tip of my tongue 80% off in a deep cut, and multiple teeth were split and chipped; him and his girlfriend didn't stay around, they actually laughed about it as they walked away, and I was in shock - and in pain - and so I didn't realize I should have called the police.
If you bend the rules around rolling stops, I don't trust you not to bend your rules you claim to have about driving tired or in bad weather.
I'm almost positive you'll violate those rules as well.
I just believe that you're a flawed human being like all the rest of us. And so its safer if you follow rules consistently and stop trying to optimize things away that don't need to be optimized. Same thing with using your turn signal every single time because even if you think you 'need' to you should always do it for the pedestrian, vehicle or bicycle that you don't see -- or even the person violating the law and driving down the shoulder of the highway.
And I don't even understand how your example is relevant. But you should take the lane and stay away from the door zone if you're bicycling (and when you're driving you should be careful about the door zone as well). They were in the wrong, but it sounds like you're not very aware either, which kind of only reinforces my point.
You're making assumptions again. From your perfectionistic-like attitude, you're probably a worse driver than I am - how's that for an assumption? Though I'm generally good at orienting myself compared to others, it'd be neat to actually learn our different driving styles and see who's a better, more responsible, more aware driver.
And arguably people who rigidly follow rules could be far more dangerous on the roads than not. For example, people who only go 100 kilometres per hour highways in Ontario - the speed limit on most highways here - even in the slow lane, cause traffic to have to move into passing/fast lane to go around them.
The back of a box van didn't have an outward moving door zone - and it was impossible to see that there was a pedestrian about to step out because the box van had no windows; nice try cherrypicking and not understanding/visualizing my argument fully/accurately in order to try to make an argument point.
So do you go exactly the speed limit where you live - or perhaps you even below the speed limit on highways?
I do always put my turn signal on because that's respectful as a warning to let people know your intentions ahead of time, and the blinking alerts the brain to a change before the movement actually starts (at least that's how they're meant to be used).
You didn't respond however to my example of rolling forward at an intersection, say where you're turning right, but it's a blind spot to the left - so you have to roll out as normal behaviour - to check if it's safe to continue with the full turn. So are you saying people should never do this, even though it's accepted-common practice (and what they actually teach in driving schools), because it's the same behaviour as a rolling stop - except the person comes to a full stop first and then slowly rolls out?
With all the assumptions you're making, I'm curious how quickly you're imagining the rolling stops I do are - in the limited circumstances/scenarios/contexts that I actually very occasionally do them?
I agree strongly with your overall sentiment, but you're quite wrong on this:
> I think every reasonable person would answer that they would [run the red light in the middle of nowhere].
I tend not to do it. Not because I have some overinflated worship of the letter of the law, but simply because it doesn't matter to me. If I'm in a hurry, I'll probably blow through it, but by default, probably not.
Edit: I also agree that you're being downvoted simply because people disagree with you or your style. It's something I'm getting somewhat tired of on HN. I think they need some concrete guidance on what's acceptable to downvote and try to keep it as much to "rules violations" as possible, because it's increasingly being used as a disagreement flag lately, in my observation, which is just unhealthy.
They ticket everything in ohio. Drive too fast? Ticket. Drive too slow? Ticket. Lights not on after the legal definition of dusk? Ticket. Hanging out in the left lane? Ticket. Not using the blinker? Ticket. Leaving the blinker on? Also ticket. The sucky part is when you are a teenager they sometimes couple this with throwing all your belongings on the side of the road in search of the weed that you must have.
At least when I grew up in Australia, part of the road laws was a statement, very close to this effect:
"You are required to drive at the maximum speed that is 1) within the speed limit, 2) is appropriate for the conditions, and 3) within your ability to control the vehicle".
And that was the rationale for ticketing 'too slow' drivers. Within those constraints, there was no reason for you to go more slowly, and posed unnecessary risk to those who were within those criteria.
It's about as illegal as breaking the speed limit. If self driving cars aren't given the same leniency as humans to break the traffic laws that 99% of humans break then they will be a nuisance on the road.
Ideally the traffic laws should be updated to be more realistic.
They're not equivalent illegalities. Speeding involves a much higher energy state than rolling stop. If there's an accident, very clearly one is much worse.
I feel like a Unicorn, but I obey the speed limit as closely as I can. My speedometer says a perfect 60 on the highway in my area, and I am always being passed like crazy. I've never received a speeding ticket.
I'm not a "nuisance" for not going faster and breaking the speed limit. Everyone else is the "nuisance" and I vote for stronger enforcement where possible.
One of the most frustrating things I deal with is people driving too fast on the main street that is (basically) just outside my cul-de-sac. It's a 35 mph limit but people drive 40-45. That makes it harder to see them coming, making the road less safe.
Too many people seem to believe that the only thing that matters is the road in front of them, they don't consider the side roads at all. The city is talking about narrowing the lanes on the main street to reduce speed and add bike lanes, and it can't happen soon enough.
Also your chance of surviving an impact at like 50mph is next to zero as a pedestrian. You have a higher chance surviving an impact at 35mph even though its still pretty small.
It's not just the highway, I am frequently passed on roads of all kinds for following the speed limit and going no faster.
They are absolutely, for breaking the law, the nuisance in these situations. The number of people breaking the law does not change what the law is or, even necessarily, what the law should be.
People generally drive the safe speed for the road they are travelling on. The fact that you're being passed (probably on the right a lot of the times) means you are driving slower than traffic and are actually a danger to other drivers. You might think you are being morally high and mighty but you are actually putting innocent lives in danger. Please have some introspection here.
It's a bad law that endangers people and should be changed. Going an unsafe speed is another law, and its entirely possible that there is no speed that does not violate one of those laws. The law is a relic of when cars were less safe, and the same safety can be achieved with much higher speeds.
No, you are just more conscious about speed-related issues than your local council. They should engage in road work to reduce the road width, making everyone slow down.
You are behaving dangerously. Accidents are caused by speed differences (one reason). People changing lanes to pass you introduces all sorts of additional complexity, increases speed deltas, reduces reaction time, limits visibility, requires quicker maneuvers, forces other drivers to double and triple check that others aren't trying to pass simultaneously, increases the risk to pedestrians and cyclists, etc.
Deliberately going the speed limit when it results in other drivers constantly passing you increases the danger to to everyone else around you significantly.
Please give this some thought.
Ideally, the German model would be enforced. Slower traffic keeps right, left lanes are for overtaking. And many places are unrestricted, meaning there's no speed limit. The system works quite well, and the flow of traffic is _vastly_ more predictable, and feels a lot safer than the US interstate system.
> People generally drive the safe speed for the road they are travelling on.
Can you substantiate that assertion somehow? People drive the speed that they feel safe with, but that is not necessarily true. It may be safe most of the time, but change due to external circumstances. It’s safe most of the time to drive 50km/h in a residential zone, except that one time when a child jumps out from behind a car.
The taxi study proved that drivers tend to take greater risks in cars equipped with ABS (although the difference in collision rates was not significant). In short, ABS may do more harm than good.
The number of people breaking the law definitely changes what the law should be for traffic laws that primarily are about coordination. If 80% of the population starts driving on the opposite side of the road, or stopping in green and going on red we should absolutely change the law. Speed limits are primarily a similar law. It hardly matters what they are as long as people go the same speed.
You drive the speed you feel you can drive without undue risk to others, those around you may do the same. I take the exceptional viewpoint that neither of you are necessarily 'nuisance.' Reasonable rate of speed depends on vehicle type/design, driver skill, sobriety, wakefulness, attentiveness, safety features of those on the road, density of traffic and environmental conditions. Reasonable rate of speed does not depend on whatever arbitrary number is on a sign.
All roads are not built to perfect standards. Chances are your freeway interchanges are not built to be taken at full highway speeds. If you tried to go 75mph to make the 101s to 110s interchange in LA, you would crash into the wall like many have done because the recommended speed is 35mph (and speaking with experience it is VERY sketchy going above that because the turn is entirely unbanked and the lanes are narrow and there is zero shoulder to speak of).
There is also the issue of meatspace. Maybe your modern car can exceed the speed limit of the road surface and safely handle itself. Meanwhile, we still have our biology to deal with, which has not hardened itself to survive an impact at a high speed with a car. Only after millions of years of pedestrian deaths will that evolution be possible. When you find yourself driving 45-50mph on a road signed for 35mph, just know that if a pedestrian were to step out and appear in front of you, you are virtually guaranteed to kill them at this speed, and if you respected the signage, they have a better chance of surviving this impact.
Most accidents happen at intersections, and you don't know how fast the other car is going. I would consider rolling stop far more "dangerous" in that regard. If I were programming it and laws were not a concern, I would probably look at speed limits on both streets and disallow on higher speed intersections, or those with obstructed vision (data allowing of course).
This makes the big assumption that the other driver is playing by the rules and respecting the speed limit and also not going to ignore the stop sign (which I see happen more and more lately in socal).
There’s nothing magical about a full and complete stop. The reason we do it is to force humans to slow down and give themselves some objective standard for how much time they need to evaluate the conditions of the intersection. And the reason rolling stops are so common is that in many situations, it’s very obvious that the full stop is an unnecessary bit of ceremony. I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable to say that a competent self driving car should be equally capable of making the necessary safety decisions whether it’s paused for a full stop or not. Given the premise that we are approving computers to make high frequency decisions about multi-ton hunks of metal driving around on our streets, there is simply no way in my mind that the difference between a full stop and a rolling stop for them is actually a safety issue.
It's more a question of whether it's a problem for the other driver. But yes, I agree the best thing would be to change the laws. Instead they have gotten even more ceremonious in my area over the last few years. Tesla is taking on a ton of liability even by going 5 mph over the limit. This recall will be used in a court case over another FSD feature for sure.
Presumably the cars driving on the intersecting lane of travel could very well be in the aforementioned higher energy state when an accident during a rolling stop occurs.
If someone rolls a stop in a non-4-way stop and there was a car approaching at 55mph at the same time from a transversal road then a close to 55mph t-bone crash is prone to happen. (And the vehicle involved might be a truck with a heavy load vs a tesla rolling a stop)
Human drivers respond to incentives. Lax policing, lax drivers. Strong policing, speed traps, and bigger fines result in people driving better. It's not that people can't drive, it's just that they don't care to drive well, but they will drive well if the enforcement is frequent and heavy enough.
Erring towards 100% cautious at all times isn't always better, it needs to be a balance between controlling the risk of accidents with the costs: time taken for individual drivers, general congestion of roads, even things like fuel consumption.
Risks vary according to weather conditions, traffic levels, times of day, etc etc. A prescriptive approach (e.g. always drive at X speed) isn't usually optimal.
are you joking? The risk of driving is injuries and death, primarily born by those _not_ in a car. How somebody weighs this with speeding or rolling stops, or any other form of acting like a careless driver is beyond me.
Most importantly, safe driving is good form. Speeding is trashy.
It's always safest to not drive at all, or never leave the house. On the other hand, exceeding the speed limit when driving through the desert doesn't endanger pedestrians to any significant degree (how many zeroes is sufficient?)
How many miles are driven through the literal desert compared to where people are around? If anything, the speed limit in the desert could be adapted to local conditions, but not base the default rules on that exception.
Why are they called "speed traps"? If you're driving over the speed limit and get a citation, it isn't a trap. This isn't like a sting operation for vehicle theft with a car left parked and running with keys in the ignition.
There are some states where it was found illegal to have someone slow down too fast, i.e. you can't have a 70 mph zone followed by a 30 mph zone. That would in fact constitute a speed trap of kinds, since no one can safely slow down 50 mph in an instant. The practical effect of this is 3 or 4 series of signs spaced exactly 100 ft or so, each one lowering the speed limit no more than 15 mph. It's the equivalent of a 'braking zone' on a race track, but on the street.
I'm a little incorrect in my use of "speed trap," my apologies. I meant where the police are hanging out out-of-view and ready to spring on anyone speeding or doing other obvious violations, not sudden speed transitions which are mainly used as a revenue stream.
Is a trap because its below the natural speed of the road. My city for example lowered the speed to 25mph by roads are designed for 35-45 mph so naturally traffic flows at that spees
How are you defining better? Because personally I find taking rolling stops when it won't cause any harm is better than always stopping, even if it's not legal.
I think that if your country have signs for rolling stops (a yield sign basically), and chose not to put one at this very intersection (even if its a new road that had not seen much usage yet), you should do a full stop, even with a car doing a full stop in front of you.
In some countries, it's not clear if you don't read the local language(Morocco, i'm looking at you!), but if the inverted red triangle exist, just do full stop.
How many times do human drivers need to actually stop at stop signs? Probably hundreds of millions of stop signs are rolled per day. How much more carbon is released, if all of those vehicles actually came to a complete stop?
Now consider how many people have died or been permanently injured from rolling stops. An extremely common mistake is a failed right-turn on red where the driver doesn't stop and rolls over a pedestrian in the crosswalk. And how many drivers will live with the guilt for the rest of their lives.
Who cares how much carbon it saves when people get horrific injuries from it? If you want to save the planet, build intersections designed for rolling like roundabouts, crosswalks with signaling, and yield signs.
How many people have died or been permanently injured from rolling stops?
