Tesla Robotaxi Freaks Out and Drives into Oncoming Traffic on First Day

And this is why DOGE gutted the Office for Vehicle Automation Safety at the NHTSA.
- I thought that was to economize for expenses?!
  So naturally they started with 5 employees in the smallest office of one of the smallest divisions of the NHTSA. Nooooo ulterior motive, nosiree

this would get a normal person's car impounded and drivers license revoked. why can a company get away with it?
- Systemic corruption.
  
  Regulatory ~~capture~~ decapitation
  
  It wouldn't say corruption, I think it's more that the law around the road was designed with a driver in mind, not with a company or even a robot. the consequences have been thought to hurt a person at fault because at the time only a person could drive
- Elon has enough fuck-you money to pay off anyone who would've complained.
  
  He also paid his way into a government position to shut down the government offices that opposed him.
- They had so many cameras on this car, how many laws do you think each average driver breaks every 22 minutes?
  It would be interesting if they could figure out why the car chose to do these specific things,

Imagine you're the guy who invented SawStop, the table saw that can detect fingers touching the saw blade and immediately bury the blade in an aluminum block to avoid cutting off someone's finger. Your system took a lot of R&D, it's expensive, requires a custom table saw with specialized internal parts so it's much more expensive than a normal table saw, but it works, and it works well. You've now got it down that someone can go full-speed into the blade and most likely not even get the smallest cut. Every time the device activates, it's a finger saved. Yeah, it's a bit expensive to own. And, because of the safety mechanism, every time it activates you need to buy a few new parts which aren't cheap. But, an activation means you avoided having a finger cut off, so good deal! You start selling these devices and while it's not replacing every table saw sold, it's slowly being something that people consider when buying.
Meanwhile, some dude out of Silicon Valley hears about this, and hacks up a system that just uses a $30 webcam, an AI model that detects fingers (trained exclusively on pudgy white fingers of Silicon Valley executives) and a pinball flipper attached to a rubber brake that slows the blade to a stop within a second when the AI model sees a finger in danger.
This new device, the, "Finger Saver" doesn't work very well at all. In demos with a hotdog, sometimes the hotdog is sawed in half. Sometimes the saw blade goes flying out of the machine into the audience. After a while, the company has the demo down so that when they do it in extremely controlled conditions, it does stop the hotdog from being sawed in half, but it does take a good few chunks out of it before the blade fully stops. It doesn't work at all with black fingers, but the Finger Saver company will sell you some cream-coloured paint that you can paint your finger with before using it if your finger isn't the right shade.
Now, imagine if the media just referred to these two devices interchangeably as "finger saving devices". Imagine if the Finger Saver company heavily promoted their things and got them installed in workshops in high schools, telling the shop teachers that students are now 100% safe from injuries while using the table saw, so they can just throw out all safety equipment. When, inevitably, someone gets a serious wound while using a "Finger Saver" the media goes on a rant about whether you can really trust "finger saving devices" at all.
Anyhow, this is a rant about Waymo vs. Tesla.
- Waymo is also a silicon valley AI project to put transit workers out of work. It's another project to get AI money and destroy labor rights. At least it kind of works isn't exactly helping my opinion of it. Transit is incredibly underfunded and misregulated in California/the USA and robotaxis are a criminal misinvestment in resources.
  
