New York Times ad warns against Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving”

[blazingkin]

Summary

 

Advocacy group, the "Dawn Project" buys a full page ad in the New York Times highlighting the dangers of allowing Tesla's "Full Self Driving" to be tested on public roads.
The group is offering $10k to anyone who can name “another commercial product from a Fortune 500 company that has a critical malfunction every 8 minutes.”
This has spawned discussion in a few news outlets and twitter over the safety of the software.

 

 

Quotes

Quote

Dan O'Dowd doesn't mince words about Tesla.
The Green Hills Software founder and CEO has alleged in a full-page advertisement that appeared in the New York Times that "millions would die every day" if the current version of Tesla's Full Self-Driving system was fully in control  of every vehicle on the road.

 

O'Dowd based his critique on a study of videos posted online that show Tesla owners using the Full Self-Driving feature, which Tesla states is in a beta stage and only capable of limited autonomous capability under driver supervision. According to his review, the videos show that Full Self-Driving commits a "Critical Driving Error" every eight minutes and an "unforced error" every 36 minutes that would "likely cause a collision."

 

My thoughts

Tesla's "Full Self-Driving" has been hyped for many years, and it has slowly started to be on the road with a much larger presence. It appears that there's been a subtle acceptance that these are "safe enough". The cited data seems to indicate that the self-driving software is not safe enough. It's very interesting this hasn't come from regulators.

 

Is there a best way to test this self driving software and what's the acceptable level for it to be on the road? It doesn't seem like there's an established framework and the discussion around it seems to not be there.

 

The $10k cash reward for a less reliable product is certainly interesting too. Surely Adobe has some less reliable software haha.

 

Sources

https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/17/new-york-times-ad-warns-against-teslas-full-self-driving/
https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/elon-musk-trash-talks-software-ceos-full-self-driving-slam
https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1482854483017318400

[Helpful Tech Witch]

i have a few issues with this.

i cant find who is backing this. Seems like a red flag to me, usually people backing something like this have something to gain from it, think those vote no to 1 adds that louis rossman had played, just happened to be backed by everyone who would benefit from it being blocked

 

did they forget windows?
that has potently dangerous faults all the fucking time

[poochyena]

self driving cars have been tested on public roads for like a decade at this point. Its not just tesla either. I also don't get the view that since its not able to self drive on 100% of roadways in any weather condition, then its worthless. If you want to say self driving cars are bad in certain streets in certain cities, then fine, even call for it to be banned there, but don't act like self driving cars aren't beneficial and are in fact dangerous while driving on the interstate during sunny weather.

[Skipple]

I did about 5 minutes of digging about "The Dawn Project". The founder of that company, Dan O'Dowd, is also the CEO of Green Hills Software. 

 

Did some digging on Green Hills Software and they appear to offer a competing product: https://www.ghs.com/products/auto_solutions.html

 

Cool.  

[blazingkin]

34 minutes ago, poochyena said:

self driving cars have been tested on public roads for like a decade at this point. Its not just tesla either. I also don't get the view that since its not able to self drive on 100% of roadways in any weather condition, then its worthless. If you want to say self driving cars are bad in certain streets in certain cities, then fine, even call for it to be banned there, but don't act like self driving cars aren't beneficial and are in fact dangerous while driving on the interstate during sunny weather.

This is not interstate during sunny weather. The FSD beta is for all roads in all environments

[wanderingfool2]

57 minutes ago, blazingkin said:

Tesla's "Full Self-Driving" has been hyped for many years, and it has slowly started to be on the road with a much larger presence. It appears that there's been a subtle acceptance that these are "safe enough". The cited data seems to indicate that the self-driving software is not safe enough. It's very interesting this hasn't come from regulators.

FSD is just badly named in my opinion.  It's more like a heavy helper in terms of driving....it's also important to note that things like Autopilot decreases the amount of accidents per mile driven...yet one could claim autopilot would create crashes.  It's not currently meant to be an autonomous driver, you still need an active driver behind the wheel and honestly having the car help doing the driving can open your eyes to other issues.

 

Actually, a good analogy would be saying that lane assist is dangerous and should be banned because without interventions it would make mistakes and cause crashes...which is why I think the regulators haven't really cracked down on it yet (Although now there is Missy Cummings are part of the NHTSA team maybe something will).  Ultimately per mile driven, FSD with a human behind the wheel causes less accidents than just a human behind the wheel.  The issue as well being that every time FSD/autopilot fails there are less people who recognize the amounts of times that FSD/Autopilot has saved lives. (There are videos out there that show Autopilot doing a quick veer when cars are about to side-swipe them)

 

FSD has a really long way to go, but unless we let companies like Tesla gather data like this we will never get to the level of automation we realistically need.  Will the system be abused? Yes.  Will there eventually be deaths via FSD? Yes.  But the key is it's about the balance of how many accidents does it prevent vs cause.