There are loads of stop signs at intersections where pedestrians would rarely if ever cross, maybe it would be possible to differentiate those intersections from crosswalks.
Change 4-way stop signs for roundaubouts like most of the world. Not only does that increase throughput by allowing to yield they also increase safety by forcing a curve and avoiding frontal crashes. (Also, pedestrian crossings should and are normally set back a bit from the intersection, given some traffic calming like level crossings and a median island and have better visibility overall)
You can't just replace every 4-way stop to a roundabout, and the "rest of the world" doesn't do so either. The vast majority of the roundabout would have to cut across residential property.
In the longer term - I suspect we will develop two different sets of laws as we understand what things robots do well and what things they do not. For example: I suspect that robots might be allowed to drive slightly faster on highways because they are better at maintaining the proper following distance, but always drive at the lowest speed limit for roads with variable conditions because they struggle to evaluate the environment.
It is neither obvious, nor possible. There are zero real world drivers that actually follow all the laws. Do you think that people are just all bad? Or is there maybe a higher level principle at play here?
Self-driving cars should be mimicking only the "best" drivers. If you qualify "best" as something like "lowest lateral g-forces on passengers" then you end up with a very comfortable drive that absolutely breaks laws all over the place and is also safe. So... which would you rather have? A driver that is a delight to experience and does not cause you anxiety, or a driver that strictly follows all laws to the letter but drives like a robot and kind of throws you around?
When driving I follow the spirit of the law, not necessarily the letter. If I'm approaching a stop sign and I can see clearly there are no other vehicles, bikes, people, etc, I slow down to very near a stop, but not a full stop. Why bother? The spirit of the law is to make sure I'm correctly yielding to other vehicles.
Perhaps a better example is stop lines at intersections; sometimes stop lines are so poorly painted that you cannot see any oncoming traffic unless you pull forward another 5-6 feet. The letter of the law says you still must completely stop at the stop line, pull forward and completely stop again, then continue. Does anybody actually do that?
The law is just a tool. It routinely does not permit the optimal choice for neither yourself nor society as a whole. Like other tools, sometimes the best choice is to ignore it.
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>The comment you are replying to said nothing about the law.
>> Why bother?
>Because you're operating heavy machinery that regularly kills people.
The context of the quote by globular-toast is from this paragraph:
>When driving I follow the spirit of the law, not necessarily the letter. If I'm approaching a stop sign and I can see clearly there are no other vehicles, bikes, people, etc, I slow down to very near a stop, but not a full stop. Why bother? The spirit of the law is to make sure I'm correctly yielding to other vehicles.
> That's exactly wrong. Human drivers need to get better, or get off the road. Robots shouldn't mimic careless driving habits.
One of those things will get better as technology advances and more R&D is done on it, the other thing will not and hasn't for a very long time. Unless I misunderstood your comment and you are actually referring to some form of transhumanity?
Which, last I checked for the state of WA, is also illegal. Just because there isn’t a cop ticketing every rolling stop at the intersection next to the elementary school by my house doesn’t make it “kind of okay because a lot of people do it”. It just means the municipality sucks at enforcement.
But it's not just that there isn't a cop watching, it's that if there was, he still won't pull you over unless you're going 10+ mph over (more where I'm from!). So the official speed limit isn't really the law. Most cops also won't get you for a rolling stop unless it's egregious.
Are you going to build in a random number generator then for self driving to add speed sometimes above the posted speed limit? Or a button to boost the speed above the state laws?
It makes no sense when all you have to do is not use self driving.
FWIW, if we're trying to maximize safety, then violating speed limits is often a must.
If the speed limit is 60 mph, but everybody is going 75 mph, then the safest speed for you as an individual is going to be 75 mph. Otherwise, you're a rolling road block, likely to get rear-ended, forcing tons of cars to change lanes to get around you.
Well, that’s the purely driver oriented point of view. Speed limits exist for other reasons, e.g. when going through pedestrian heavy areas. Going above the speed limit there endangers lives (regardless of if everyone else is doing it or not).
On surface streets, speed limits are usually quite reasonable. In all the streets I drive regularly, I think the limits are good, except for one stretch where it has two lanes in each direction, and so I often want to go 45 mph, but the limit is 35, likely because there are some houses that directly face the street.
It's highways that often have unreasonably slow speed limits, at least here in Oregon.
Chances are the turns on the highway are designed to be taken at the speed limit. Sure go ahead and go 75mph with the crowd, don't be surprised when one day its you who is leaving a bumper behind on the freeway. Also on residential streets speeding is simply unaceptible. At 35mph an impact with a pedestrian will kill them 70% of the time. At 50 mph that goes up to nearly all of the time. We shouldn't favor serving impatient people over the safety of others. If the issue is everyone is going 75mph and its dangerous for self driving cars to go 65mph, then we should install speed cameras that send tickets to people who go 75mph rather than letting self driving cars also break the law and drive at dangerous speeds that our road infrastructure is not designed to handle.
Technically, highway (construction) code is that roads are engineered such that turns and such can be navigated safely at 15mph above the speed limit (or of 'cautionary speeds').
I state the above entirely on its own merits, not as a judgment of "should I or should I not travel at speed X on this road".
Maybe thats true with modern code, but thousands of interchanges across the country that aren't being reconfigured anytime soon have those yellow recommended speed signs that imo should be headed in many cases
All you've done is to make an argument for speed governors. If the speed limit is 60mph, but everyone is going 75mph, then the point of "automated self-driving can't come fast enough, humans can't be trusted to pilot automobiles!" is self-evident. Argue all day if you like about whether the number on the sign is wrong, but that discussion belongs elsewhere.
I see from another comment that you’re in OR. That explains why you think freeway limits are too low. :-)
(The joke here is that OR’s speed limit on highways is typically 10mph below that of other PNW states, even in the “least populated county in the U. S.)
Having driven a lot in central and eastern OR, the roads are a bit winding, and even on the interstate going through the blue mountains can be a bit seat of the pants. They probably just never saw the roads safe enough to raise the speed limit.
If you want to go over the speed limit then don't use self driving.
If you increase the speed limit by 10mph, humans will just adjust up too.
I do agree that interstate speed laws need to be updated. The most dangerous spot I drive on an interstate is crossing a state line that drops from 70mph to 55mph. The slower zone is so dangerous because some people are then going 55mph and some still want to go 80mph.
I don't see how self driving can be anything other than the most perfect letter of the law driver though.
So, self-driving cars are supposed to be, at the same time...
...much safer than human-driven cars, because they never tire and they never break traffic rules and thus never cause accidents
and
...supposed to bend and break traffic rules like humans quite often do in order to be efficient drivers
How should that be possible? Ah yeah, by having self-driving cars which are so extremely intelligent that they don't just follow the legal rules, but some idealistic set of rules deviating from the written laws that no human has ever been able to write down concisely, let alone bring into algorithmic form, but that is at the same time 100% safe and very efficient at allowing a maximum number of vehicles to reach their individual destinations in the shortest time possible.
Anyone not convinced that L5 self-driving cars are impossible without first developing a strong AGI way above human intelligence levels should have a really good solution for this obvious contradiction.
Easy. There is no contradiction. If I can think faster, see better, and react faster than you, I can break exactly the same traffic laws as you and still be a much safer driver. Computers can do all of those things currently, and it is a matter of time before that is applied to driving.
It's not complicated. Traffic laws are not perfectly aligned with safety. Plenty of legal things are unsafe and plenty of things that are illegal are not always dangerous.
This isn't surprising either. The process of making laws is political and politics are clearly not an ideal way to decide on a perfect and exhaustive and precisely detailed set of rules for anything. The laws do not constitute an algorithm for driving. They are necessarily simplified. And yes, a self driving car is going to need a set of driving rules that are much more detailed than anything humans have written down before.
That seems like an appropriate generalized take on "laws" but in the specific case of ignoring a stop sign, I don't think it applies. Stop signs are a traffic control device that other drivers rely on to predict the intent of a vehicle approaching the stop sign.
Stop signs are anything but "ignored". The actual behavior only applies when the car recognizes a stop sign and also assesses good visibility to ensure that no other cars are around, and the car still slows regardless. It's not just blowing through stop signs at top speed whenever it feels like it.
Pragmatic rulemaking for large numbers of people also needs to take into account the fact that the rule will naturally be viewed as a loose guideline by some people, and even as a thing to be defied for its own sake by others. Setting the limit stricter than the actual desired behavior can push average behavior closer to the target.
> Setting the limit stricter than the actual desired behavior can push average behavior closer to the target.
Absolutely not, at least in the context of speed limits. Where I live, most of the speed limits are at least 15mph lower than they should be (why is a 6 lane road 30mph???), so you get:
* people who follow the speed limit exactly: 30mph
* people who follow the speed limit the road was designed for: 45mph
* people who see the limit as a "limit:" 25mph
It's a mess. Roads need to be designed to the desired speed limit. Don't make a 6-lane straight road 30mph; people unfamiliar with the area will assume the speed limit's 50% higher than it is, and people from the area will feel like they're going incredibly slow.
In short, it should be uncomfortable to go >= 20mph over by design if you want people to follow your speed limits.
It actually is incredibly complicated. You can tell, because every individual person you speak to will have a different interpretation of which rules are there for safety and which ones can be ignored.
The fact that you start your post about how an AI can make such a determination with the words "it's not complicated" discredits you.
Obviously rules for self driving cars are very complicated. What's not complicated are the reasons why the road laws made for humans are not directly suitable as unbreakable principles for self driving cars to always follow.
A human breaks the rolling stop rule on a case by case basis and is responsible for the consequences, while a rolling-stop-avoidance feature acts on your behalf and Tesla is responsible for it. An analogy might be that it's the difference between getting food poisoning from home cooking vs. from a restaurant. Even though you're consuming food in both instances, the liability is assigned differently.
If you break rules when you think you don't need to follow them you'll find that you're not 99.9% perfect and you will inevitably cause a crash.
If you follow the rules all the time you won't make that error.
The reason why computers should ultimately replace human drivers is precisely because we're dangerously incompetent and overconfident and shouldn't be breaking any rules.
1) they have to be simple enough to fit in an AVERAGE DRIVER's head (it is a miracle to me that highways in cities are as functional and low-error as they are yes I know the death statistics on driving)
2) the law makers know the laws will be bent, so they set a baseline of VERY VERY SAFE and hope that most people only bend the law to VERY SAFE or at worst MOSTLY SAFE.
It seems weird given how "bad" self-driving algs are right now, but with a detailed database of locations and context, I absolutely believe the "rolling stop" logic in the car would be safer and more effective than a human observing complete stops.
I definitely do not agree with Tesla's vision-only no-location-context algorithm approach. Such a thing is a baseline, but if you know the location to where you are going, then route-specific data should be downloaded that has been optimized with multiple specific AI computation passes.
That's how humans work: we are slow and dumb when we are driving in unfamiliar locations and routes, but for our commute routes we know where potholes are, cracks in the road, which lane to be in, dangerous sidestreets and intersections and congestion points, etc.
So I disagree that L5 is impossible. Well, it depends on "way above human intelligence". I think what you are trying to say is you need a supersapient intellect with IQ 195.
But AIs can be "dumb" but have access to a far larger memory space and database and respond to a far wider bandwidth of sensor information. The AI programs may not be solving Fermat's Last Theorem in the margin of a book, but they can be smarter in the sense that it's like having a million gnomes watching at once.
> Well, it depends on "way above human intelligence". I think what you are trying to say is you need a supersapient intellect with IQ 195.
I'd say even "normal human intelligence" would suffice for at least getting L5 to work (maybe not with perfect safety and efficiency, but working at all). But you cannot remove the need for actual "intelligence" from the equation, and that's the problem: our AIs are not "intelligent" at all. They are idiot savants, and driving a car isn't exactly a problem where you need savant-like capabilities. It is a very general, broad-range problem, which is much more applicable for the broad mental capabilities of even the not-so-smart part of humanity.
Case in point: there are human savants in areas like playing chess or Go or recognizing text in many different spoken languages, but there are no human savants in the area of driving cars on public roads.
Or possibly they just know that real world driving involves so many context-dependent decisions that trying to cover it all with laws is about as reasonable as making a self driving car.
> because they never tire and they never break traffic rules and thus never cause accidents
No, because they never tire and almost never break traffic rules in dangerous ways, and thus cause accidents much less frequently than humans. Realistically, this means that instead of following the speed limit they'd follow speed limit + X, instead of keeping the prescribed distance they'd keep whatever distance human drivers typically maintain (while still keeping enough distance to react and stop), and it also means rolling through 4-way stops when they have sufficient confidence that it is safe to do so.
Humans aren't given leniency, there's just an issue enforcing laws on the books. The answer isn't to give self driving cars the same pass to endanger others especially when its lines of code we could implement trivially.
This. Elon is all "move fast and break things"; "things" in this case being Teslas and the people inside them. And why wouldn't he? The federal government barely pays attention to wanting to audit self-driving technologies as it is.
If the company accepts the liability, I can't be charged for a driving crime while the car is out of my control, and it is statistical safer to let the car drive itself I am on board, but the courts haven't cleared the liability problem, and there are safety concerns with large white trucks being detected, so driving your own car seems like the right choice for 2022.
