2d ago

Self-Driving Tesla Fails School Bus Test, Hitting Child-Size Dummies… Meanwhile, Robo-Taxis Hit the Road in 2 Weeks.

Self-Driving Tesla Fails School Bus Test, Hitting Child-Size Dummies… Meanwhile, Robo-Taxis Hit the Road in 2 Weeks. - FuelArc News

I have no confidence that Tesla will fix this before the planned Robo-Taxi rollout in Austin in 2 weeks.

After all, they haven't fixed it in the last 9 years that self-driving Teslas have been on the road.

Fuck Cars @lemmy.world

KayLeadfoot @fedia.io

2d ago

Self-Driving Tesla Fails School Bus Test, Hitting Child-Size Dummies… Meanwhile, Robo-Taxis Hit the Road in 2 Weeks.

fuelarc.com /tech/test-shows-self-driving-tesla-blowing-school-bus-stop-signs-to-run-over-child-sized-dummies-raising-concerns-about-planned-robo-taxi-rollout-in-2-weeks/

Autonomous Vehicles @futurology.today

KayLeadfoot @fedia.io

2d ago

Self-Driving Tesla Fails School Bus Test, Hitting Child-Size Dummies… Meanwhile, Robo-Taxis Hit the Road in 2 Weeks.

fuelarc.com /tech/test-shows-self-driving-tesla-blowing-school-bus-stop-signs-to-run-over-child-sized-dummies-raising-concerns-about-planned-robo-taxi-rollout-in-2-weeks/

145 comments

This one is pretty unforgivable. Supposedly the ability to detect these situations was added in December (according to the article) but it's clearly not working very well. Something like this should 100% pause the rollout of robo-taxis.
For normal cars though, the drivers should press the brakes to disable FSD when they see their car not slowing down when approaching a stopped bus like this.
- Except the big danger with fully self driving cars is that drivers are not paying attention at all as they have nothing to do most of the time. They'll be on their phones regardless of what theyre supposed to do and that will cause deaths. So such a glaring safety flaw will have numerous opportunities to happen in real life - humans do not make good safety features in cars; thats what the self drive stuff was for.
  Teslas self drive technology is not fit for the roads regardless of this. Musk had sensors stripped out pf the cars design to save money because apparently he knows better than all the worlds self drive engineers. The guy is a just an investment bro woth a huge ego - he can't let the people hes investing in get onwith it, because he sees himself as a "genius". The guys a moron.
  
  Linus tech tips recently reviewed a car with semi auto self driving. It can keep you in the lane and at the right speed. He said it’s perfect for school zones because he knows he doesn’t have to watch the Speedo and give that extra attention to watching for kids walking out. I have to agree with him, there is a school on my commute and the speed drops to 20mph. I let the car do that bit while I worry about little (or sometimes big) feet.
  Would I trust that system to spot a child before I do? Not a chance.
  
  They’ll be on their phones regardless of what theyre supposed to do and that will cause deaths.
  So no different to in non self-driving cars then.

They know these things are going to kill people; it's just inevitable.
Engineers are well aware of there being a cost-benefit analysis for saving human lives. O'Grady from Practical Engineering did a great video explaining how much a human life is worth to engineers. I think it was a little under $60k.
The purpose of reducing government oversight as much as possible is so that the cost of killing people is as low as possible.
It's not an on/off switch of government regulation. They know that every additional policy they can shift in their favor will translate to increased profits down the line as people inevitably die from these things.
- Fight Club taught me the cost of human life to corporations.
  If PredictedLawsuitLosses < CostOfRecall then RecallNotAnnounced
  Human life doesn't factor in at all for them.
  
  Human life absolutely factors into predicted lawsuit losses. Wrongful death lawsuits are expensive.
- Some of you may die~
  But it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.
- This is why capitalists align with fascists.
  Google, Meta, etc, are all taking the knee, because no regulation lets them slurp up our data. Target is shooting itself in the foot on DEI to appease stupid Mussolini, because a fascist autocrat doesn’t enforce labor protections.
  
  Fascism, at its core, is an alignment between government and corporations. Capitalists align with fascism because that's the entire point of fascism.
- Damn, must suck living in the US
  
  I lived there for six-ish years- from 1998 until 2004.
  When Americans re-elected GWB, I realized “this place is RAPIDLY becoming a shithole that’s only going to get worse.” I got the hell out as soon as I was able, and every single day since, I’ve been more relieved I left when I did.
- I'd be down if and when they do better than human drivers. Until then, there's trains.
  