 

A note about the "data".  They did it by viewing FSD Beta test videos (even from what they analyzed in the last 9 months it's doubled the amount of time between "errors")...and the bulk of the FSD Beta videos out there are ones where people have been trying to put it into bad or difficult scenarios.

 

A side note, as @Skipple mentioned, the funding for this ad is highly biased.  Just like how some of the lidar people (Missy Cummings) are highly anti-tesla.  Ultimately vision systems are the way to go over things such as lidar and radar (which introduce either extreme costs or lower resolutions)

 

 

[wseaton]

Just wait until this technology starts replacing municipal bus drivers and then truck drivers. Wait until those ads start flying.

 

I still get a chuckle at how consumers think autonomous driving is intended to help soccer moms get groceries and grandma get to bingo safer. Its all about replacing labor. Stop being naive. 

 

Musk is rich enough....he will have to open his own finance company because you will be financing one of these things 10years to be able to afford one. Let alone afford a house....which we don't have enough of to park your EV in front of. 

 

Best investment i made in transportation was buying a bike. 

[Spotty]

3 hours ago, Skipple said:

Did some digging on Green Hills Software and they appear to offer a competing product: https://www.ghs.com/products/auto_solutions.html

Bold move, let's see if it pays off for them. The average Joe isn't going to see this ad and think "Tesla self driving is bad, we should buy a competing self driving car". They'll think "self driving cars are dangerous, I shouldn't buy one".

Like it or not a lot of people associate self driving or electric cars with Tesla.

[RejZoR]

4 hours ago, wseaton said:

Just wait until this technology starts replacing municipal bus drivers and then truck drivers. Wait until those ads start flying.

 

I still get a chuckle at how consumers think autonomous driving is intended to help soccer moms get groceries and grandma get to bingo safer. Its all about replacing labor. Stop being naive. 

 

Musk is rich enough....he will have to open his own finance company because you will be financing one of these things 10years to be able to afford one. Let alone afford a house....which we don't have enough of to park your EV in front of. 

 

Best investment i made in transportation was buying a bike. 

Musk is rich mostly selling vaporware to investors and rabid fanboys are worshipping him like god for some reason. Tesla cargo truck is vaporware, Tesla Cybertruck is vaporware, Tesla Roadster is vaporware, they are rehashing same old Tesla car designs since first own Tesla design (that's not redesigned Lotus Elise chassis) and just adding more stupid things to them like that cut off steering wheel and cramming all the physical buttons into ridiculous touch screen and hyping "auto pilot" for whole decade and it's still shit and straight up dangerous. Hyperloop is a massive failure and goes against any logical application of physics as well as being a massive vaporware and lastly, their Vegas underground tunnels that are just laughable even for a concept.

 

Only things that Musk has currently done sort of right are Tesla cars they currently have and sell and SpaceX. And even SpaceX is involved in some pretty bad BS of overpromised ideas and weird contracts with NASA...

[Helpful Tech Witch]

8 hours ago, Skipple said:

I did about 5 minutes of digging about "The Dawn Project". The founder of that company, Dan O'Dowd, is also the CEO of Green Hills Software. 

 

Did some digging on Green Hills Software and they appear to offer a competing product: https://www.ghs.com/products/auto_solutions.html

 

Cool.  

Called it.

 

9 hours ago, Helpful Tech Wiard said:

Seems like a red flag to me, usually people backing something like this have something to gain from it, think those vote no to 1 adds that louis rossman had played, just happened to be backed by everyone who would benefit from it being blocked

 

[poochyena]

9 hours ago, blazingkin said:

This is not interstate during sunny weather. The FSD beta is for all roads in all environments

I know

6 hours ago, Spotty said:

The average Joe isn't going to see this ad and think "Tesla self driving is bad, we should buy a competing self driving car". They'll think "self driving cars are dangerous, I shouldn't buy one".

Like it or not a lot of people associate self driving or electric cars with Tesla.