  a silicon valley AI project to put transit workers out of work
  Silicon valley doesn't have objectives like "putting transit workers out of work". They only care about growth and profit.
  In this case, the potential for growth is replacing every driver, not merely targeting transit workers. If they can do that, it would mean millions fewer cars on the road, and millions fewer cars being produced. Great for the environment, but yeah, some people might lose their jobs. But, other new jobs might be created.
  The original car boom also destroyed all kinds of jobs. Farriers, stable hands, grooms, riding instructors, equine veterinarians, horse trainers, etc. But, should we have held back technology so those jobs were all around today? We'd still have streets absolutely covered in horse poop, and horses regularly dying in the street, along with all the resulting disease. Would that be a better world? I don't think so.
  It's another project to get AI money and destroy labor rights.
  Waymo obviously uses a form of AI, but they've been around a lot longer than the current AI / LLM boom. It's 16 years old as a Google project, 21 years old if you consider the original Stanford team. As for destroying labour rights, sure, every capitalist company wants weaker labour rights. But, that includes the car companies making normal human-driven cars, it includes the companies manufacturing city buses and trains. There's nothing special about Waymo / Google in that regard.
  Sure, strengthening labour rights would be a good idea, but I don't think it really has anything to do with Waymo. But, sure, we should organize and unionize Google if that's at all possible.
  Transit is incredibly underfunded and misregulated in California/the USA
  Sure. That has nothing to do with Waymo though.
  robotaxis are a criminal misinvestment in resources.
  Misinvestment by whom? Google? What should Google be investing in instead?
- That was great, the first comparison that came to mind after reading it was they are both a game of russian roulette...
  Waymo - you get one chamber loaded with a blank, might kill you if you get it.
  Tesla - you get one empty chamber... And the gun is loaded by your worst enemy
- I mean Waymo is way better at their job than Tesla and are more responsible, but this rant makes them out to seem perfectly safe. Whilst they are miles safer than Tesla, they still struggle with edge cases and aren't perfect.
  
  AFAIK they're as safe as SawStop table saws. There has only ever been one collision involving a Waymo car that resulted in a serious injury. It was when a driver in another car, who was fleeing from police, sideswiped two cars, went onto the sidewalk and hit 2 pedestrians. One of the cars that was hit was a Waymo car, and the passenger was injured. Obviously, this wasn't the fault of Waymo, but it was included in their list of 25 crashes with injuries, and was the only one involving a serious injury.
  Of the rest, 17 involved the Waymo car being rear-ended. 3 involved another car running a red light and hitting the Waymo car. 2 were sideswipes caused by the other driver. 2 were vehicles turning left across the path of the Waymo car, one a bike, one a car. One was a Waymo car turning left and being hit on the passenger side. It's possible that a few of these cases involving a collision between a vehicle turning and a vehicle going straight could be at least partially blamed on the Waymo car. But, based on the descriptions of the crashes it certainly wasn't making an obvious error.
  IMO it would be hard to argue that the cars aren't already significantly safer than the average driver. There are still plenty of bugs to be ironed out, but for the most part they don't seem to be safety-related bugs.
  If the math were simple and every Waymo car on the road meant one human driver off the road with no other consequences or costs, it would be a no-brainer to start replacing human drivers with Waymo's tech. But, of course, nothing is ever that simple.
  Source: https://www.understandingai.org/p/human-drivers-are-to-blame-for-most
  
  Human drivers struggle with edge cases also. I've seen a lot you drive, and as an old medic who has done his share of MV accidents, I can tell you y'all ain't that good at it.
  While I have no dog in this hunt, all any self driving vehicle needs to be is just a bit better than a human one to be an improvement and a net win, (never let perfect be the enemy of good enough). And historically, as soon as any new technology becomes affordable, humans adopt it and use the snot out of it. The problem is, humans aren't very good at projecting future harm that any new tech tends to drag along with it.
  
  I was a Waymo stan before Tesla made it cool!
  https://fuelarc.com/news-and-features/insurer-study-waymo-is-12-5-times-safer-than-human-drivers/
  Seriously, though. I am an avowed enemy of the grim reaper, I'm a fan of Volvos for the same reason. And I like how transparent Waymo is with their data. The independent study linked is really illuminating if you like automotive safety stats.
- Excellent work
- Really good analogy. loved this
- some dude out of Silicon Valley hears about this, and hacks up a system that just uses a $30 webcam, an AI model that detects fingers (trained exclusively on pudgy white fingers of Silicon Valley executives)
  Hotdog / not hotdog
- Waymo is so much better, yeah. No problems with waymo. except all the times they almost hit me.
  
  Waymo times than Teslas?
- This put a smile on my face.
- Awesome read, thanks!
- Wow...