At the moment, Tesla's liability position is "heads I win, tails you lose," since you're supposed to be hands-on-wheel and alert at all times while using FSD. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This is one of the really hard issues of automation: humans normalize disobedience to the point that strict obedience ranges from irritating to dangerous; the gap is not an engineering problem.
I wish all stop signs would be replaced with roundabouts, or mini roundabouts like those in the UK. Stop signs are wildly time inefficient, less gas efficient, and more dangerous. Not necessarily best practice, but I'm all for rolling stops in the meantime.
Then ask our legislatures to change the law. Don't let private companies make cars that disobey the laws developed by elected officials and those they appoint.
In Iceland they have many roundabouts all over, and at most low residential intersections there's simply a yield for one of the intersecting roads. Having a yield instead of having to come to a stop is so refreshing.
You are also required to have your lights on when you are driving. It notably increases visibility even during the day.
I came back to the US really wishing those policies would go into effect nationwide.
Yes I would love to see the elimination of the four-way stop intersection. One road should be designated as the "arterial" road and should not stop. The crossing road should yield. There are very few cases where a four-way stop is justified.
They're almost the default now in my area of the US if at all plausible.
Having said that a lot of roads in my area are already built around 4 way stops and it's not easy to undo that, but new construction in my area of suburbia US has adopted the roundabout.
We have one roundabout in my small town, and there is strong hatred towards it. There's a perception that it's far more dangerous than any alternatives.
Roundabouts are awesome (for cars), when the intersection was designed and has space for it. Retrofitting them into intersections often doen't work. They do it a lot in my city in smaller residential intersections. They can be so tight that the turning radius of a mid-large size car or SUV won't allow circumnavigation. People drive over the center, and still make left turns because it is so hard to get around.
Where I am, they fix the "drive over the center" problem by making it a giant concrete barrier so you can't drive over the center unless you have a monster truck.
There is one in my city and it is in popular shopping center, so it get a heavy usage out of it. In the center, there is trees and rocks as decorations and designed to prevent anyone from driving over the center. There is other city that have a small (1-lane) roundabout, the center is protected with chain "rope-like" barrier with the sign to drive right.
Paramedic here. Have been called to more than one MVA where your regular sedan has successfully "climbed" a 20" vertical concrete raised center of a roundabout. Energy and inertia is a powerful thing!
In that use case, the goal is simply a rule for determining right-of-way. Doesn't really matter if they drive over the center as long as they wait their turn to do so.
My friend crashed through the center of recently retrofired roundabout and took flying for a few meters. The policeman was very happy since he won a bet that it'll take less than 3 days for the first car flying.
The issue is space to put roundabouts. Majority of American cities already have roads set up and it would be difficult to put in the roundabout to replace existing infrastructures. Roundabout requires more space than a simple 2-lane wide 4-way intersection.
And there is a driver problem, majority of American almost never have any experience driving on roundabouts. I seen some would simply cut off the roundabout traffic and proceed on their way without yielding.
I think most crossroads could accomodate a mini roundabout, maybe lopping off each corner a bit. Where I live, converting an crossroad to a roundabout seems to take about a year, they close and completely excavate the existing roadway, relocate storm drains, build a huge center island, and take an additional 10' of property all around. It seems excessive.
I'd wish new construction aimed for that, but converting existing four-way stops to roundabouts would require widening of the road at all four corners which is impractical (i.e. you may have to knock down buildings, but certainly have to re-place sidewalks).
The data shows that roundabouts are safer and even improve traffic flow. But they're also a nightmare to install after the fact, which is why it is so uncommon. All we can do is stop making the same mistakes going forward.
Same thing with burying power lines: Far cheaper to do with new construction, substantially more reliable and better able to withstand natural disasters, but we aren't. Society is just bad at planning for tomorrow if it costs us a little today at every level.
There are issues with mini roundabouts, two I regularly see in my home town:
- If you have one 'entrance' to the roundabout which is partially busy, say at rush hour, it becomes near impossible to enter the roundabout from a different direction. With a normal roundabout many more cars can be on the roundabout at once and a natural flow, even from less used entrances, just happened. This does not work on a mini roundabout.
- Where they have replaced a T junction, people often ignore it causing (near) accidents when going "straight on" when they don't have right of way.
They are definitely not a one size fits all solution.
Many stop signs could be replaced by yield signs. The energy savings would be enormous. A full stop should only be needed when making a left hand turn or needed for sighting, and there are many stop signs in places where left turns are impossible.
I live in an area with roundabouts. The frequency of collisions actually seems higher because people do not know the rules and do not yield before entering the roundabout.
I live in an area with roundabouts. There are very few accidents in roundabouts and it's impossible to get a license if you don't know how the rules for a roundabout.
What the studies say is; "they can substantially reduce crashes that result in serious injury or death." That is not the same as a reduction in the total number of accidents. The number of accidents may actually be higher in a roundabout, but the severity is lower and they are more survivable.
In a few months: Tesla baffled as regulators crack down on their "I'm in a rush" feature, which makes Tesla cars with FSD ignore any and all speed limits as long as the car deems that's safe to do and won't bother anybody.
It can be a real pleasure to enjoy a buttery-smooth ride, and robots will excel at it. And of course manufacturers will optimize for it since it demonstrates confidence and safety. OTOH, you know what can also be fun? Having a Tesla kick your butt with almost 1 G.
There should be a reasonably-smooth default setting, a "show me your skills" super-smooth setting, a "sporty" setting, and "madman". The latter would probably cost extra due to the extra wear and tear, and I'm sure I'd pay for it, at least once, for the experience.
I'm not sure I understand the joke here. That's the way it works. The cars already allow you to speed (up to a limit, obviously). Just roll the right scroll wheel. And you can control its default choices via a menu (e.g. "limit + 5mph", etc...). Being able to match traffic speeds is a good and useful feature.
But yes, it's technically "illegal", just like a rolling stop. Which prods the question of why one is subject to regulatory oversight and the other is not.
> But yes, it's technically "illegal", just like a rolling stop. Which prods the question of why one is subject to regulatory oversight and the other is not.
Because one is a safety issue when done, and one is a safety issue when not done. Not obeying the speed limit is (mostly) safe when matching the traffic around you. Not stopping fully at a stop sign is unsafe since it can lead to accidents regardless of what everyone else around you does.
Or to flip it around... obeying the speed limit but not matching the traffic around you is generally unsafe. While obeying the stop sign and stopping fully is always safe.
Limit + 5mph is an explicit control by the driver, not a decision by the car. "I'm in a rush" described here is not explicit, the car is making decisions on how much faster to go. Self driving regulations naturally only regulate decisions by the car, not decisions by the driver. "break all speeding laws however you want" isn't a decision as much as a directive on how to make driving decisions.
Same with rolling stop in fsd, it's even more clearly a decision by the car which would naturally fall under self driving regulation while decisions by the driver naturally wouldn't. I.e. this isn't a "perform rolling stops" button the driver pressed to force the decision.
"Recall" is the only term available to express a software update via the NHTSA's public notification process. It's just the word we have. And yes, it implies things that are salaciously untrue, which is one of the reason it finds its way into headlines like this.
>A recall is issued when a manufacturer or NHTSA determines that a vehicle, equipment, car seat, or tire creates an unreasonable safety risk or fails to meet minimum safety standards. Manufacturers are required to fix the problem by repairing it, replacing it, offering a refund, or in rare cases repurchasing the vehicle.
So basically, regardless of whether the fix is a software or hardware update, any issue a car has that "creates an unreasonable safety risk or fails to meet minimum safety standards" falls underneath the "recall" banner. I can see the benefit here; a recall generally gets a certain level of publicity that a "software update" might otherwise not. It might not be a bad idea for people crossing at stop signs to think, "Hmm, Tesla approaching, let's exercise just a bit more caution", until this is resolved.
> Tesla will perform an over-the-air software update that disables the "rolling stop" functionality, NHTSA said.
I was perplexed by the wording as well. Apparently software updates can be labeled recalls now? Did someone inform Microsoft, maybe this would help Windows 11 adoption.
Personally I am curious how this is done in the AI. Do they simply flip a switch that says “if you see stop sign make a full stop,” or do they now have to update and retrain the neural net to acquire this behavior. Does anyone know?
There is a mix of a "neural net planner" and a "explicit planning and control" in traditional code[1]. The explicit planner has the last word, and uses input from both the "vector space" and the neural net planner.
Karpathy has commented about the neural nets gradually replacing the traditional code. See his presentation[2] around 18:45.
The feature, which appeared to violate state laws that require vehicles to come to a complete stop and required drivers to opt-in for what it dubbed "Assertive"
I have the FSD beta on my Model X, and opted in to assertive not knowing that it enabled rolling stops. I enabled "assertive" in hopes of making the car less timid about unprotected turns.
BTW, the FSD beta is terrible. Its what I imagine a senior citizen taking their first drive after getting a learners permit would be like. The worst part is horribly timid behavior pulling into traffic or making unprotected left turns. It also is quite annoying on rural 2 lane roads, with frequent enough phantom braking to make passengers queasy and hence make me turn off FSD. It has no knowledge of potholes, so I frequently have to take over before it costs me a wheel and a tire by hitting a monster pothole.
Its frustrating that I paid $3000 for this 4+ years ago, and waited 4 years for the feature, and was made to drive overly gently (no hard cornering or braking) in order to get a good "safety score" for quite a while before I could even try it. The $3000 would have been much better off had I invested it in Tesla stock.
If this is where they are after 4 years, I don't hold out much hope.
What version of FSD beta are you on? After 10.6 most of my complaints were addressed and I am very happy using it to get to work every day, although I live in a suburban / semi-urban area and have never used it on rural roads. I have an original model 3. Pretty much any left-handed turn is protected with a stoplight around me, although it negotiates unprotected ones well for the ones I’ve faced under 35mph
We have solid infrastructure so can’t speak to the potholes complaint. A few months back FSD beta started acknowledging speed bumps and taking them slowly so I’d imagine potholes are in the works.
When one of your main complaints about your self driving car is that it is too timid and doesn’t avoid potholes, I think things are progressing just fine. Just step back a little and think about where the technology was 5, 10 years ago. Heck even 20 years ago. Imagine telling someone on a forum “yeah my self driving car is fine but a little timid for me and ugh, potholes!”
Well, I have lots of others, but I didn't want to look too much like I'm ranting.
They include:
- Driving too close to parked cars for comfort on un-laned side streets when there is no oncoming traffic. I personally like to leave enough room to avoid somebody opening their door into me, if I have the room.
- Leaving way too much space in front of the car at stoplights. This is a problem when it leads to blocking the entrance to left turn lanes, etc.
- Totally blowing through stop signs in parking lots.
- Freaking out and making me take over on a mildly tricky interstate interchange where 2 lanes narrow to one.
And I'm sure there are a million others that I'm forgetting about.
The point is that you can't rely on FSD to fully self-drive. Somewhat decent doesn't cut it. In particular, if it can't avoid potholes, it's not safe to let it drive on the road.
I'm confused by this response. "Horribly timid behavior pulling into traffic" sounds like they're saying that when a car pulls into traffic it pulls in too slow, which puts other cars at risk of hitting the Tesla that's not properly getting up to speed. And when I read, "has no knowledge of potholes," I picture a Tesla slamming down into a giant pothole and damaging the car; needing to pull over to get it towed, fixed, etc.
Are things really "progressing just fine" if the car is repeatedly putting itself into dangerous situations?
Edit: I suppose that one could make the argument that we didn't even have this kind of tech on the roads ten years ago, and sure, that's progress in one sense. But I wouldn't call it "just fine" by a long shot, nor would I dismiss these concerns as whininess.
> The $3000 would have been much better off had I invested it in Tesla stock.
It'd be ~$40,000 >.<
Could be worse. If the people who put a $50,000 down payment on a Roadster 2.0 the day they announced them had bought $TSLA instead, they would have enough money now to pay cash for TWO Roadsters and have enough money left over to add a Model S Plaid.
When I moved to San Francisco from Europe I had to take a drive test to get a US license. In every single intersection I did a rolling stop, and got like 15 minor "errors" on my score sheet. However, since I had no other errors I got the license. Perhaps the FSD beta would also pass this test.
The problem with the assertive setting is it didn't really work. The car would still do a rolling stop even in chill. I think in those cases it might have been creeping for visibility but often the creep is a full blown drive into the intersection.
They really need to add some explicit controls over this like navigate on autopilot has. I've had to disengage so many times due to it making really dumb moves that could be fixed with just asking me first. I know thats against their end goal but their models just are not there yet.
So it was software feature in FSD that when encountering a stop sign, it did not stop as it was unable to read those signs? That's much worse than the time the FSD system was confusing the moon with a traffic light and was slowing down in the highway.
No wonder it is eligible for the nickname of 'Fools Self Driving'.
Laws can be dumb, if there are no other cars and you roll through a stop sign why is that unsafe? This is also called California stop. People in California have places to be and it's a big place so the effects compound.
I don't think there are any federal laws about traffic signs. California's laws require you to come to a complete stop at stop signs. Programming a computer to intentionally break the law "because I have places to go" seems like poor judgement to me.