Well, right, thats why this company won't offer self driving, they will offer "the driving experience package" or whatever, which is just self driving, but under a different name

[wanderingfool2]

3 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Musk is rich mostly selling vaporware to investors and rabid fanboys are worshipping him like god for some reason. Tesla cargo truck is vaporware, Tesla Cybertruck is vaporware, Tesla Roadster is vaporware, they are rehashing same old Tesla car designs since first own Tesla design (that's not redesigned Lotus Elise chassis) and just adding more stupid things to them like that cut off steering wheel and cramming all the physical buttons into ridiculous touch screen and hyping "auto pilot" for whole decade and it's still shit and straight up dangerous. Hyperloop is a massive failure and goes against any logical application of physics as well as being a massive vaporware and lastly, their Vegas underground tunnels that are just laughable even for a concept.

 

Only things that Musk has currently done sort of right are Tesla cars they currently have and sell and SpaceX. And even SpaceX is involved in some pretty bad BS of overpromised ideas and weird contracts with NASA...

The timelines might be overpromised, but overall a decent amount of stuff isn't vaporware.  With SpaceX at least it's actually pretty good compared to the competition...literally you have the SLS (Boeing) which has cost over $10 billion and will cost $1billion per launch...and they still haven't done the test launch yet.  This was back when Falcon 9's were just a concept idea.  Cybertruck isn't vaporware...it likely won't come out until end of 2022 but it's not vaporware.  The semi wasn't vaporware (had to fight Nikola off the patent, and realistically until the 4680 cells were ready it really didn't make financial sense diverting cells away from vehicles which have a higher profit margin).  [Pepsi is actually installing the special super chargers now]...Tesla was also trying to work with the industry to create a standardized truck charger cable/plug design.

 

To address you "[autopilot is dangerous]" the numbers say otherwise.  Per mile driven it's still safer than per mile driven without it...so can people please stop with the "it's terrible".  The timeline is off, sure but the technology that's driving it is lightyears ahead of the competition...but honestly I'd rather have a company that sets high goals and tries getting there than the other companies that set low goals and achieves the same amount of work but in double the time.  I've seen it happen after a company merge, the new companies goals were only 75% production of what our company was currently doing...after the merge with everyone on the same salary miraculously we started just barely hitting the targeted "goals" [i.e. we lost production because the management was setting too low of goals].

 

A note regarding the price of FSD.  The way I think of it, it's partially an adopters tax and partially a way to justify even steeper prices later if it gets to the point that it's allowed driving in select cities/regions without a driver.  If it gets to that point (my guess around 10 years out, maybe as little as 3 years though...depending on how dojo goes), then the price would be justified in that the concept is you rent out the vehicle as a taxi.  Ultimately I think that's one of the reasons for the higher price (and the shear amount of money it takes to develop the technology around it).  When robotaxi's are recognized as not being a thing, then I think you will find that the prices might lower.

 

  

50 minutes ago, Caroline said:

I have an idea, trust me this is genius, like 170 IQ level genius. What if... you DRIVE BY YOURSELF???. Mind: blown. 

 

Driving by yourself is statistically worse than you driving with autopilot

[RejZoR]

Autopilot is so great it gets confused by some lines on the road and a road splitting barrier... I like how you can twist statistics to make things look good when they are not.

 

Overpromised timeline? 3/4 of the shit they "promised" was suppose to come out 5 years ago. Tesla even mocked Ford on Cybertruck "launch" and Ford has literal purchasable electric F-150. Where is the amazing "nuclear blast proof" Cybertruck? Lol.

 

Elon is full of shit and he can't shut up with his big mouth that works faster than his brain and he spews shit that he shouldn never vocalize.

[IkeaGnome]

1 hour ago, Caroline said:

I have an idea, trust me this is genius, like 170 IQ level genius. What if... you DRIVE BY YOURSELF???. Mind: blown. 

 

But then how can I make TikToks, eat, vlog, and get a massage while I drive? 

What you're suggesting is totally unfair. To the point of impairing my rights as an independent traveler in this plane of existence.

/s

[wanderingfool2]

17 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Autopilot is so great it gets confused by some lines on the road and a road splitting barrier... I like how you can twist statistics to make things look good when they are not.

It's not twisting statistics...you can literally look up the numbers.

 

When AutoPilot+safety features are on it's 2x less likely to get into an accident than when you have safety features alone.  If you let your vehicle run into a splitting barrier you are not utilizing it correctly.  A note as well, running into trucks and barriers as well also began happening when trusting the radar signals (which they have since removed).  Also again, it's like me saying autocorrect in my Toyota is dangerous and causes accidents [because it commonly tries "correcting" my driving in a certain section due to the tar lines].  Is the feature dangerous no, but under your logic I should be calling it just as dangerous as AutoPilot then

 

You can easily override Autopilot, it's designed that way because you are suppose to be monitoring the road as well.  Have you driven in a Tesla before using Autopilot for an extended amount of time?  Because I have, and I can tell you it hands down beats the other systems.