Remember guys, Tesla wants to have a living person sitting behind the wheel for "safety." Don't YOU want to get paid minimum wage to sit in a car all day, paying attention but doing nothing unless it's about to crash, at which point you'll be made the scapegoat for not preventing the crash?
Welcome to the future, you're gonna hate it here.
- I mean, compared to getting minimum wage flipping burgers in a hot kitchen, or picking vegetables in the sun, or working the register in a store in a bad neighborhood, or even restocking stuff at Walmart... yes, I would sit all day in an air conditioned car doing nothing but "paying attention".
  
  The unfortunate thing about people is we acclimatise quickly to the demands of our situation. If everything seems OK, the car seems to be driving itself, we start to pay less attention. Fighting that impulse is extremely hard.
  A good example is ADHD. I have severe ADHD so I take meds to manage it. If I am driving an automatic car on cruise control I find it very difficult to maintain long term high intensity concentration. The solution for me is to drive a manual. The constant involvement of maintaining speed, revs, gear ratio, and so on mean I can pay attention much easier. Add to that thinking about hypermiling and defensive driving and I have become a very safe driver, putting about 25-30 thousand kms on my car each year for over a decade without so much as a fender bender. In an automatic I was always tense, forcing focus on the road, and honestly it hurt my neck and shoulders because of the tension. In my zippy little manual I have no trouble driving at all.
  So imagine that but up to an even higher level. Someone is supervising a car which handles most situations well enough to make you feel like a passenger. They will switch off and stop paying attention eventually. At that point it is on them, not the car itself being unfit. I want self driving to be a reality but right now it is not. We can do all sorts of driver assist stuff but not full self driving.
  
  You seem to have missed the point. Whether or not you think that would be an easy job, the whole reason you'd be there is to be the one that takes all the blame when the autopilot kills someone. It will be your name, your face, every single record of your past mistakes getting blasted on the news and in court because Elon's shitty vanity project finally killed a real child instead of a test dummy. You'll be the one having to explain to a grieving family just how hard it is to actually pay complete attention every moment of every day, when all you've had to do before is just sit there.

It is probably being remotely driven from India and they just lost wifi for a minute.
- To quote AVCH, "His controller disconnected."
  
  AVCH
- AI=ALways indian.
  
  AI = Actually Indians

The rent seeking is so hard with this automate-the-profits bullshit.
The moment we perfect auto-taxis the service should be a public benefit and run by a nonprofit.
- NYC Mayoral candidate Mamdani is talking about making busses free, and that makes a radical shitload of sense.
  Free autotaxis would be a boon for productivity and personal freedom, like AI promises to be but democratized for everybody rather than just the richest fraction of a percent.
  
  People are going to take a shit in them. And ride them around for fun

You can tell it’s a Tesla because of the way it is.

So it emulates a standard BMW driver. Well done.
- Still work to be done, it uses the blinkers.
  
  At least they were used incorrectly to be just as unpredictable.
- Tesla driver are the new BMW drivers. And since Tesla uses their customers driving data to train their AI it’s not a surprise that the AI drives like an asshole.

Parking in a fire lane to drop off a passenger just makes it seem more human.
- Yea, this one isn't an issue. If you are dropping off passengers, you are allowed to stop in a fire lane because that is not parking.
  
  Which brings up an interesting question, when is a driverless car 'parked' vs. 'stopped'?
- They turned the empathy dial to 5%. Works great, right?

Yea, I am not surprised given that the regular lane keep is still ghost braking when going under bridges.
Still, I am surprised how well they are doing, using only cameras.
- Imagine if they used other sensors than just cameras like the competent companies!
  
  No no no, you don't get it! Humans only have eyes, so cars that only have eyes should perform just as good as humans! Disregard that humans don't perform well in fog or rain or generally anything that isn't good weather and also disregard that to match our eyes' resolution you'd need extremely high resolution cameras that produce way too much data for current computers and also disregard that most of the stuff isn't happening in our eyes but in our brains and also disregard that the point that is usually being made to advocate for self driving cars is that they should be better than humans!