As soon as you make the rolling stop legal people will push the limits of that law and drive straight through if they think the way is clear.
The numbers of drivers driving through reds (at least here in coastal San Diego) has noticeably increased over the past two years, previously people would hit the gas if the lights turned yellow, now they are hitting the gas if they see yellow (and crossing through the intersection on red). Accident statistics seem to back that up https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/29/us/red-light-deaths-trnd/inde...
Making traffic rules less strict seems like a recipe for more accidents and deaths.
Traffic lights are a completely separate issue. The cars are traveling much faster. At a stop sign you will have much more time to react since you're going 5-7mph max.
Are they recalling the software version for an update to fix a safety issue? If so, then it is a recall. You can't play semantics with words like that for these issues.
>A recall is issued when a manufacturer or NHTSA determines that a vehicle, equipment, car seat, or tire creates an unreasonable safety risk or fails to meet minimum safety standards. Manufacturers are required to fix the problem by repairing it, replacing it, offering a refund, or in rare cases repurchasing the vehicle.
That's an interesting challenge for autonomous vehicles though... On one hand, the idea of programming your self-driving system to violate the law seems baffling. On the other hand, there are unwritten local rules everywhere. I suspect that even though rolling stop are illegal in California, the traffic density requires drivers to adopt a more aggressive stance if they want to move effectively and rolling stop helps that, especially when multiple cars are stopped in line waiting at a stop sign.
If most people adopted that unsafe unlawful behaviour but which help reduce congestion, what are you suppose to do as a car maker if respecting the law will make other users road-rage against your client using your self-driving system?
I guess we're headed towards yet another slice of future dystopia - where once we saw the opportunity for clean and efficient automated driving by the time it's here it'll have been so heavily influenced by current bad driving habits that they'll have to keep the bad traditions up, if not to be defensive against people but instead to be defensive around other older AI drivers that are still assuming bad habit.
I don't think we should program-in unsafe driving behaviours to accommodate road-ragers. As those self-driving features get more main-stream, this will just become more normal. And if road-ragers are still around, they should get fined.
This sort of conflict highlights the difference between the traffic laws (which are often rooted in revenue generation instead of safety) and the way people really drive. Speed limits have the same issue. Some governments (such as Germany) have roads with no speed limit. Why don't we have those everywhere?
In the end, it comes down to personal responsibility. Apparently the people in Germany drive more responsibly than everywhere else?
Rolling stops are how a fair number of folks drive, especially when there is no traffic on a cross street. I was in a small down growing up, and you'd slow to maybe 1-3 MPH, then turn.
I know everyone on HN get's outraged by these decisions with FSD (and regulators do too). One thing I think this exposes is actually human driving. This is in fact common - the system is reflecting things back to us.
I was on road up higher and the number of people on their phones is mind boggling. THey will literally sit at a green because they are so checked out, they will be texting while merging. It's madness.
today i approached a 4 way stop. the car to the left of me arrived later, as I was coming to a complete stop. well the driver to the left used a rolling stop and continued through the stop line. then he had the audacity to beep at me as he cut me off.
The issue there is not so much the rolling stop but not respect right of way.
Personally I think almost all stop signs should be replaced with roundabouts as it better represents how people want to drive and allows for rolling stops but that’s just me
A stop sign at the end of a neighborhood road at the intersection of a main thorough street makes sense.
But four-way stop signs absolutely should not be a thing. Anywhere a 4-way stop exists should certainly be a roundabout.
The only problem is that roundabouts in the USA are exceedingly rare in most of the country. There would need to be a massive education campaign for them to work for most people. There are an alarming number of Americans that think that the people already on the roundabout have to yield for the people coming on.
It depends on the location. There are plenty of city intersections where 4-way stops are completely appropriate, and a roundabout would be impossible because it would have a much bigger footprint (and would block trucks and emergency vehicles).
Some places use virtual roundabouts, where the roundabout part is simply a small painted circle on the road. Emergency vehicles can drive straight over it
There's also formed roundabouts where most of it is raised but only by a small amount, so that emergency vehicles with large tires can drive straight over it but still discourages light vehicles from doing the same.
We have a heavily trafficked roundabout in our neighborhood and it's a big hazard to pedestrians because drivers take it way too fast and fail to yield to pedestrians in the crosswalks around it. Aside from that, the roundabout is great but takes up a lot more space than an intersection would. Maybe some bumps to calm the traffic approaching the roundabout would help.
The problem that I see is just insufficient respect for traffic laws. I'm not sure what to do about it, aside from more police presence.
I do like the Australian perspective, where I learned to drive before I moved to the US.
There's no concept of "right of way" on Australian roads. There's only "duty to yield". It might seem like a subtle concept/difference, but when it comes time to stand up in court/ be pulled over/ avoid an accident, it frames things better.
Too many in the US are "it's my road, asshole, I got the right of way".
If you lack the situational awareness to recognise a police car in the vicinity, it's probably better to actually come to a stop. I suspect that's part of why the law works well enough.
I was going to argue with you that rolling stops are dangerous, but I ran into this interesting article which recommends replacing stop signs with more informative indicators:
If a police officer sees you do a donut in the middle of an intersection where i live (also southern california) you will just flee home and do it again tomorrow night. Traffic enforcement varies strikingly in California it seems.
Setting aside legality, It's hard to believe that Tesla's FSD has the ability to successfully evaluate its current context (weather, time of day, visibility, vehicle "body language") and decide when a rolling stop is safe and when it's not. Not that humans always do this well either, but resorting to rolling stops always while ignoring the circumstances seems like a bad move.
In the Assertive profile, it can do rolling stops, but only under circumstances where it is very safe, such as four-way stops with no other driving vehicles present.
I have FSD Beta as well. Even in Assertive mode, I've never actually seen it do a rolling stop, including rural areas with nothing around. I'm not saying it doesn't happen. In fact, I'd prefer it didn't--or at least provide an option to toggle it on and off.
Right, but the promise of self-driving vehicles is about them being safer than humans. Humans are irrational and impulsive. Those actions disrupt the flow of traffic. The idea is that a self-driving vehicle can be safer than a human because it will do things like follow speed limits, always come to a complete stop, etc.
If self-driving vehicles are simply going to operate like facsimiles of human driving behavior their benefits are greatly diminished.
I think as long as autonomous drive systems are intermingling on regular roads with human drivers, they need to behave like human drivers. Human drivers will get angry with autonomous systems, especially during rush hour, if they adhere strictly to all laws such as full stops and speed limits.
As others have pointed out, this may force us to contend with the laws first since it's clear local enforcement and laws are not aligned.
When a majority of driving is autonomous, laws will likely evolve slightly. If/when all driving is autonomous, then things get really interesting: short following distance, peer-to-peer intersections without stops, etc.
Humans get outraged all the time. If you drive exactly at the speed limit, they get angry, if you drive 5km/h over they get angry that you don't drive 10km/h over it, others get angry that you are tailgating them when they are driving exactly as fast as allowed and will brake check you --- I really think autonomous cars should just mechanically stick to the rules, then they are at least predictable.
I don’t see anything wrong with copying human driving behavior except without any risk of drunk driving, driving and texting, falling asleep at the wheel, having a heart attack or stroke at the wheel etc. The average truck driver appears to be morbidly obese and gets little to no physical exercise, yet they drive enormous trucks that can do insane amounts of damage if they suffer a heart attack or stroke, personally I can’t wait for self driving vehicles to come online.
EDIT: Not really sure why I am getting downvoted for this, you can search google and get maybe hundreds if not thousands of results about truck/bus drivers and heart attacks/strokes causing deadly crashes, but they get maybe 1% of the media attention of an FSD video rolling through a stop sign
https://fox4kc.com/news/family-says-driver-of-tractor-traile...
Seriously! I was going to make the same observation about truck drivers. It takes so little to exercise effectively. Why not pull over your truck for 30 minutes twice a day and do some basic calisthenics/bodyweight exercises? Who's going to notice?
How and why does stopping completely at a stop sign, with good visibility and no present pedestrians or cross traffic, increase safety? Will wait for an answer.
To be fair most self-driving cars don't have the the blind spots that make rolling stops unsafe to pedestrians. So they can be much safer than human drivers while still doing rolling stops in this manor.
The Tesla crept into the parked cars to see around the corner, and the driver applied brakes.. I don't see any exceptional behavior here other than the driver using the touchscreen while driving.
That's exactly the problem -- the driver had to hit the brakes because his car had started to pull into the path of a fast-moving UPS truck that his Tesla doesn't pick up until the last second. The "360º view" scanned "200 times per second" and acted upon with "superhuman latency" still randomly decides to pull out in front of traffic. Either the cameras are buggy or the software is, but we can do better.
it is a right turn onto a 2 lane road, where the right lane is protected by parked cars.
the tesla pulls into the PROTECTED lane to see around the parked cars.
you are assuming that it would have then decided to pull into traffic, but that belief is pretty unfounded. When FSD cannot see well enough to decide that a turn is safe, it will literally sit there for minutes. Yes, i am quite certain it would have done that in the protected parking lane.
I'm not assuming anything - what I told you happened is literally how the driver -- who likes Tesla and has has owned 3 others before this one -- reported it.
"If I didn’t slam the brakes, we would’ve been taken out by the UPS truck."
But sure, go off about how certain you are when there's video evidence proving you wrong...
Rolling stops were only enabled in the "Aggressive" FSD Beta driving profile, one of three available profiles. Several FSD Beta testers used the Aggressive profile in areas where rolling stops are common. They did this because when using the other profiles, they would be embarrassed or honked at because their car insisted on always coming to a full stop.
Anyone familiar with driving in Los Angeles knows that when it's safe to do so (e.g., when there is no cross traffic on a turn), a rolling stop is extremely common. So common that it is plausible that people behind you might honk if you insist on doing a full stop and then cautiously proceed. Especially during rush-hour.
By the same token, most people in Los Angeles drive 5 to 10 MPH over the posted speed limits. Driving at the posted speed limit will cause other drivers to hate you.
I truly don't understand this line of reasoning. "Oh no, I've been honked at! Someone in a car, who I'll never meet, doesn't like me! I guess I'd better start driving a bit more unsafely so that people don't honk at me!". I'll ignore someone honking at me if it means I'm driving more safely.
And I've driven in LA plenty of times. It might be the norm for LA drivers, sure, but I would also argue that that whole region could use at least a bit more patience when on the road.
The speed limit differential gets into a bit more of a grey area, though, in regards to laws that require you to maintain a speed that's in line "with the flow of traffic". It's similar in Atlanta; posted speed limit might be 55, but you're likely going to be going at least 70 in the slow lane in order to maintain the flow.
Last time I was there I had someone get out of their vehicle and get angry as fuck at me - screaming, calling me a piece of shit, mother fucker, etc. - because they turned into oncoming traffic (my lane) to get around a garbage truck, found me there driving in my right of way, and demanded I back up and make room for them. Everyone else on the road in LA seem generally grumpy and impatient.
Granted, I usually drive pretty fast and am aware of my tendency to be impatient behind the wheel, but it seems, anecdotally at least, like LA is worse than many other areas in that regard. The first 20 minutes driving around after I leave LAX are usually spent thinking, "I'm crazy, but these people put me to goddamn shame and I need to adapt quickly," lol.
There are some truly idiotic drivers in California. On the one hand you have people in their beamers who go as fast as possible whenever they have an open lane, that might mean 50mph on residential streets and over 100 on the highway. Then you have the other end of the spectrum, people who think the speed limit is a limit, not a minimum, and drive like 40mph on the freeway with no one in front of them in one of the middle lanes. People weave aggressively left and right to get around them and it causes accidents.
All of this is the direct result of little enforcement for traffic rules. I've never seen someone pulled over ever in California unless there's been an accident. I've never seen a cop with a radar gun. I've actually seen the LAPD speed past me and hang out in the left lane with no lights on, because that's just how the standard of driving is in LA apparently. You try that in the midwest and you will be pulled over for going to fast, for going to slow, for having a 10 foot tall stack of scrap metal in your truck, for spending to much time in the left lane, and for failing to signal. The highways feel truly lawless in California.
One time, a CHP car turned its lights off and deliberately hung out in my blind spot for a few miles on the 405. I can only assume they were waiting for me to do something they could use as an excuse to pull me over.
My suggestion would be for people to stop honking out of impatience. If there's an actual issue, honk. Someone not moving as quickly or dangerously as you'd like isn't an excuse to honk.
I really only honk at people for screwing up. If they cut me off I will wail on the horn for a long time, just holding it, letting them know. I love embarrasing asshole drivers like this especially if they have some passenger. Whenever cars honk at me for using the crosswalk I actually enjoy it, because then I just stand in front of their car for the rest of the light cycle absolutely cussing them out and embarrasing them while they can do nothing because the walk sign is on. I love pointing to the walk sign and saying "What does that sign say? Drive? does that stick figure walking with a countdown say Drive to you?" as loud as possible. Other pedestrians have even fist bumped me. It is so cathartic!
