this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2024
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Can someone explain like I'm five how Waymo has robitaxis without drivers behind the wheel and automated driving such as that offered by Tesla is not yet able to do the same?
Is it just that Waymo has mapped a small area really, really well? What's the difference? Why is Tesla so bad at it but Waymo is able to do it?
I'm not sure what you mean by suggesting Tesla is bad at it. Have you looked at any recent videos of Tesla FSD driving in cities? It's not flawless and neither is Waymo but claiming it's bad is far from the truth. Most people seem to be basing their opinion about FSD on outdated information. It has come a long way. It will reliably take you from your home to the grocery store and back with zero driver interventions. Nowdays it's almost boring to watch videos about FSD because it is so good.
Tesla FSD has killed multiple people.
And it will keep killing people even after it surpasses the most skilled human driver. What's your point?
If we replaced every single car in the US with a self driving vehicle that was 10x safer driver than an average human is, there would still be 11 deaths every single day. Does that mean it's unsafe we should go back to human drivers and 110 daily deaths?
There is no evidence that Tesla's FSD is 10x safer than a human driver, nor particularly strong reason to believe that it will get there using just cameras that are worse than the human eye.
Waymo on the other hand, actually has the safety data to back up a 10x claim, if not higher.
So if we replaced every single car in the US with Waymo's vehicles the daily deaths from traffic accidents would drop from 110 to 11. That's 11 news articles every day to use as evidence about how self driving cars are "not safe" because Waymo has killed multiple people.
That's the absurdity my comment tries to highlight. It's all relative. Pointing to individual accidents is not a proof in itself of something being unsafe. This applies to Tesla FSD as well.
Fair point in the abstract, but in this scenario Waymo has killed zero people while developing self driving technology while Tesla has already killed several. The deaths have also not been caused by random unavoidable happenstance, but from driving full speed into trucks and medians.
It's entirely possible that by the time both are ready for actually full primetime and are both 10x safer than the average human driver, that Waymo's software will have killed zero people and Tesla's software will have killed several.
Both will lead to people getting killed eventually. It's near-unavoidable fact of reality. Better not let perfect be the enemy of good. The key is that less and less people are dying and getting injured.
This is a bit of a false equivalency.
There is zero reason to think that Waymo software, that has slowly and incrementally rolled out to new areas, and relies on cameras, radar, and sonar, will have the same fatality rate as Tesla's FSD software that just got pushed out to anyone with a Tesla, and relies just on cameras.
More to the point, we still don't know if Tesla FSD can actually outperform a human. It is again, based on cameras that are worse than the human eye.
This whole conversation so far has entirely missed the point.
The fact that a self driving car company has gotten people killed is a moot point. Even if we had a self driving car that is 100x safer driver than humans it will still get people killed. Saying "This 100 times safer than human car company has gotten multiple people killed" doesn't mean anything. Human drivers get 110 people killed every single day in the US alone. That's the starting point. Not 0 people getting killed. The only thing that's important here is being better driver than human. Not perfect - better.
Not sure if you read the above?
Why not zero intentional murders?
Let's hear your plan then.
We shouldn't be consciously murdering people so that suburbanites can drive around in a huge metal cage with two sofas, a stereo system, HVAC, micro-plastic tires, slave-produced resources, exhaust/energy, etc.
Instead we should ban cars and replace them with readily available infrastructure for walkers, bikers, wheelchairs, and LEVs that's sustainable, healthy, affordable, pleasant, efficient, cheap, etc.