  They hate trains..."THERE IS ONLY TWO GENDERS!"
  
  The problem is, it's already better than the worst human drivers, it's just that that's too low a bar. It's a looong way away from being better than the best human drivers (think taxi and bus drivers who do it every day, or police who actually go through extra vehicle handling training)
- On the bright side, maybe this is building up to an "owner of the Segway company"-type ending?

Tesla self driving is already responsible for the deaths of multiple people.
They weren't held accountable for those.
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
- If regular school shootings were no reason to actually do something, why would regular deadly accidents with self driving systems be one? I'm always amazed by what Americans are willing to tolerate.
  
  Every day more people feel like they have nothing to lose.
  It's only a matter of time before they direct their ire towards the ones who put them in that position.
- That's slightly different since most states will put full responsibility on the driver even for autonomous cars. If there's no driver, though, it would go back to the manufacturer. That's why Uber gave up on self driving after one of their test cars ran over someone.

Much like the mass shootings in the U.S., there's literally no solution for this. /s
- Well, what are we 'aposta do?!
  Strangle these defenseless corporations with the same kind of regulations we continue to create and impose on small businesses? Do you even know who their father is?!
  
  You got the strangle part right.
- Where is Luigi
- These never get old:
  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BxvxbZGjlv4
  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wNtxtuQxUz8
  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QbXTDuwSVkk

So, the USA people are the beta testers, i guess.
- only Texans... (with the robotaxis)
  
  Texas state legislature has passed a law making it illegal for cities to pass laws more restrictive than the state laws and Austin which is known to be full of progressives. This makes it a perfect place for Tesla to beta-test it's software. They'll kill people likely to vote for Democrats.
  
  Thoughts and prayers.
- Might also explain why they're the only ones that seem to have all this knowledge of a population crisis that no one else is aware of.
  Thank God for the technocratic elite, and their foresight to know their plans for greatness will almost certainly wipe out the entire U.S. population. Hazard of being part of the unwashed masses, I guess.
  Glad they are doing all this while they simultaneously argue that a loss of our personal liberty is a small price to pay for their protection. If they weren't keeping us safe from... ::gestures vaguely:: China(?) then who would?

I guess there's going to be a lot of heroes popping Robo-Taxi tires. To protect their community and all that.
- I recall that people blocked Waymo cars at one point by simply placing orange cones in front of them. Given Teslas only use cameras I wonder if you could just slap a sticker of an orange cone (or just a splash of orange paint) on the hood and confuse it enough that it wouldn’t move…
  Edit: Or, if you really want to be a dick, get some black stickers (the stronger the glue the better) and surreptitiously put them over one or more cameras.
  
  Given Teslas only use cameras
  This still blows my mind. My fucking robot vacuum uses LiDAR, and multi-ton vehicles on public roads use cameras? Jesus Christ.

I knew I was better than a Tesla. I actually got my Class A for driving a school bus. I can legally drive pretty much anything on wheels, because the school bus pretty much requires everything. Even hazardous material training. Just in case the government needs to use a school bus to offload nuclear waste or something. I just like to think the kids are toxic. 🤷🏻‍♂️
- When I worked with kids, there were a lot of biohazards. Mostly shit, snot, and piss, but on a bus you'll probably get a fair bit of puke too. I'm guessing the driver has to clean the bus.
  
  I'm wondering if maybe it was just your driving style
- You have to have hazmat to drive a school bus?!?
  
  Just some minor training associated with it. I do not actually have a hazmat endorsement; it's literally just a special thing for school buses because they are allowed to be used to transport such material in an emergency.
  But the training would make it rather easy to obtain the endorsement, if I really wanted it (I do not tho).

So motorcyclists weren't enough, they're going after kids now? Did they move their headquarters to israel?
- rofl

Did they try it with a lighter colored child?
- No worries, it happens a lot, people are just drawn to me

Correction: Robo-Taxis Hit the Child in 2 Weeks
- My immediate thought was “That’s not all they’re going to be hitting…”

It's because it was so good that it knew it was a dummy and not a child /s

Let's not get carried away pretending America cares too much about children dying frfr.
- Yeah once they're out of the womb, fuck 'em. We only care about the unborn.
  