 

Again, FSD isn't really ready for full release, but it's hard to argue it's progress.

 

btw, for anyone who cares here is a nice video of a successful drive navigating around pedestrians, crossing the lines when needed etc.  Yes FSD does need work, and needs an active driver but I can tell you now that when the below becomes like 99% of the drive it's going to become a lot safer (with a human still behind the wheel)

 

21 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Overpromised timeline? 3/4 of the shit they "promised" was suppose to come out 5 years ago. Tesla even mocked Ford on Cybertruck "launch" and Ford has literal purchasable electric F-150. Where is the amazing "nuclear blast proof" Cybertruck? Lol.

No Ford doesn't, the release date is still in 2022; and will only be 15,000 units. 

[adarw]

40 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Elon is full of shit and he can't shut up with his big mouth that works faster than his brain and he spews shit that he shouldn never vocalize.

elon is just a master at deceiving people, this guy sucks.

[poochyena]

1 hour ago, Caroline said:

I have an idea, trust me this is genius, like 170 IQ level genius. What if... you DRIVE BY YOURSELF???. Mind: blown. 

 

its more dangerous and less efficient.

49 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Autopilot is so great it gets confused by some lines on the road and a road splitting barrier... I like how you can twist statistics to make things look good when they are not.

But it is good. Might as well say cars aren't good because they can't drive off road very well. Learn the limits and use it within those limits

[BuckGup]

Aside from the obvious corporate objective of the ad I trust a self driving car way more than 90% of the drivers on the road. It doesn't need to be perfect simply better than people texting, drunk, distracted, road rage, and so on while driving

[NumLock21]

I misread The Dawn Project as The Darwin Project and looking at the picture, I'm going like wow, some people are so confident in Tesla's self driving technology, they're wiling to stand in the middle of the road, with a Tesla barrel towards them at full speed!

[RejZoR]

2 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

It's not twisting statistics...you can literally look up the numbers.

 

When AutoPilot+safety features are on it's 2x less likely to get into an accident than when you have safety features alone.  If you let your vehicle run into a splitting barrier you are not utilizing it correctly.  A note as well, running into trucks and barriers as well also began happening when trusting the radar signals (which they have since removed).  Also again, it's like me saying autocorrect in my Toyota is dangerous and causes accidents [because it commonly tries "correcting" my driving in a certain section due to the tar lines].  Is the feature dangerous no, but under your logic I should be calling it just as dangerous as AutoPilot then

 

You can easily override Autopilot, it's designed that way because you are suppose to be monitoring the road as well.  Have you driven in a Tesla before using Autopilot for an extended amount of time?  Because I have, and I can tell you it hands down beats the other systems.

 

Again, FSD isn't really ready for full release, but it's hard to argue it's progress.

 

btw, for anyone who cares here is a nice video of a successful drive navigating around pedestrians, crossing the lines when needed etc.  Yes FSD does need work, and needs an active driver but I can tell you now that when the below becomes like 99% of the drive it's going to become a lot safer (with a human still behind the wheel)

 

No Ford doesn't, the release date is still in 2022; and will only be 15,000 units. 

So, 3 Teslas rammed a road splitting barrier in a broad daylight and you divide that by all Teslas sold and you get stellar numbers. Statistics! Also all the people sleeping and jerking off while Tesla is on Auto pilot shows how much safer it is. Just wait till 80% of population has them and they do shit. I don't care how safe it is, it's still used by idiots who don't understand it. No, it won't be safer, because it expects user's attention and if you're just vegetating there, you're not involved in the driving at all. I've driven a relatively long range in a regular car with classic speed limiter and while you need to be more involved as it doesn't brake itself, just the fact I wasn't actively having my foot on the gas and controlling it meant I was less involved in the driving. Take away steering and braking and soon you're just along on the ride while systems expect you to be attentive. It's BS and you know it. You're not, they just say this to cover their ass legally. Oh it crashed, you weren't paying attention. Then what the fuck is the point of all this?

 

Elon promised full auto pilot years ago and he also promised we'd have bunch of robo taxies around and it would be stupid to buy anything but Tesla. Where is all of that along with all the vaporware I mentioned. Nowhere. The guy is full of shit and he can't keep his stupid mouth shut when he should.