If they hit me at speed there's nothing I could do whether I argued or not, I'd be laid out before I knew what happened. If they stopped, then hit me, that wouldn't be a bad collision to take, they'd only get up to a few mph in the few feet in front of me even if they hammered the throttle. I'd slide off the hood and get their plates and then they'd be in jail and I would walk into the courtroom with a neck brace and get my payout.
I'd be getting that anyway when I get old, or I could be arthritic and also riding off the dividends of my massive settlement I had in my youth which I promptly would throw in the market.
> If they cut me off I will wail on the horn for a long time, just holding it, letting them know. I love embarrasing asshole drivers like this...
I can say confidently that I've never looked at any other driver doing this and thought anything but, "Jesus Christ, calm the fuck down." I've been that guy doing the honking as well, and I'm fully aware that nobody arounds me gives a shit and they just find me annoying. Hell, half the time most of them don't even know what happened; they just look over and see some overly-angry dude screaming at someone.
>... especially if they have some passenger.
Did you really embarrass them in front of the passenger, or yourself? What if the transgression you're honking at was a genuine mistake with a reason that actually makes sense? I've been the passenger in situations like this before and have found myself thinking, "Yeah, oops, but I don't totally fault my driver or the other driver for this and the chud doing the honking needs to chill out because clearly they don't understand the driver's perspective."
I don't think cutting me off without a turn signal has any logic other than "me me me to the red light first!" If I can get them to have a reaction like "jesus Christ, calm the fuck down" then I am a happy camper. Again there are honest mistakes, and clearly asshole illegal behavior that drivers do like speeding like crazy, cutting people off, weaving through the freeway like a snake, running reds, cutting into lanes and blocking traffic because you must get to the turn lane at the last possible moment before there is a barrier, and willfully ignoring signage like no turns on reds. I'm also not embarrassed about calling out drivers as a pedestrian. Why would I be? I do it when have right of way and they don't and they had the audacity to honk at me for walking when the walk sign is lit. It's fun to call out assholes. I love shouting at them, so satisfying.
Go to some town with less than 100k population at least 50 miles away from a metro area and you'll see this sort of ideal world: everyone goes the speed limit or 1-5 MPH below it, honking is only if you haven't moved for at least 5 seconds after the light turns green, nobody's in a hurry at all.
From my experience honking is exclusively used for frustration over driving style, with vehicular faults more often reported by less aggressive means like flashing brights or shouting the info from an opened window.
> I truly don't understand this line of reasoning. "Oh no, I've been honked at! Someone in a car, who I'll never meet, doesn't like me! I guess I'd better start driving a bit more unsafely so that people don't honk at me!". I'll ignore someone honking at me if it means I'm driving more safely.
Sometimes a "bit" of safety isn't worth the tradeoff in throughput. But that also assumes it's safer to stop completely. It's very possible that smoother traffic flow is safer. Or maybe there's more risk that you get rear-ended than is caused by a rolling stop.
Then let's get the road designed that way. I'm onboard with the argument you're making about flow, but - and perhaps this is just me - traffic is safer when it's predictable.
Let's say you have a stop sign in your neighborhood that "everyone" rolling-stops through. Sure, great, let's look into changing that stop into maybe a yield, or a roundabout, or whathaveyou that safely allows for the flow that that street necessitates. But in the meantime? Stop at the stop sign! Yeah, sure, we can make the argument that the rolling stop is now "predictable" to everyone in the neighborhood, but what happens when you get an out-of-towner in front of you on your morning commute and you slack off on watching for them to stop, resulting in you rear-ending them?
Improving the flow of traffic is great, but ignoring rules for the sake of flow adds additional layers of unpredictability that ultimately result in roads that are less safe for drivers/pedestrians, at least IMO.
Anyone familiar with driving in Los Angeles knows that when it's safe to do so (e.g., when there is no cross traffic on a turn), a rolling stop is extremely common. So common that it is plausible that people behind you might honk if you insist on doing a full stop and then cautiously proceed. Especially during rush-hour
Anyone who drives in LA during rush hour knows that it is never safe to do a rolling stop, because during rush hour there is going to be cross traffic and you need to check that there is cross-traffic at the intersection before turning.
I've witnessed a lot of accidents where some moron thought that saving 3 seconds was more important than safety, and rolled right in front a car that had the right-of-way, or into a pedestrian in the crosswalk that the driver hadn't seen.
The human behavior here (slow rolling stop signs) at least in theory can prevent being rear-ended by someone who is used to everyone else in the area doing that (of course it's the rear-ender's fault in a crash... but still an annoyance for everyone involved)
There's no benefit to the computer swerving in and out of the lane like a drunk driver, or taking an intentionally inefficient route like a crooked taxi driver, or other pure-downside criminality.
The human behavior can also result in an accident when a car or pedestrian that expects the car to stop walks out in front of the car.
In theory, the car should be paying attention in all directions at the same time and won't get into an accident, but car sensors are not infallible, especially when detecting pedestrians, moreso if they are partially obscured by foliage, newspaper stands, etc.
Automated cars should stop 100% of the time at intersections where they are required to do so. When the stop signs are changed to "Self-driving yield" signs, then the cars can do a rolling stop.
So my point wasn't that cars should act like drunk drivers, but that modeling human behaviors is not the right mindset for self-driving cars.
Is it, or do we simply have more miles driven per capita? We are a big country. Not Monaco, where you could walk to anywhere else in Monaco to join a friend for breakfast
Looks to me like the US is still on the highish side for deaths per vehicle-mile compared to the EU and Canada, although not that high by worldwide standards.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 431 ms ] threadSince they wrote it the way they did, I would guess there is some regulatory document that causes this to be classified a a "recall" for legal purposes. But it's incorrect to substitute legal language for common English language when there is a conflict between the two, except in legal contexts. That rule goes for technical language in general.
Is this practice more common in British English? I feel that it seems to appear more often in writing by British people, but that's anecdotal and could be incorrect.
Not entirely unlike the rest of the mainstream media, I would suppose.
That can be anything from "these airbags might not open when they're supposed to", like the Takeda problem, or "if water splashed just right on the bottom of the open door, you would have water next to electrical wires which could maybe start a fire" (an issue my car had a few years ago).
Tesla met with the NHTSA and agreed to issue a recall. How is it possibly bad journalism to call it what it is?
As for semantic arguments, obviously the current colloquial usage of the term "recall" means to call for products in use to be removed from use and potentially for remediation. However, the usage of the term in the article is the precise, legal, technical usage of the term meaning what I stated above. This usage and definition by NHTSA predates the colloquial definition and was thus not confusing at the time it was defined, and is both precise and has been precisely used by NHTSA for duration of its usage of the term so their usage of the term has not materially changed in the interim. Therefore, it is both technically, semantically, and culturally correct to use the term "recall" in this specific instance even though the colloquial usage of the term has changed underneath them. This is in contrast with Tesla's usage of the term Autopilot which does correspond with your concerns as it was coined after the colloquial usage had already shifted, and limited effort was made to precisely define and inform potential stakeholders of any differences in terminology with respect to the colloquial usage.
[1] https://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/recalls/recallproblems.cfm
I don't think that's right, because countries could "recall" ambassadors, or parliament could be "recalled." Essentially, "recall" means "to bring back." If you aren't bringing something back, it isn't a recall. I don't have time to do the etymological research, so this could be wrong, but it isn't likely. (IIRC I used to be able to access the Oxford English Dictionary for free online, but I'm finding that now I can't.)
If you want more explanation, there is many years' worth at https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....
Strangely, Tesla exported this rolling stop behavior everywhere, despite it being illegal in many (maybe most) states.
It’s strange that this was allowed to get so far. This violation should have been obvious.
If you're ok with a car just slowing down and yielding to traffic if necessary, why not use a "Yield" sign instead of a "Stop" sign?
We have "yield" signs for entry onto highways and roundabouts, for example, where the goal is to keep traffic moving.
Or better yet, turn 4-way stops into roundabouts.
We can use the national average fine or use the GPS to match it to the proper jurisdiction. I don't care which.
https://www.thetrafficticketattorneys.com/blog/7-things-you-...
https://www.sidmartinbio.org/what-is-the-fine-for-a-californ...
https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/defense/vehicle-code/22450/
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...
No, they certainly do not. I live in California and I've gotten a ticket for doing this.
This seems to be an example of Tesla “pushing the boundaries” in a way that puts their customers at risk. I’m all for small-l libertarianism, but they could spend effort where it actually mattered instead of this childish petulance.
False. I present to you California Vehicle Code #22450:
>The driver of any vehicle approaching a stop sign at the entrance to, or within, an intersection shall stop at a limit line, if marked, otherwise before entering the crosswalk on the near side of the intersection.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...
It is NOT legal to do a rolling stop in California. Like everywhere else in the nation, you must (legally speaking) come to a complete stop at sign/light. Failure to do so will result in a ticket (if you're caught).
This one seems so obviously avoidable that I’m baffled as to why they let it happen.
Whereas, a rolling stop, that's not legal (as far as I know) anywhere.
EDIT: I am incorrect with the above statement. I apparently live in one of 4 states where you can exceed the speed limit by up to 10mph while passing.
For sure in Colorado it's not legal to exceed the speed limit to pass. But it is illegal to drive below the speed limit while in the passing lane on a highway with a speed limit 65 mph or higher. There's exceptions for safety and congestion, but otherwise the left lane is considered a passing lane. If you're not passing, you're not supposed to be in that lane.
Of course these are the laws, not the practice, which is what I think GP was trying to say.
http://www.mit.edu/~jfc/laws.html
Of all of the places I've been Chicago was probably the worst at speeding, especially in the dead of night when the roads are "too" open. Recently they got a bit stricter with the speed cameras though https://www.illinoispolicy.org/chicagos-speed-cameras-ticket...
I would strongly discourage you from trying that line of argument with the cops when you're pulled over for speeding. I'm certain that a court of law with decent standards does not interpret speeding "at least a little" as anything except a binary.
A thing is not legal just because law enforcement lets you get away with it, but I don't think this is a good example. It's silly to have this conversation without at least acknowledging the way driver behavior expands into "grey areas" and gaps in enforcement, and I don't think it's trivially obvious that "self driving" cars should rigidly follow the letter of the law even if that means they'll be the only cars on the road doing so.
And again, I don't think the car should speed by default, but a car going 2-3mph over the posted limit should be acceptable rather than an error state because the world is not black and white.
If you can determine in real-time whether the maneuver your about to perform or the speed you're going is safe then why even have speed limits? The speed limit for highways is still 65 whether it's a a bone dry, pitch dark, pouring rain, or completely iced over. "Any speed under 65" can't possibly be a safe speed for all these conditions while allowing for the highest safe speeds possible in ideal, or even average, conditions. And this doesn't even being to take into account the huge vehicle variance and tire ware. The safe operating speeds for a top-heavy Honda Fit with narrow tires vs a low-to-the-ground wide-tired Corvette are going to be wildly different.
And then you have to deal with other drivers. If traffic is going 75 you're gonna have a hell of a time merging capped at 65. And in an ideal world nobody would pass on the right making it possible to get off the highway without increasing speed but real life hits hard.
For the same reason driving below average speed is dangerous. If you drive 10km/h slower than everyone else you are a problem, even if everyone else is driving at or slightly above the speed limit (very common in Germany).
Illegal is binary for most driving laws (especially 'do what this sign says' rules), but some things fall into an ambiguous category of illegal-but-rarely-enforced. The problem is that computers don't do well with ambiguous rules. I strongly suspect that when most cars are using FSD the rule of being allow to drive a little over the speed limit will be removed, and cars will have to stick to the limits. Hopefully the limits will be raised.
It also engages only when approaching an empty intersection. Any obstacles/pedestrians or moving vehicles cause a full stop. To be perfectly honest: I turned it on when I saw it, but haven't seen it actually do it yet. And at this point I guess I never will.
I mean, speeding is equally illegal and inarguably more dangerous. Yet no one is upset that the car lets you speed.
"Full Self Driving" is the name of the vehicle option that you can purchase or license, which includes a bunch of different features (light/sign recognition, autonomous navigation on highways, lane changes, stuff like that).
Or have enough social media clout (in the appropriately Tesla-positive direction).
Emphasis mine; this apparently wasn't the default behavior. Though, it may not have been clear to users opting-in exactly what "assertive mode" changes about the system's behavior.
It happens in all three modes Chill, Average and Assertive to different degree.
I always wonder how this plays out on a granular level. Some folks have to be thinking / asking if this is a good idea or not.
In high school there was only a handful of things I learned that were actually useful, outside of social experiences. One of them was a teacher who taught business and law classes. In a business class he shared with us, first saying he could probably get fired for telling us this, but that if we had good ideas, new we had a good idea for a business, then instead of going to university and getting $40,000+ into debt over 4 years - get a job and/or apprenticeship and work on your idea. At the end of that 4 years he suggested you'd be in a much better position than those who went into higher education; of course it depends on what someone's goals are. In law class he gave an example: in some states in the US there are very long stretches of road where you won't see anyone for awhile, and sometimes there are traffic lights on a straight road - with no intersection. He put forward to the question of what do you do if that traffic light is red when you come up to it? There's zero vehicles near you in either direction, there's no intersection to worry about cross-traffic, and so do you stop and wait for the light to go green, or do you go again even though it's red? I think every reasonable person would answer that they would go. E.g. A rolling stop in some circumstances isn't dangerous for anyone; and I also see police doing it all the time.