Navigation issue / hesitation
The video really understates the level of fuck up that the car did there...
And the guy sitting there just casually being ok with the car ignoring the forced left going straight into oncoming lanes and flipping the steering wheel all over the place because it has no idea what the hell just happened... I would not be just chilling there..
Of course, I wouldn't have gotten in this car in the first place, and I know they cherry picked some hard core Tesla fans to be allowed to ride at all...
- I've come to the realization, at least where I live, that a hell of a lot of accidents are prevented because of drivers who are actually aware and safe. This goes a bit beyond defensive driving IMO. I'm talking flat out accident avoidable. There is an entire class of drivers who are not even aware of the accidents they have almost caused because someone else managed to avoid their stupid driving.
  The majority of accidents that are likely to happen with these robocoffins will be single car or robocoffin meets robocoffin. The numbers on safety after a year will be acceptable because non accident causing error prone driving is not reported in any official capacity.
  I still maintain that the only safe way to have autonomous vehicles on the road is if they do not share the road with human drivers and have an open standard for communicating with other autonomous cars.
  
  open standard
  Soery, no, that's infrastructure.

I am entirely opposed to driving algorithms. Autopilot on planes works very well because it is used in open sky and does not have to make major decisions about moving in close proximity to other planes and obstacles. Its almost entirely mathematical, and even then in specific circumstances it is designed to disengage and put control back in the hands of a human.
Cars do not have this luxury and operate entirely in close proximity to other vehicles and obstacles. Very little of the act of driving a car is math. It's almost entirely decision making. It requires fast and instinctive response to subtle changes in environment, pattern recognition that human brains are better at than algorithms.
To me this technology perfectly encapsulates the difficulty in making algorithms that mimic human behavior. The last 10% of optimization to make par with humans requires an exponential amount more energy and research than the first 90% does. 90% of the performance of a human is entirely insufficient where life and death is concerned.
Investment costs should be going to public transport systems. They are more cost efficient, more accessible, more fuel/resource efficient, and far far far safer than cars could ever be even with all human drivers. This is a colossal waste of energy time and money for a product that will not be par with human performance for a long time. Those resources could be making our world more accessible for everyone, instead they're making it more accessible for no one and making the roads significantly more dangerous. Capitalism will be the end of us all if we let them. Sorry that train and bus infrastructure isnt "flashy enough" for you. You clearly havent seen the public transport systems in Beijing. The technology we have here is decades behind and so underfunded its infuriating.
- This technology purely exists to make human drivers redundant and put the money in the hands of big tech and eventually the ruling class composed off of politicians risk averse capitalists and beurocracy. There is no other explanation for robo taxis to exist. There are better solution like trains and metros which can solve the movement of people from point A to point B easily. It does not come with a 3x-10x capital growth that making human drivers redundant will for the big tech companies.
  
  This technology purely exists to make human drivers redundant and put the money in the hands of big tech and eventually the ruling class composed off of politicians risk averse capitalists and beurocracy. There is no other explanation for robo taxis to exist.
  There is another reason, though, and it's much simpler. Basic greed.
  There are people who see the opportunity to make more money for themselves, so they'll do it. When it comes to robo taxis, they're not interested in class struggles, it's not about politics, their interest in making human drivers redundant extends only so far as increasing their customer base. These aren't Machiavellian schemers rubbing their hands together and cackling at their dark designs coming to fruition, it's just assholes in suits who's one and only concern is "number go up."
  Even when it comes to their politics and to the class dynamics, their end goal is always the same. Number go up. They don't care about what harm it could do. They're not intent on deliberately doing more harm, they give no thought to doing less harm, they do not care. All that drives them, ever, is Number Go Up.
- Public transport systems are just part of a mobility solution, but it isn't viable to have that everywhere. Heck, even here in The Netherlands, a country the size of a post stamp, public transport doesn't work outside of the major cities. So basically, outside of the cities, we are also relying on cars.
  Therefore, I do believe there will be a place for autonomous driving in the future of mobility and that it has the potential to reduce number of accidents, traffic jams and parking problems while increasing the average speed we drive around with.
  The only thing that has me a bit worried is Tesla's approach to autonomous driving, fully relying on the camera system. Somehow, Musk believes a camera system is superior to human vision, while it's not. I drive a Tesla (yeah, I know) and if the conditions aren't perfect, the car disables "safety' features, like lane assist. For instance when it's raining heavily or when the sun is shining directly into the camera lenses. This must be a key reason in choosing Austin for the demo/rollout.
  Meanwhile, we see what other manufacturers use and how they are progressing. For instance, BMW and Mercedes are doing well with their systems, which are a blend of cameras and sensors. To me, that does seem like the way to go to introduce autonomous driving safely.
  