 

As for Ford F-150's in EV flavor, that will be 15.000 units more than Tesla Cybertrucks. If Tesla actually releases it in 2022 I'll have the most surprised Pikachu face you can imagine.

[RejZoR]

3 minutes ago, James Evens said:

Absolutely not.

Under the hood they are constantly implementing changes. Just see the evolution they have goon through for the body construction or door handle mechanism.

Does any tesla fan raves about how fancy the new door mechanism is? Absolutely not. That might be why you notice the questionable software and "interesting" interior design decisions instead of those changes.

Who gives a shit about door handles? Which btw love to freeze in during winters on Teslas so you can't even open the car. Top notch engineering!

[Sauron]

12 hours ago, wseaton said:

Just wait until this technology starts replacing municipal bus drivers and then truck drivers. Wait until those ads start flying.

Going to be waiting for a while since I don't see any plans for a Tesla bus and the truck announcement seems to have been a lie...?

 

The ad doesn't seem very trustworthy but, in principle, I agree that a corporation like Tesla shouldn't be testing experimental technology on the skin of its customers and bystanders. It's one botched update away from disaster. Whatever the merits of these systems they should be held to a higher testing standard before they can be released to the public.

[wanderingfool2]

7 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

As for Ford F-150's in EV flavor, that will be 15.000 units more than Tesla Cybertrucks. If Tesla actually releases it in 2022 I'll have the most surprised Pikachu face you can imagine.

You were the one who brought up that Ford was selling the Lightning, when they weren't.

 

10 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

So, 3 Teslas rammed a road splitting barrier in a broad daylight and you divide that by all Teslas sold and you get stellar numbers. Statistics!

That's a foolhardy argument to make in regards to trying to say my stats are bad.  Let me clue you into the realavance of my stats.  If you have 2 people and one drives 4 million miles with autopilot on they will on average have 1 accident, for the one who drives 4 million miles with autopilot off (safety features on) they on average will have 2 accidents.  That is a whole lot more relevant when talking about safety.

 

14 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Just wait till 80% of population has them and they do shit. I don't care how safe it is, it's still used by idiots who don't understand it.

I'm sorry, but just because people abuse a system doesn't mean that system itself is dangerous.  Under your logic, we should force all car manufactures to put a cap on the top speed of a vehicle based on location because people will speed.

 

16 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

No, it won't be safer, because it expects user's attention and if you're just vegetating there, you're not involved in the driving at all. I've driven a relatively long range in a regular car with classic speed limiter and while you need to be more involved as it doesn't brake itself, just the fact I wasn't actively having my foot on the gas and controlling it meant I was less involved in the driving. Take away steering and braking and soon you're just along on the ride while systems expect you to be attentive. It's BS and you know it. You're not, they just say this to cover their ass legally. Oh it crashed, you weren't paying attention. Then what the fuck is the point of all this?

The point is that statistically you will crash less (roughly 2x if looking at miles driven).  I'm assuming you haven't tried driving a Tesla with Autopilot for an extended amount of time (or rather if you did then you are driving it in the area that is less trained towards at the moment).  Because I can tell you now having it on can make you a better driver.

 

18 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Elon promised full auto pilot years ago and he also promised we'd have bunch of robo taxies around and it would be stupid to buy anything but Tesla. Where is all of that along with all the vaporware I mentioned. Nowhere. The guy is full of shit and he can't keep his stupid mouth shut when he should.

So what, the timeline is off.  I already stated that.  If you still believe the timelines listed then you are the one being foolhardy.  It's like how Intel kept saying that the next generation will be reduction on the node size.  The fact is after the first time, I didn't trust that they would figure out the node size reduction.  Do I say that Intel is producing vaporware?  You can hate Musk all you want, but the fact is Autopilot and FSD are not necessarily more dangerous than other systems in vehicles.

[blazingkin]

Timely news. It's Autopilot, not FSD, but

Person charged with Vehicular Manslaughter while using Tesla Autopilot

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/18/california-tesla-driver-vehicular-manslaughter-autopilot-crash

[RejZoR]

18 minutes ago, James Evens said:

Me!

One of the very value skills which more and more get's lost is seeing through the black magic and actually understand the world.

When you see the door handle on a tesla just doing it's task. Is it black magic or just the result of a well designed solution?

It's a door handle that pops out. And gets frozen during winters because not entire world is a sunny California... I don't know what's magical about it. It's a door handle. A flawed one at that.