Of course AI deciding when to do it when it may not yet be accounting for the whole or an adequate enough of environment does add questions, and because it's not critical to self-driving, I believe it's a good idea to not allow it until that conversation can be thoroughly hashed out, as well as the technology much more thoroughly tested and evolved.
Edit: Lazy people downvote - find something better to do with your time, or some other form of entertainment.
Simple, binding, easy to follow rules are important when the cost of mistakes is death or significant damage
There is nuance. Pilots are the final authority when it comes to the safety of the craft, and you're in the clear if your actions were justified. With self driving cars, we're discussing where the boundaries are and when the vehicle's decision can take precedence over coarse legal code (as occurs with human drivers every day).
https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/91.3 (14 CFR § 91.3 - Responsibility and authority of the pilot in command.)
(private pilot who has deviated from ATC commands in GA aircraft and had to fill out a written report over a cup of coffee)
That's the only justification we have here for making rolling stops.
That's why rolling stop laws don't always end up with you getting a ticket. I was pulled over a year or two after first getting my license for executing a rolling stop. The cop reminded me what I'd done, recognized that I was a dumb kid and a relatively new driver, told me to cross my heart and promise I'd never do it again, and let me go. Enforcement is circumstantial and nobody's going to follow that rule if they're not aware that they could get in trouble for it.
>In law class he gave an email: in some states in the US there are very long stretches of road where you won't see anyone for awhile, and sometimes there are traffic lights on a straight road - with no intersection. He put forward to the question of what do you do if that traffic light is red when you come up to it? There's zero vehicles near you in either direction, there's no intersection to worry about cross-traffic, and so do you stop and wait for the light to go green, or do you go again even though it's red? I think every reasonable person would answer that they would go. E.g. A rolling stop in some circumstances isn't dangerous for anyone; and I also see police doing it all the time.
Many such stop lights exist because they provide a safe space to cross the road for pedestrians. In fact there are a few such lights near me in long stretches of road, among woods, that allow people walking through trails in the woods to cross the road. I stop at those lights every single time. Why? Because I don't know if someone has crossed yet. Could be that it's a family trying to cross the street, and they had to go back to the trail to corral a kid that wandered the other way and they'll be crossing the street in a second. Or, it could be a group of people - some of them have crossed, others are shortly behind and will be coming out in a second.
The point is that, often, I don't know what is or isn't there. And unless I know, I'm going to stop.
>Edit: Lazy people downvote - find something better to do with your time, or some other form of entertainment.
Happy now?
Morale has improved, the beatings can stop.
You're right, and it's the same with jaywalking - it's usually only enforced or a fine or charge laid if the action causes a collision or harm.
In the example I gave there wasn't pedestrian crossing as part of the example, and in it you also stop at the light first. In your scenario it sounds like there are blind spots too, whereas I guess I left out some language, like the road was in a desert with full visibility everywhere. Of course, you need to always fully stop or be rolling slowly enough, say if you're making a right-hand turn at a red light [where legal], so that you can stop quickly enough if you see past the blind spot that traffic is coming.
I'd guess that's a speed deterrent. Long stretches of flat, open road with nothing around to crash into are very inviting for people looking to race. Get going fast enough and you risk losing control of your vehicle and crashing into other people, say an oncoming car. Those red lights, assuming I'm understanding your scenario correctly, encourage people to maintain a safer pace of travel.
>Of course, you need to always fully stop or be rolling slowly enough, say if you're making a right-hand turn at a red light...
... no. There is no "or be rolling slowly enough". Stop.
Sure, or perhaps it makes people who maybe zoned out give them an opportunity to see how fast they're going - and slow down, and they get an opportunity to see if they slowed down fast enough to stop at the red light - before reaching the next red light which maybe is in a little town up ahead a bit, so if they didn't stop in time for the first red light then they've kind of been notified to be more careful next time. But the exercise was to ask: if it's 100% safe to go at a red light [once you've stopped at it], with zero potential for anyone getting hurt, do you go through the red light, or do you wait until it turns green?
It makes for quite the interesting psychological test seeing how different people answer, similar I suppose to the whole train track scenario - where your train is going to crash - and you have a few options; Will Smith in iRobot has related trauma as well, the robot's AI determined to save him - an adult - over the young girl, even though he was trying to command the robot to save the little girl.
> ... no. There is no "or be rolling slowly enough". Stop.
If you're at a stop sign or red traffic light, and if it's legal in your jurisdiction to turn right on, you have to start rolling forward - and are allowed to even if there's a blindspot and can't see any traffic coming yet [the road could be clear or not] - so if you're going slowly enough and there's no traffic then you continue, if you all of a sudden can see past the blindspot and there's enough time to safely go then you continue, if there isn't enough time to pull out then you stop.
Stop and wait. Keep those good habits a part of your second nature.
>If you're at a stop sign or red traffic light, and if it's legal in your jurisdiction to turn right on, you have to start rolling forward - and are allowed to even if there's a blindspot and can't see any traffic coming yet [the road could be clear or not...
This is true, but you are missing one very important caveat; you pull up to the stop sign, THEN YOU STOP, and then you slowly inch forward to see past the blind spot and continue on per the rest of your comment.
If you must know, I downvoted you because you whines about downvotes. Sure, I'm lazy, but at least I don't cry about internet points.
Maybe brainstorm as to what the actual implications of the dopamine hit/easy reward to downvote/suppress content is vs. simply having an upvote mechanism, and then share your thoughts and I'd be happy to get into a conversation with you. It doesn't sound like you've spent the time to actually extrapolate to the full consequences of the downvote mechanism.
Your response here though is one prime example as to why downvotes for most content types shouldn't exist. That you spent the tiny effort to click downvote to react to what you perceived as my "whining" - that that was a strong enough trigger or annoyance for you emotionally says more about your emotional regulation than the content of what I said, likewise by actually commenting you outed yourself or rather shared your actual qualitative reaction/response - so now there's an opportunity for a conversation, to broaden or enhance your understand or perhaps get educated by seeing things more from my perspective.
Don't you think having a qualitative response vs. a single quantitative digit changing to suppress content in an algorithm is more valuable to you, to society?
P.S. Upvoted you for commenting. Now maybe your comment won't be at the bottom, interesting how the "worst" or less valuable or lowest quality [qualitative] comments naturally make their way to the bottom - without requiring the downvote mechanism, isn't it?
P.P.S It'd be neat if HN/dang would offer a parallel view of posts, and then in the actual thread view, have 2 columns of comments - one not influenced by downvotes, and the other as the status quo - so people can start to experience and contrast; because AFAIK downvotes/upvotes aren't available in the API, so a third-party can't develop this? I'd certainly develop this system if HN's API could facilitate it.
I think the law as-is is already ambiguous enough (due to its complex nature) that our society waste huge amount of energy and resources arguing about its meanings. Anything that can be "rigidly" defined (and therefore enforced) with little downside* is a win in my book, purely from a practical perspective.
* Just like in this particular case (rolling stop), the "downside" of enforcing full stop compared to a subjective "safe rolling stop" is close to none.
And about the spirit of the law, to me it's pretty simple: if an illegal practice works better in this regard than the "legal" alternative, sure, we should seriously consider if we need to punish people doing so.
But in most of cases people bringing this in, both practices are perfectly aligning with the spirit of the law. Paired with the practicality argument above, there isn't much point to allow rolling stop as it doesn't make the road "safer" than full-stop.
Also, as someone coming from a country that doesn't have stop sign, people are spoiled and don't know how genius this idea is.
In an ideal world where everyone follows traffic law and pay full attention to the road all the time, stop sign isn't really needed. However, people are not machine. The whole points of stop sign is to force these distracted drivers to pay attention at intersections, even if only out of fear of getting a ticket. This kind of "foolproof" safety technique is not as excessive as it may look like at the first glance. Therefore, I'd argue having people full stopping is exactly the spirit of stop sign.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ljzj9Msli5o
You can get away with it a hundred times, or a thousand times, but eventually you'll be tired and do it and clobber a pedestrian you didn't see because "you were tired" (so its not your fault, even though it 100% is).
Stop thinking the way you do and stop being one of the 88% of American drivers who think they're above average. Follow the goddamn rules because you're not 99.99% perfect and its the .01% that is going to hurt someone else.
And "I see the police doing it all the time" clearly isn't the right moral barometer, if you haven't been paying attention.
You're making assumptions too, it seems, of what scenarios I believe it's safe for rolling stops to occur - or what state a person will be in when they're doing it. For example, I don't drive when I'm very tired, and whether I am tired at all or not, if weather conditions or if traffic conditions
Maybe we shouldn't allow airplanes to been flown anymore because "you can get away with it a hundred times, or a thousand times, but eventually you'll" crash?
I wonder if you're convoluting different rules, like your assumptions, and not differentiating that different rules are more serious than others - giving the same weight to less serious rules than those that are more serious. E.g. Speeding through a red light during rush hour is different than a pedestrian jaywalking - yet both are illegal.
And before someone comes in to say a jaywalker can't do the same damage as a vehicle, here's my personal story: I was riding my bicycle, going a normal speed, vehicles parked along the side as they were allowed to - and the perfect scenario for a collision occurred: a tall, strong man walked out into the street - looking the opposite direction first - from behind a box van with no windows, and stepped right into my path with no time for me to put my breaks on. I crashed into him - he didn't actually move - and I had whiplash, my jaw slammed shut, I bite the right side tip of my tongue 80% off in a deep cut, and multiple teeth were split and chipped; him and his girlfriend didn't stay around, they actually laughed about it as they walked away, and I was in shock - and in pain - and so I didn't realize I should have called the police.
I'm almost positive you'll violate those rules as well.
I just believe that you're a flawed human being like all the rest of us. And so its safer if you follow rules consistently and stop trying to optimize things away that don't need to be optimized. Same thing with using your turn signal every single time because even if you think you 'need' to you should always do it for the pedestrian, vehicle or bicycle that you don't see -- or even the person violating the law and driving down the shoulder of the highway.
And I don't even understand how your example is relevant. But you should take the lane and stay away from the door zone if you're bicycling (and when you're driving you should be careful about the door zone as well). They were in the wrong, but it sounds like you're not very aware either, which kind of only reinforces my point.
And arguably people who rigidly follow rules could be far more dangerous on the roads than not. For example, people who only go 100 kilometres per hour highways in Ontario - the speed limit on most highways here - even in the slow lane, cause traffic to have to move into passing/fast lane to go around them.
The back of a box van didn't have an outward moving door zone - and it was impossible to see that there was a pedestrian about to step out because the box van had no windows; nice try cherrypicking and not understanding/visualizing my argument fully/accurately in order to try to make an argument point.
So do you go exactly the speed limit where you live - or perhaps you even below the speed limit on highways?
I do always put my turn signal on because that's respectful as a warning to let people know your intentions ahead of time, and the blinking alerts the brain to a change before the movement actually starts (at least that's how they're meant to be used).
You didn't respond however to my example of rolling forward at an intersection, say where you're turning right, but it's a blind spot to the left - so you have to roll out as normal behaviour - to check if it's safe to continue with the full turn. So are you saying people should never do this, even though it's accepted-common practice (and what they actually teach in driving schools), because it's the same behaviour as a rolling stop - except the person comes to a full stop first and then slowly rolls out?
With all the assumptions you're making, I'm curious how quickly you're imagining the rolling stops I do are - in the limited circumstances/scenarios/contexts that I actually very occasionally do them?
I appreciate the conversation BTW - so thank you.
> I think every reasonable person would answer that they would [run the red light in the middle of nowhere].
I tend not to do it. Not because I have some overinflated worship of the letter of the law, but simply because it doesn't matter to me. If I'm in a hurry, I'll probably blow through it, but by default, probably not.
Edit: I also agree that you're being downvoted simply because people disagree with you or your style. It's something I'm getting somewhat tired of on HN. I think they need some concrete guidance on what's acceptable to downvote and try to keep it as much to "rules violations" as possible, because it's increasingly being used as a disagreement flag lately, in my observation, which is just unhealthy.
At least when I grew up in Australia, part of the road laws was a statement, very close to this effect:
"You are required to drive at the maximum speed that is 1) within the speed limit, 2) is appropriate for the conditions, and 3) within your ability to control the vehicle".
And that was the rationale for ticketing 'too slow' drivers. Within those constraints, there was no reason for you to go more slowly, and posed unnecessary risk to those who were within those criteria.
Ideally the traffic laws should be updated to be more realistic.
I'm not a "nuisance" for not going faster and breaking the speed limit. Everyone else is the "nuisance" and I vote for stronger enforcement where possible.
Too many people seem to believe that the only thing that matters is the road in front of them, they don't consider the side roads at all. The city is talking about narrowing the lanes on the main street to reduce speed and add bike lanes, and it can't happen soon enough.
So if you are being passed like crazy and going the speed limit, the speed limit is set incorrectly, and you are, in fact, the nuisance.
They are absolutely, for breaking the law, the nuisance in these situations. The number of people breaking the law does not change what the law is or, even necessarily, what the law should be.