  They don't actually care about the unborn either. They just want women to suffer, that's always been the only goal.
- If we did the Carolina Lean is a bigger threat than Elon, but somehow that's legal in most states.
- Yeah the draconian punishment and outcry when someone dares to overtake a school bus is absolutely laughable.
  Give that child chance to be shot the next day in school! Or starve to death, because they can't afford school lunches.

The article doesn’t mention anything about where the cars will be driving in Austin, but I reluctantly took a Waymo from the airport in Phoenix to a hotel and it did really well. Even slowed down for a guy who was jaywalking.
It ended up taking longer than expected because apparently they’re either require or trained on different roads than you would normally take (e.g. no highways). It did such a good job, though, that I ended up taking a Waymo a second time while there.
All this to say that it may not be ready for all roads, but is ready for some. Definitely still scary though.
- I believe Waymo has a better set of sensors (Lidar + Radar+ Cameras instead of just cameras), more processing power, and more research / time / resources spent on it compared to Tesla.
  So it's not that we aren't ready for self driving taxis, but rather about which cars are ready to provide that service
  
  I think Waymo is also trying to prioritize safety. I was in San Francisco recently and took one, just out of curiosity, from my hotel to a Giants game. It seemed to stop when pedestrian traffic got heavy instead of going all the way to the stadium. So, like three blocks from the stadium. No biggie. I might have told a human taxi driver I could walk from there.
  I’m not sure if it’s a California regulation or Waymo trying to play it safe but I will never get in a self-driving car regulated by Texas and designed to the specifications of one of history’s biggest dumbasses.
  
  Makes sense. There were sensors alll over that thing.
- Waymo is really interesting - you probably wouldn't guess it, I'm a cautiously optimistic autonomy person! Waymo is already 12x safer than human drivers, that's brilliant, I love that.
  Teslas will (allegedly) start on a small, low-complexity street grid in Austin. exact size TBA. Presumably, they're mapping the shit out of it and throwing compute power at analyzing their existing data for that postage stamp.
  The rub... that all points out the obvious danger of rolling out the wild-west FSD that Tesla drivers are currently employing everywhere else. If it's safe enough to trust to drive your car for you, why does it need a ton of additional guard-rails to operate without a safety driver?
  
  Yeah it’s scary to think about. There should be laws though that you’re still 100% at fault if you were not driving during an accident. I imagine another issue with FSD is government having a backdoor into your car to immobilize you or whatever they want. Part of me is in favor of that, but of course that a huuuge responsibility that can be abused.
  
  Teslas will (allegedly) start on a small, low-complexity street grid in Austin. exact size TBA. Presumably, they're mapping the shit out of it and throwing compute power at analyzing their existing data for that postage stamp.
  Lol where are the Tesla fanboys insisting that geofencing isn't useful for developing self driving tech?
  
  Can Waymo sometimes use a remote human driver?
- I am optimistic about self driving, just not Teslas. Unlike other self driving cars, Tesla is exlusively reliant on cameras. Others, like Waymo, have cameras, lidarr sensors and radar.
  
  It's weird--Tesla at least projected some sort of 'higher-end' quality back when they first started coming around but as time has gone on it's proven itself to be a very cheaply-made vehicle.
  The fact they insist on using their proven-inferior tech for FSD tells you all you need to know: they aren't looking to innovate or even bring themselves up to modern standards. They are determined to make their cars with the cheapest, shittiest tech and they'll just grease the right palms in order to proceed as necessary.

Texas releasing these things in public is horrifying. Tesla is last in this field, and refuses to add LIDAR, which is obviously what is needed.
- My $60 robot vacuum has lidar....
  
  Maybe you can get a business going mounting roombas on Tesla bumpers?
- Lidar is one of the things it needs, but even when they properly see what's ahead they don't interpret it correctly and don't take the correct actions, it's bigger than just lidar, which is honestly terrifying

The children were hamas obviously
- They were behind white genocide in South Africa
- “And if you don’t support killing them, you support terrorists, mmmkaaaaayyyy” — Bill Maher

If their "AI" wind shield wipers could identify.....rain?....I'd be more hopeful about identifying a child.

Can't wait for the robo taxis to get vandalized.
Barring that, can't wait until they fail miserably.

I wonder if the FSD disengaged mere seconds before impact so Tesla can blame anything but their shitty software.