  There's usually buses from villages into the major cities though, it live in one and there's a bus every hour to go to a nearby city, from where I can then take a train. I wouldn't say it's that bad
  
  I believe Austin was chosen because they're fairly lax about the regulations and safety requirements.
  Waymo already got the deal in Cali. And Cali seems much more strict. Austin is offering them faster time to market as the cost of civilian safety.
- I've been saying for years that focusing on self driving cars is solving the wrong problem. The problem is so many people need their own personal car at all.
  
  Exactly. Bring back trams, build less suburbs, better apartment housing. If we want a society reorganized around accessibility then let's actually build that.
- While I agree focusing on public transport is a better idea, it's completely absurd to say machines can never possibly drive as well as humans. It's like saying a soul is required or other superstitious nonsense like that. Imagine the hypothetical case in which a supercomputer that perfectly emulates a human brain is what we are trying to teach to drive. Do you think that couldn't drive? If so, you're saying a soul is what allows a human to drive, and may as well be saying that God hath uniquely imbued us with the ability to drive. If you do think that could drive, then surely a slightly less powerful computer could. And maybe one less powerful than that. So somewhere between a casio solar calculator and an emulated human brain must be able to learn to drive. Maybe that's beyond where we're at now (I don't necessarily think it is) but it's certainly not impossible just out of principle. Ultimately, you are a computer at the end of the day.
  
  I never did say it wouldn't ever be possible. Just that it will take a long time to reach par with humans. Driving is culturally specific, even. The way rules are followed and practiced is often regionally different. Theres more than just the mechanical act itself.
  The ethics of putting automation in control of potentially life threatening machines is also relevant. With humans we can attribute cause and attempted improvement, with automation its different.
  I just don't see a need for this at all. I think investing in public transportation more than reproduces all the benefits of automated cars without nearly as many of the dangers and risks.
- I always have the same thought when I see self driving taxi news.
  "Americans will go bankrupt trying to prop up the auto/gas industries rather than simply building a train".
  And it's true. So much money is being burned on a subpar and dangerous product. Yet we've just cut and cancelled extremely beneficial high speed rail projects that were overwhelmingly voted for by the people.

If we're gonna let them on the road, I say that software should get points just like a driver, but when it gets suspended all the cars running that software get shut down.
- How about we leave the driving to people, and not pre-alpha software?
  There's no accountability for this horribly dangerous driving, so they shouldn't be on the road. Period.
  
  There's no accountability for this horribly dangerous driving, so they shouldn't be on the road. Period.
  Well that's exactly what their post was about, adding accountability.

Wow it's almost like having an AI with a 2D view to go off of is a bad idea? Hmmm who'd have thunk it?
- You're telling me we're not at the point where self driving cars are a thing? But a Tech CEO said so? Who am I supposed to believe if not a Tech CEO?
  
  Self-driving cars are a thing, Weymo is doing pretty fine.
  But you might be able to spot a few (dozen) teeny-tiny (huge, bulky and extremely obvious) differences between a Waymo and a Tesla cybercab.

Oh, stop your complaining. It’s not perfect, but we’ve all seen how easy this is to fix. Just barge into Tesla tomorrow and randomly fire 20% of the employees. That’s how real leaders get things done.
/s

Haaa, finally !! An AI taxi that behaves like a normal taxi driver. It must feel so refreshing.