It's a bad law that endangers people and should be changed. Going an unsafe speed is another law, and its entirely possible that there is no speed that does not violate one of those laws. The law is a relic of when cars were less safe, and the same safety can be achieved with much higher speeds.
Deliberately going the speed limit when it results in other drivers constantly passing you increases the danger to to everyone else around you significantly.
Please give this some thought.
Ideally, the German model would be enforced. Slower traffic keeps right, left lanes are for overtaking. And many places are unrestricted, meaning there's no speed limit. The system works quite well, and the flow of traffic is _vastly_ more predictable, and feels a lot safer than the US interstate system.
Can you substantiate that assertion somehow? People drive the speed that they feel safe with, but that is not necessarily true. It may be safe most of the time, but change due to external circumstances. It’s safe most of the time to drive 50km/h in a residential zone, except that one time when a child jumps out from behind a car.
https://archive.ph/QKVjR
There is also the issue of meatspace. Maybe your modern car can exceed the speed limit of the road surface and safely handle itself. Meanwhile, we still have our biology to deal with, which has not hardened itself to survive an impact at a high speed with a car. Only after millions of years of pedestrian deaths will that evolution be possible. When you find yourself driving 45-50mph on a road signed for 35mph, just know that if a pedestrian were to step out and appear in front of you, you are virtually guaranteed to kill them at this speed, and if you respected the signage, they have a better chance of surviving this impact.
> When you find yourself driving 45-50mph on a road signed for 35mph, just know that if a pedestrian
Change the road to be a 35mph road. It'll be cheaper too.
I suggest that this will in practice feel like you are being "passed like crazy".
FTFY.
Erring towards 100% cautious at all times isn't always better, it needs to be a balance between controlling the risk of accidents with the costs: time taken for individual drivers, general congestion of roads, even things like fuel consumption.
Risks vary according to weather conditions, traffic levels, times of day, etc etc. A prescriptive approach (e.g. always drive at X speed) isn't usually optimal.
are you joking? The risk of driving is injuries and death, primarily born by those _not_ in a car. How somebody weighs this with speeding or rolling stops, or any other form of acting like a careless driver is beyond me.
Most importantly, safe driving is good form. Speeding is trashy.
There are some states where it was found illegal to have someone slow down too fast, i.e. you can't have a 70 mph zone followed by a 30 mph zone. That would in fact constitute a speed trap of kinds, since no one can safely slow down 50 mph in an instant. The practical effect of this is 3 or 4 series of signs spaced exactly 100 ft or so, each one lowering the speed limit no more than 15 mph. It's the equivalent of a 'braking zone' on a race track, but on the street.
In some countries, it's not clear if you don't read the local language(Morocco, i'm looking at you!), but if the inverted red triangle exist, just do full stop.
Who cares how much carbon it saves when people get horrific injuries from it? If you want to save the planet, build intersections designed for rolling like roundabouts, crosswalks with signaling, and yield signs.
There are loads of stop signs at intersections where pedestrians would rarely if ever cross, maybe it would be possible to differentiate those intersections from crosswalks.
"Roundabout vs. 4-way stop, which one is superior?" - Interesting Engineering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brkrYdlMCsg
In the longer term - I suspect we will develop two different sets of laws as we understand what things robots do well and what things they do not. For example: I suspect that robots might be allowed to drive slightly faster on highways because they are better at maintaining the proper following distance, but always drive at the lowest speed limit for roads with variable conditions because they struggle to evaluate the environment.
Perhaps a better example is stop lines at intersections; sometimes stop lines are so poorly painted that you cannot see any oncoming traffic unless you pull forward another 5-6 feet. The letter of the law says you still must completely stop at the stop line, pull forward and completely stop again, then continue. Does anybody actually do that?
Because you're operating heavy machinery that regularly kills people.
----------
>The comment you are replying to said nothing about the law.
>> Why bother?
>Because you're operating heavy machinery that regularly kills people.
The context of the quote by globular-toast is from this paragraph:
>When driving I follow the spirit of the law, not necessarily the letter. If I'm approaching a stop sign and I can see clearly there are no other vehicles, bikes, people, etc, I slow down to very near a stop, but not a full stop. Why bother? The spirit of the law is to make sure I'm correctly yielding to other vehicles.
There's no doubt there was reference to law.
One of those things will get better as technology advances and more R&D is done on it, the other thing will not and hasn't for a very long time. Unless I misunderstood your comment and you are actually referring to some form of transhumanity?
Which, last I checked for the state of WA, is also illegal. Just because there isn’t a cop ticketing every rolling stop at the intersection next to the elementary school by my house doesn’t make it “kind of okay because a lot of people do it”. It just means the municipality sucks at enforcement.
It makes no sense when all you have to do is not use self driving.
If the speed limit is 60 mph, but everybody is going 75 mph, then the safest speed for you as an individual is going to be 75 mph. Otherwise, you're a rolling road block, likely to get rear-ended, forcing tons of cars to change lanes to get around you.
When it's 35 vs. 40 it's a lot safer to sit at the speed limit.
And in a 25 zone there's not really a flow of traffic to worry about.
On surface streets, speed limits are usually quite reasonable. In all the streets I drive regularly, I think the limits are good, except for one stretch where it has two lanes in each direction, and so I often want to go 45 mph, but the limit is 35, likely because there are some houses that directly face the street.
It's highways that often have unreasonably slow speed limits, at least here in Oregon.
I state the above entirely on its own merits, not as a judgment of "should I or should I not travel at speed X on this road".
(The joke here is that OR’s speed limit on highways is typically 10mph below that of other PNW states, even in the “least populated county in the U. S.)
If you increase the speed limit by 10mph, humans will just adjust up too.
I do agree that interstate speed laws need to be updated. The most dangerous spot I drive on an interstate is crossing a state line that drops from 70mph to 55mph. The slower zone is so dangerous because some people are then going 55mph and some still want to go 80mph.
I don't see how self driving can be anything other than the most perfect letter of the law driver though.
...much safer than human-driven cars, because they never tire and they never break traffic rules and thus never cause accidents
and
...supposed to bend and break traffic rules like humans quite often do in order to be efficient drivers
How should that be possible? Ah yeah, by having self-driving cars which are so extremely intelligent that they don't just follow the legal rules, but some idealistic set of rules deviating from the written laws that no human has ever been able to write down concisely, let alone bring into algorithmic form, but that is at the same time 100% safe and very efficient at allowing a maximum number of vehicles to reach their individual destinations in the shortest time possible.
Anyone not convinced that L5 self-driving cars are impossible without first developing a strong AGI way above human intelligence levels should have a really good solution for this obvious contradiction.
Computers cannot "think" at any speed.
This isn't surprising either. The process of making laws is political and politics are clearly not an ideal way to decide on a perfect and exhaustive and precisely detailed set of rules for anything. The laws do not constitute an algorithm for driving. They are necessarily simplified. And yes, a self driving car is going to need a set of driving rules that are much more detailed than anything humans have written down before.
I hate this so much. Selective enforcement only serves to enable overzealous enforcement against unpopular and disenfranchised groups.
One does one small thing wrong and they can then tack a large handful of other charges that would never otherwise be enforced. It's disgusting.
Make the rules things that should actually be rules. Enforce them as written. The end.
Absolutely not, at least in the context of speed limits. Where I live, most of the speed limits are at least 15mph lower than they should be (why is a 6 lane road 30mph???), so you get:
* people who follow the speed limit exactly: 30mph
* people who follow the speed limit the road was designed for: 45mph
* people who see the limit as a "limit:" 25mph
It's a mess. Roads need to be designed to the desired speed limit. Don't make a 6-lane straight road 30mph; people unfamiliar with the area will assume the speed limit's 50% higher than it is, and people from the area will feel like they're going incredibly slow.
In short, it should be uncomfortable to go >= 20mph over by design if you want people to follow your speed limits.
The fact that you start your post about how an AI can make such a determination with the words "it's not complicated" discredits you.
The assertion that a significant difference exists is not complicated and is easy to prove.
Not really. You can fail to see a pedestrian and cripple them and you won't see a whole lot of consequences for your "accident" (negligence).
Breaking rules on a case-by-case basis is also how the normalization of deviance occurs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ljzj9Msli5o
If you break rules when you think you don't need to follow them you'll find that you're not 99.9% perfect and you will inevitably cause a crash.
If you follow the rules all the time you won't make that error.
The reason why computers should ultimately replace human drivers is precisely because we're dangerously incompetent and overconfident and shouldn't be breaking any rules.
Their legal department works studiously to handwave away every marketing statement.
"The driver is only in the seat for legal purposes. The car is driving itself." - "You are entirely responsible for driving the vehicle."
"Use Summon to bring your car to you while dealing with a fussy child." - "Pay attention to vehicle at all times."
1) they have to be simple enough to fit in an AVERAGE DRIVER's head (it is a miracle to me that highways in cities are as functional and low-error as they are yes I know the death statistics on driving)
2) the law makers know the laws will be bent, so they set a baseline of VERY VERY SAFE and hope that most people only bend the law to VERY SAFE or at worst MOSTLY SAFE.
It seems weird given how "bad" self-driving algs are right now, but with a detailed database of locations and context, I absolutely believe the "rolling stop" logic in the car would be safer and more effective than a human observing complete stops.
I definitely do not agree with Tesla's vision-only no-location-context algorithm approach. Such a thing is a baseline, but if you know the location to where you are going, then route-specific data should be downloaded that has been optimized with multiple specific AI computation passes.
That's how humans work: we are slow and dumb when we are driving in unfamiliar locations and routes, but for our commute routes we know where potholes are, cracks in the road, which lane to be in, dangerous sidestreets and intersections and congestion points, etc.
So I disagree that L5 is impossible. Well, it depends on "way above human intelligence". I think what you are trying to say is you need a supersapient intellect with IQ 195.
But AIs can be "dumb" but have access to a far larger memory space and database and respond to a far wider bandwidth of sensor information. The AI programs may not be solving Fermat's Last Theorem in the margin of a book, but they can be smarter in the sense that it's like having a million gnomes watching at once.
I'd say even "normal human intelligence" would suffice for at least getting L5 to work (maybe not with perfect safety and efficiency, but working at all). But you cannot remove the need for actual "intelligence" from the equation, and that's the problem: our AIs are not "intelligent" at all. They are idiot savants, and driving a car isn't exactly a problem where you need savant-like capabilities. It is a very general, broad-range problem, which is much more applicable for the broad mental capabilities of even the not-so-smart part of humanity.
Case in point: there are human savants in areas like playing chess or Go or recognizing text in many different spoken languages, but there are no human savants in the area of driving cars on public roads.
Or possibly they just know that real world driving involves so many context-dependent decisions that trying to cover it all with laws is about as reasonable as making a self driving car.
I think it's the nerds that are delusional.
No, because they never tire and almost never break traffic rules in dangerous ways, and thus cause accidents much less frequently than humans. Realistically, this means that instead of following the speed limit they'd follow speed limit + X, instead of keeping the prescribed distance they'd keep whatever distance human drivers typically maintain (while still keeping enough distance to react and stop), and it also means rolling through 4-way stops when they have sufficient confidence that it is safe to do so.
Just like you will find people complain about taking their manual shift away when none of the US drivers ever knew what they are even missing.
If I'm responsible, then I can choose to have the car break the law on my behalf, and accept the consequences.
Please drive your car. You owe this to everyone else on the road.
It is my belief that this will always be true.
From yesterday:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ESJH1NLMLs
"... as we look at this accident history what we find is that in 68% of these accidents, automation dependency plays a significant part ..."
"... automation dependent pilots allowed their airplanes to get much closer to the edge of the envelope than they should have ..."
You are also required to have your lights on when you are driving. It notably increases visibility even during the day.
I came back to the US really wishing those policies would go into effect nationwide.
Having said that a lot of roads in my area are already built around 4 way stops and it's not easy to undo that, but new construction in my area of suburbia US has adopted the roundabout.
And there is a driver problem, majority of American almost never have any experience driving on roundabouts. I seen some would simply cut off the roundabout traffic and proceed on their way without yielding.
https://www.google.com/maps/@56.5903811,-3.3375594,3a,75y,21...
The data shows that roundabouts are safer and even improve traffic flow. But they're also a nightmare to install after the fact, which is why it is so uncommon. All we can do is stop making the same mistakes going forward.
Same thing with burying power lines: Far cheaper to do with new construction, substantially more reliable and better able to withstand natural disasters, but we aren't. Society is just bad at planning for tomorrow if it costs us a little today at every level.
- If you have one 'entrance' to the roundabout which is partially busy, say at rush hour, it becomes near impossible to enter the roundabout from a different direction. With a normal roundabout many more cars can be on the roundabout at once and a natural flow, even from less used entrances, just happened. This does not work on a mini roundabout.
- Where they have replaced a T junction, people often ignore it causing (near) accidents when going "straight on" when they don't have right of way.
They are definitely not a one size fits all solution.
https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/intersection/roundabouts/
<button>DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?</button>
Personally I'd like a Foghat option:
<button>Slow ride, take it easy.</button>
It can be a real pleasure to enjoy a buttery-smooth ride, and robots will excel at it. And of course manufacturers will optimize for it since it demonstrates confidence and safety. OTOH, you know what can also be fun? Having a Tesla kick your butt with almost 1 G.
