motorcityadam

Puffy! Very cute!

This video from the Verge is an absolute mess. I offer my thoughts in this Mastodon thread: https://mastodon.social/@adamjcook/110628308734836028

I am familiar with PAVE.

I think that... ever since Ed Niedermeyer left as their spokesperson and after witnessing Cruise's safety-deficient behavior go unchecked and unchallenged... the organization has really lost legitimacy in terms of actually advocating for public safety.

Not surprising.

The "unofficial" reality is that the NHTSA has a dual mandate - which included keeping cars affordable for Americans.

A virtually non-existent regulatory process are enormous cost savings for automakers - more than most people realize. The deaths and injuries from vehicle defects are just tossed upon the public's back.

The NHTSA works for automakers and the agency has a revolving door with the industry that is likely second-to-none.

For the record, and as I have noted before, Dan O'Dowd has spent millions of dollars to fashion himself as the "public safety advocate" and to challenge Tesla's FSD Beta program as such.

However, Dan O'Dowd has done anything but.

Instead of educating the public in terms of the actual systems safety foundational issues and various wrongdoings with Tesla's FSD Beta program - Dan has elected to engage in these pointless spectacles that have zero public educational value and are entirely unsafe in of themselves.

Nothing can be obtained from personal experiences with a safety-critical system of type, except for apparent systems safety issues (and that still leaves "unseen" systems safety issues on the table).

And a conversation with Ross Gerber, who is a key lieutenant of the Tesla Online Community and has never shown any interest in learning about proper systems safety, is a pointless exercise at this point.

Dan's actions harm all of us that are competent and responsible systems safety experts.

Tesla's Autopilot and FSD Beta programs are unsafe and they require serious discussion and analysis.

Yeah. They are going to have to fix that pronto.

Interesting that the German carmakers, in particular, are warming up this (per the scoop).

So, a possible bug in Lemmy... I am not sure yet though.

It looks like when I was composing some recent comments... if you post something in another thread... it like "shifts" my comment over to your thread...

I do not know if it because you are a mod or something, but it was quite surprising behavior.

If I did not just go crazy or something, I am certain that someone else would have noticed this by now.

Another highly-dangerous comparison between two incomparable different systems.

The Waymo vehicle is a Level 4-capable vehicle with no human driver fallback requirement.

The Tesla vehicle is a Level 2-capable vehicle with a human driver fallback requirement at all times - which effectively leaves the Tesla vehicle the same human driver control responsibilities as a vehicle without automation.

The risk profiles and validation traits between these two vehicles are, therefore, incomparable different.

Ok, besides that.

First off, there are no guarantees that this human driver did not run the route several times in their FSD Beta-active vehicle and then selected the most "visually performant" one.

In fact, since these are safety-critical systems, we must assume that was done.

Secondly, given the reliability demands of a Level 4-capable vehicle (as is ignorantly claimed, implicitly, by the human driver featured in this clip)... a single video (or any amount of videos) are simply too puny to establish anything quantifiable.

I did not watch the whole clip, but in at least one spot the human driver apparently interacts with the surrounding vehicles in order to allow the FSD Beta-active vehicle the space to exit a blocked lane:

And, here, the FSD Beta-active vehicle's planner appeared to intend on illegally taking a left-hand turn from a forward/right-turn only lane. It seemingly did not actually perform the illegal turn, but aside from the human driver's negligence in allowing the vehicle to even "try it", this is an "unseen" issue that is simply hand-waved away.

What if, say, the FSD Beta-active vehicle was in the exact same lane but the traffic configuration/volume was slightly different?

Would the FSD Beta-active vehicle have attempted to execute the turn illegally?

No one can say, including the human driver and Tesla - which is unacceptable for the obligations of a safety-critical system.

We are having a sort of LFP battery production boom here in Michigan so it seems.

Ford is building a LFP plant with CATL IP: https://eu.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2023/03/02/michigan-legislature-oks-more-incentives-ford-battery-plant-marshall/69961540007/

And Our Next Energy (ONE) is doing so also (and I believe just doubled? their previous capacity plan): https://www.autonews.com/suppliers/inside-our-next-energys-battery-plants

It is OK to see, but in my view, Detroit and Michigan do need to move aggressively away from automotive manufacturing as a dominant economic force in the state.

It is holding us back.

ONE, at least, has plans for ESS systems production which does do that... ever so slightly.

Yeah. I agree.

I feel at home here (at least as at home as I was moving from Twitter to Mastodon).

And I actually feel like Lemmy is "closer" already to Reddit than Mastodon was to Twitter (which was sort of a turn off on the latter).

I am here. Adam Cook (used to be /u/adamjosephcook on Reddit)!