It hits the road in America. And considering the state of that country, this isn’t even near the list of problems atm.
- Maybe y'all can't shoot the cars when they go Christine on you.

Move fast and break things!
- Move fast and break ~~things~~ schoolchildren!
- I still don't get how anyone thought this notion was ever considered a good strategy for anything... it clearly shows these people have no skin in the game because there is no way they would break their own things
  
  This is exactly what it is. Move fast, and break other people's things. Then never fucking take responsibility
  
  I'm developing a game engine, that is currently unpopular, instead of trying to make the old API work with the new rendering system, I just decided to completely redo a lot of stuff. It was mandatory for the GUI subsystem as previously it was a spaghetti code of mess, now it's a pretty well usable thing. It was less mandatory with the sprite and tile rendering, but I needed to adjust stuff to OpenGL, as previously it used the CPU.
- Did you mean: Move fast and murder children?
- "fail faster" was always my favourite
- A German party campaigned under the slogan "Digital first. Bedenken second" (Sic, i.e. mostly english). Bedenken means concerns.
  They were punished pretty hard last election.

Tesla be like: Yeet the child!

Well DUH! It's trained off of the asshats who drive them, and most of them blow right past flashing red school buses and stop signs.

Worth saving this article for future class actions. Go go go!

These accidents could be the dell knell for Tesla with the lawsuits that will follow
- Hooray for the free market!
  I'm sure all the dead children would have been proud to be collateral damage for such an important event!

This is a fitting allegory for AI.
- Yeah. Yeah, can't use it in any failure-sensitive field right now.
  No more than you could use a human who periodically hallucinates (and that means you are NOT good to drive, give me them keys XD )

Listen. If we cared about safety we do something about it. This is where we are.

Elon is not going to personally take responsibility for his cars?

They should throw in a loony tunes landscape for extra comedic value.
- Mark Rober already did that.

How the fuck, will this get the go ahead? In the US you can sue anyone for anything, how long before a class action gets filed against Tesla and their death traps?
- Tesla owns the gov rn, litigation against tesla will be domestic terorism
- Oh don't worry, the grifters will all have cashed out and be floating away on golden parachutes long after the decades of litigation is over.

Kids just gotta run faster is all.

ok maybe this is easier to address: is there any safety test that a self driving Tesla doesn't fail?
- They're very effective at preventing pregnancy and STIs.
  
  I heard it in health class a bajillion times, so as a reminder, abstinence is the only effective birth cont- oh wait, no, no, Teslas are very effective at preventing pregnancy and STIs.

only a tesla could collide with the very road it's driving on
I get that's not what "hit the road" means but I stand by what I said

It's a Tesla, so probably mistook the dummy for an immigrant. In other words: Within specs

Kid should have moved for the musk mutilater 2.00.

They’re only following the Norm theory (rest in peace), helping us kill the dummies so as a specie we grow intellectually
- I believe that was a Cliff theory.

What the fuck Tesla 🥲

These things need tires.
Tires are rubber.
Texas has a lot of guns.
- You can literally wear a mask and just put tape over a couple cameras while it's stopped at a light and the whole thing will just freak out. Spray paint is probably even faster.
  
  Faster to apply and much harder to remove.

Luckily you can sabotage a robot car the same way you can sabotage a normal car. Actually there's more ways than a normal car.
- Continue...

Waymo, which I think grew out of the original Google self-driving car project, has been operating robo-taxis for several years. They're available in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and a few more cities. I wonder how they did on the schoolbus test. Not able to find anything online about that. They use different car manufacturers from China, UK, Germany, and it looks like one of them (Jaguar Land Rover) is owned or partly owned by Ford. So data about the individual cars is kind of hard to track down.
- Atlanta is the latest launch city, they are all white Jaguar i-Paces.
- Waymo had non-standard stop-signs figured out six years ago XD Feels essential to running a half-way responsible autonomous car service?
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vu8gmFhiGko

Not unexpected.

So it's working as intended, if everyone is scared of walking or driving with those killer-taxis roaming around, some people will be tricked into hiding inside the killer-robo-taxis.
- The only way that you can stop a crazy-killer-robo-taxi is to have your own craxy-killer-robo-taxi.
  Craxy-killer-robo-taxi don't kill people... Oh wait, they do.

If that photo is from the actual test, Cheesus Sliced...
There's so little going on for video to pick up on apart from overcoming folage texture.

145 comments