Fucking hell. We don't let drunks drive taxis, and that goddamn thing drove like it was under the influence.
Does Tesla get sent tickets for traffic violations, or are we OK with this?
- I'm sure they're legal team is hard at work trying to find loopholes to circumvent any traffic infringements
  
  Depending on how exactly the laws are worded, they might even get away without paying fines. Many traffic codes define that only the driver (not the owner of the car) can be fined, and these robo taxis don't have drivers.
  
  I can see the headlines... "Tesla. De-funding the police!"

So, Tesla Robitaxis drive like a slightly drunk and confused tourist with asshole driving etiquette.
Those right turns on red were like, "oh you get to go? That's permission for me to go too!"
- I know many people who believe that "right on red" means they have the right of way to make the turn and don't have to stop first or yield to traffic.
  
  I know many ~~people~~ fucking morons
  
  I almost failed my first drivers test because I stopped at a stop sign instead of just yielding on a right turn. Still to this day it seems... wrong.
  
  We should arm pedestrians so we can shoit the subhuman filth who take rights on red.

Oof, these highlighted parts from only one video are already enough for me. This looks very stressful, I don't think I could finish a whole ride with one of these.
- Don’t worry. It’ll get into a collision before you finish a whole ride.

But Musk told me it's ready for primetime, why would he lie?

A man who can’t launch a rocket to save his life is also incompetent at making self driving cars? His mediocrity knows no bounds.
- To be fair Musk only has money and doesnt Do shit at either Company
  
  He meddles. That much is apparent. The cybertruck is obviously a top down design as evidenced by the numerous atrocious design compromised the engineers had to make just to make it real. From the glued on "exoskeleton" to the hollowed ALUMINUM frame to the complete lack of physical controls to the default failure state turning it into a coffin to the lack of waterproofing etc.
  
  It's hilarious to me that Musk claims to work 100 hours a week but he's the CEO of five companies. Even if the claim were true (and of course it isn't) it means being the CEO of one of his companies is a 20-hour-a-week job at best.
- Seriously. I waa better at rocketry than him by age twelve.

Well obviously it's been trained on human taxi driver behaviour

Watch that stock price fall... wheeeee
- It already jumped up about 10% on monday simply because the service launched. Even if the service crashes and burns, they'll jump to the next hype topic like robots or AI or whatever and the stock price will stay up.
  
  And its fallen back down about 30% of those gains already. Hype causes spikes.. that's nothing new.

Not great performance at all.
That's better than I was expecting to be perfectly honest.
I'm pretty impressed with the technology, but clearly it's not ready for field use.
- Yeah, it's a few years away from being ready. Plus the dumb shits need to backpedal on this "cameras for everything!" idiocy.
  I'm surprised the taxis aren't being driven remotely while Musk lies about their amazing AI or whatever.
  
  this “cameras for everything!” idiocy.
  That's why I'm so impressed with how well it's actually working. When they get off that really weird self-imposed restriction, it could be an interesting technology.

At least it's not driving straight into a tree, I call that an improvement.
- Man, I cannot figure out why that vehicle was turning. What is it trying to avoid? Why does it think there could be road there? Why doesn't it try to correct its action mid way?
  I'm really concerned about that last question. I have to assume that at some point prior to impact, the system realized it made a mistake. Surely. So why didn't it try to recover from the situation? Does it have a system for recovering from errors, or does it just continue and say "well I'll get it next time, now on with the fetal crash"?
  
  That wasn’t FSD. In the crash report it shows FSD wasn’t enabled. The driver applied a torque to the steering wheel and disengaged it. They were probably reaching into the back seat while “supervising”.

Hooray! I feel so safe. I think I'll move to Texas so I can get obliterated by this taxi from the future.

What's crazy is that the safety driver's hair has gone completely grey in just two days.
- That safety driver did not give a single fuck about driving on the wrong side of the road..
  