There should be a reasonably-smooth default setting, a "show me your skills" super-smooth setting, a "sporty" setting, and "madman". The latter would probably cost extra due to the extra wear and tear, and I'm sure I'd pay for it, at least once, for the experience.
But yes, it's technically "illegal", just like a rolling stop. Which prods the question of why one is subject to regulatory oversight and the other is not.
Because one is a safety issue when done, and one is a safety issue when not done. Not obeying the speed limit is (mostly) safe when matching the traffic around you. Not stopping fully at a stop sign is unsafe since it can lead to accidents regardless of what everyone else around you does.
Or to flip it around... obeying the speed limit but not matching the traffic around you is generally unsafe. While obeying the stop sign and stopping fully is always safe.
Same with rolling stop in fsd, it's even more clearly a decision by the car which would naturally fall under self driving regulation while decisions by the driver naturally wouldn't. I.e. this isn't a "perform rolling stops" button the driver pressed to force the decision.
>A recall is issued when a manufacturer or NHTSA determines that a vehicle, equipment, car seat, or tire creates an unreasonable safety risk or fails to meet minimum safety standards. Manufacturers are required to fix the problem by repairing it, replacing it, offering a refund, or in rare cases repurchasing the vehicle.
So basically, regardless of whether the fix is a software or hardware update, any issue a car has that "creates an unreasonable safety risk or fails to meet minimum safety standards" falls underneath the "recall" banner. I can see the benefit here; a recall generally gets a certain level of publicity that a "software update" might otherwise not. It might not be a bad idea for people crossing at stop signs to think, "Hmm, Tesla approaching, let's exercise just a bit more caution", until this is resolved.
[1]https://www.nhtsa.gov/staticfiles/rulemaking/pdf/Recalls-FAQ...
I was perplexed by the wording as well. Apparently software updates can be labeled recalls now? Did someone inform Microsoft, maybe this would help Windows 11 adoption.
The car still needed to be fixed. The car was faulty.
I liked this feature, damnit.
Karpathy has commented about the neural nets gradually replacing the traditional code. See his presentation[2] around 18:45.
[1] https://saneryee-studio.medium.com/deep-understanding-tesla-...
[2] https://youtu.be/hx7BXih7zx8
I have the FSD beta on my Model X, and opted in to assertive not knowing that it enabled rolling stops. I enabled "assertive" in hopes of making the car less timid about unprotected turns.
Its frustrating that I paid $3000 for this 4+ years ago, and waited 4 years for the feature, and was made to drive overly gently (no hard cornering or braking) in order to get a good "safety score" for quite a while before I could even try it. The $3000 would have been much better off had I invested it in Tesla stock.
If this is where they are after 4 years, I don't hold out much hope.
We have solid infrastructure so can’t speak to the potholes complaint. A few months back FSD beta started acknowledging speed bumps and taking them slowly so I’d imagine potholes are in the works.
I tweeted at Elon about the potholes.. let's hope something improves.
They include:
- Driving too close to parked cars for comfort on un-laned side streets when there is no oncoming traffic. I personally like to leave enough room to avoid somebody opening their door into me, if I have the room.
- Leaving way too much space in front of the car at stoplights. This is a problem when it leads to blocking the entrance to left turn lanes, etc.
- Totally blowing through stop signs in parking lots.
- Freaking out and making me take over on a mildly tricky interstate interchange where 2 lanes narrow to one.
And I'm sure there are a million others that I'm forgetting about.
Are things really "progressing just fine" if the car is repeatedly putting itself into dangerous situations?
Edit: I suppose that one could make the argument that we didn't even have this kind of tech on the roads ten years ago, and sure, that's progress in one sense. But I wouldn't call it "just fine" by a long shot, nor would I dismiss these concerns as whininess.
It'd be ~$40,000 >.<
Could be worse. If the people who put a $50,000 down payment on a Roadster 2.0 the day they announced them had bought $TSLA instead, they would have enough money now to pay cash for TWO Roadsters and have enough money left over to add a Model S Plaid.
They really need to add some explicit controls over this like navigate on autopilot has. I've had to disengage so many times due to it making really dumb moves that could be fixed with just asking me first. I know thats against their end goal but their models just are not there yet.
No wonder it is eligible for the nickname of 'Fools Self Driving'.
The numbers of drivers driving through reds (at least here in coastal San Diego) has noticeably increased over the past two years, previously people would hit the gas if the lights turned yellow, now they are hitting the gas if they see yellow (and crossing through the intersection on red). Accident statistics seem to back that up https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/29/us/red-light-deaths-trnd/inde...
Making traffic rules less strict seems like a recipe for more accidents and deaths.
the “recall” is an OTA software update
Please see this: https://www.nhtsa.gov/staticfiles/rulemaking/pdf/Recalls-FAQ...
>A recall is issued when a manufacturer or NHTSA determines that a vehicle, equipment, car seat, or tire creates an unreasonable safety risk or fails to meet minimum safety standards. Manufacturers are required to fix the problem by repairing it, replacing it, offering a refund, or in rare cases repurchasing the vehicle.
If most people adopted that unsafe unlawful behaviour but which help reduce congestion, what are you suppose to do as a car maker if respecting the law will make other users road-rage against your client using your self-driving system?
Kinda cheeky, but I bet a lot of people would love automated driving features that change behavior around police.
In the end, it comes down to personal responsibility. Apparently the people in Germany drive more responsibly than everywhere else?
I know everyone on HN get's outraged by these decisions with FSD (and regulators do too). One thing I think this exposes is actually human driving. This is in fact common - the system is reflecting things back to us.
I was on road up higher and the number of people on their phones is mind boggling. THey will literally sit at a green because they are so checked out, they will be texting while merging. It's madness.
Personally I think almost all stop signs should be replaced with roundabouts as it better represents how people want to drive and allows for rolling stops but that’s just me
But four-way stop signs absolutely should not be a thing. Anywhere a 4-way stop exists should certainly be a roundabout.
The only problem is that roundabouts in the USA are exceedingly rare in most of the country. There would need to be a massive education campaign for them to work for most people. There are an alarming number of Americans that think that the people already on the roundabout have to yield for the people coming on.
The problem that I see is just insufficient respect for traffic laws. I'm not sure what to do about it, aside from more police presence.
Yes, that seems to be a somewhat common solution, eg: https://goo.gl/maps/XJ8SNDDrQBhBu1nH8
There's no concept of "right of way" on Australian roads. There's only "duty to yield". It might seem like a subtle concept/difference, but when it comes time to stand up in court/ be pulled over/ avoid an accident, it frames things better.
Too many in the US are "it's my road, asshole, I got the right of way".
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/adaptive-behavior/20...
If self-driving vehicles are simply going to operate like facsimiles of human driving behavior their benefits are greatly diminished.
As others have pointed out, this may force us to contend with the laws first since it's clear local enforcement and laws are not aligned.
When a majority of driving is autonomous, laws will likely evolve slightly. If/when all driving is autonomous, then things get really interesting: short following distance, peer-to-peer intersections without stops, etc.
EDIT: Not really sure why I am getting downvoted for this, you can search google and get maybe hundreds if not thousands of results about truck/bus drivers and heart attacks/strokes causing deadly crashes, but they get maybe 1% of the media attention of an FSD video rolling through a stop sign https://fox4kc.com/news/family-says-driver-of-tractor-traile...
there was no AEB alert so there was not an unanticipated vehicle detected...
it is a right turn onto a 2 lane road, where the right lane is protected by parked cars.
the tesla pulls into the PROTECTED lane to see around the parked cars.
you are assuming that it would have then decided to pull into traffic, but that belief is pretty unfounded. When FSD cannot see well enough to decide that a turn is safe, it will literally sit there for minutes. Yes, i am quite certain it would have done that in the protected parking lane.
I'm not assuming anything - what I told you happened is literally how the driver -- who likes Tesla and has has owned 3 others before this one -- reported it.
"If I didn’t slam the brakes, we would’ve been taken out by the UPS truck."
But sure, go off about how certain you are when there's video evidence proving you wrong...
Anyone familiar with driving in Los Angeles knows that when it's safe to do so (e.g., when there is no cross traffic on a turn), a rolling stop is extremely common. So common that it is plausible that people behind you might honk if you insist on doing a full stop and then cautiously proceed. Especially during rush-hour.
By the same token, most people in Los Angeles drive 5 to 10 MPH over the posted speed limits. Driving at the posted speed limit will cause other drivers to hate you.
And I've driven in LA plenty of times. It might be the norm for LA drivers, sure, but I would also argue that that whole region could use at least a bit more patience when on the road.
The speed limit differential gets into a bit more of a grey area, though, in regards to laws that require you to maintain a speed that's in line "with the flow of traffic". It's similar in Atlanta; posted speed limit might be 55, but you're likely going to be going at least 70 in the slow lane in order to maintain the flow.
Granted, I usually drive pretty fast and am aware of my tendency to be impatient behind the wheel, but it seems, anecdotally at least, like LA is worse than many other areas in that regard. The first 20 minutes driving around after I leave LAX are usually spent thinking, "I'm crazy, but these people put me to goddamn shame and I need to adapt quickly," lol.
All of this is the direct result of little enforcement for traffic rules. I've never seen someone pulled over ever in California unless there's been an accident. I've never seen a cop with a radar gun. I've actually seen the LAPD speed past me and hang out in the left lane with no lights on, because that's just how the standard of driving is in LA apparently. You try that in the midwest and you will be pulled over for going to fast, for going to slow, for having a 10 foot tall stack of scrap metal in your truck, for spending to much time in the left lane, and for failing to signal. The highways feel truly lawless in California.
Being honked at takes cycles to triage what’s happening; in itself that lowers safety.
This works until you do it to a driver who has had a really bad day and demonstrates that the walk sign isn't a force field.
Yes, he'll probably go to jail for vehicular manslaughter, but that doesn't help you.
And that constant neck pain, limited mobility and/or arthritis that creep their way into your neck as you get old as a result would be so worth it.
Sounds like they'd be nobly sacrificing themselves to remove two people with anger issues from the general population!
I can say confidently that I've never looked at any other driver doing this and thought anything but, "Jesus Christ, calm the fuck down." I've been that guy doing the honking as well, and I'm fully aware that nobody arounds me gives a shit and they just find me annoying. Hell, half the time most of them don't even know what happened; they just look over and see some overly-angry dude screaming at someone.
>... especially if they have some passenger.
Did you really embarrass them in front of the passenger, or yourself? What if the transgression you're honking at was a genuine mistake with a reason that actually makes sense? I've been the passenger in situations like this before and have found myself thinking, "Yeah, oops, but I don't totally fault my driver or the other driver for this and the chud doing the honking needs to chill out because clearly they don't understand the driver's perspective."
It's almost always immediately obvious what the transgression is if you're paying the slightest bit of attention.
Even the people who are on their phones at a light and have to regain situational awareness from square one do a pretty good job figuring it out.
Sometimes a "bit" of safety isn't worth the tradeoff in throughput. But that also assumes it's safer to stop completely. It's very possible that smoother traffic flow is safer. Or maybe there's more risk that you get rear-ended than is caused by a rolling stop.
Let's say you have a stop sign in your neighborhood that "everyone" rolling-stops through. Sure, great, let's look into changing that stop into maybe a yield, or a roundabout, or whathaveyou that safely allows for the flow that that street necessitates. But in the meantime? Stop at the stop sign! Yeah, sure, we can make the argument that the rolling stop is now "predictable" to everyone in the neighborhood, but what happens when you get an out-of-towner in front of you on your morning commute and you slack off on watching for them to stop, resulting in you rear-ending them?
Improving the flow of traffic is great, but ignoring rules for the sake of flow adds additional layers of unpredictability that ultimately result in roads that are less safe for drivers/pedestrians, at least IMO.
Anyone who drives in LA during rush hour knows that it is never safe to do a rolling stop, because during rush hour there is going to be cross traffic and you need to check that there is cross-traffic at the intersection before turning.
I've witnessed a lot of accidents where some moron thought that saving 3 seconds was more important than safety, and rolled right in front a car that had the right-of-way, or into a pedestrian in the crosswalk that the driver hadn't seen.
I'm not sure that modeling human behavior is the right way to design a self driving car.
There's no benefit to the computer swerving in and out of the lane like a drunk driver, or taking an intentionally inefficient route like a crooked taxi driver, or other pure-downside criminality.
In theory, the car should be paying attention in all directions at the same time and won't get into an accident, but car sensors are not infallible, especially when detecting pedestrians, moreso if they are partially obscured by foliage, newspaper stands, etc.
Automated cars should stop 100% of the time at intersections where they are required to do so. When the stop signs are changed to "Self-driving yield" signs, then the cars can do a rolling stop.
So my point wasn't that cars should act like drunk drivers, but that modeling human behaviors is not the right mindset for self-driving cars.
Easy to retrofit a 4-way intersection into a roundabout.
Looks to me like the US is still on the highish side for deaths per vehicle-mile compared to the EU and Canada, although not that high by worldwide standards.