  He must have seen so much worse to not even be flinching at that.

One of those American robot cars
- I understood that reference

What real world problem does this solve?
- Stonks?
- Actually, lots. The issue is that if it doesn't work it's dangerous.
- Task automation
  
  Is it really task automation if it does it worse than a drunk human could have done it?
- Nothing that a train + scooter / bicycle cannot solve imo

The Tesla is is just following the regional driving style. Humans make the same mistakes at 15:06
/s
- This but unironically. If this is the worst thing that happened on launch day then that seems pretty successful to me. This is the worst version of the robo taxi we will ever see.

It found out who made it so it knew what to do

Cruise cars were already doing this and performed far better. GM is fucking braindead and pulled the plug like usual though.
- Leave it to GM to find a way to thread the needle and seize defeat from the jaws of victory.

Welcome to johnnycab

Wow that turn signal sound is annoying. Why does it even need to make a sound in a car that’s supposed to be driving itself?
- Important feedback for the passenger to ensure the car is actually following the rules. I would freak out at a corner if I couldn't tell the car was signaling.
  
  The rider shouldn't have to care.
  Naturally, simply being in a "self-driving" Tesla is reason enough to worry.

Doesn't sound too safe
- So, just the right amount of safe then?

lmfao

Sounds like the indian guy driving it with a joystick was a bit hungover. You'd think they'd screen that thing at the entrance of the cubicle farm where all these AI folk drive these from. AI is just "anonymous indians" for elmo's grifting kind.

~~Student~~ Robo drivers, amirite?

oof

Let's see bug balls what he has to say.

Maybe they're just getting the wrong people to provide training data. The kind of people who drive Tesla's do tend to drive like morons, so it would make sense.

Watching anything that fElon fail sparks joy.

...oh, that's just the vietnam regional setting...
- It could be the south or west of France too. Driving as if you were drunk is a universal skill.
  
  ...oh, i think you misunderstand me: that's not impaired driving, that's skillful navigation through the normal flow of traffic in sàigòn...

Sounds like a normal cab driver where I'm from. Need to turn off cabbie mode and turn on Sunday grandma mode.
- The only difference being you can ask a human cabbie to slow down :,)
  
  Depends. I had this perpetually angry cabby a few months back that when I asked him to slow (son has autism, partially verbal). Not only did he not slow down, he sped up and this was in a snowstorm on the highway. Nothing I could do, if I said anything he went faster. Had a Dr appt so I could do nothing once we were out of that cab. I complained later and best cab co would do is “not send that cab” again.
- I’d rather have a car that drives better than a typical cabby or uber driver.
  Waymo has arguably been there for a while now. I’ll Uber outside of their coverage area, and take the autonomous car with in it. Every other Uber driver in my area is making late lane choices, tailgating, cutting people off, talking to me about how the world works, etc. The Waymos don’t do any of that shit.
  Having experienced FSD, I can honestly say, Waymo’s LiDAR system is way better. It doesn’t do this terrifying shit.

Tbh it's not as bad as I was expecting. Those clips could definitely have resulted in an accident, but the system seems to actually work most of the time. I wonder if it couldn't be augmented with lidar at this point to make it more reliable? A live stress test is ridiculously irresponsible and will definitely kill people, but at least it's only Texans at risk (for now).
I was skeptical of the idea of robotaxis, but this kind of sold me on it. If they're cheaper than human drivers, I might even be able to get rid of my car some day. It doesn't change the fact that I'll never get into one because the CEO is a nazi though.
- Keep in mind this is a system with millions of miles under it's belt and it still doesn't understand what to do with a forced left turn lane in a very short trip in a fairly controlled environment with supremely good visual, road, and traffic conditions. LIDAR wouldn't have helped the car here, there was no "whoops, confusining visibility", it just completely screwed up and ignored the road markings.
  It's been in this state for years now, of being surprisingly capable, yet horrible screw ups being noted frequently. They seem to be like 95% of the way there and stuck, with no progress in reality just some willfull denial convincing them to move forward anyway.

oof