Study Finds Self-Driving Cars Are Safer Unless They Have to Turn
Autonomous vehicles are good at driving in some conditions but more likely to screw up in others.
By Ryan Whitwam June 21, 2024 https://www.extremetech.com/cars/study- ... ve-to-turn
Autonomous driving technologies are new and untested, so they attract a lot of attention when something goes wrong. Automakers offering this technology often claim a self-driving car is safer on average than a human driver. A new study from the University of Central Florida seems to support that position. The researchers found that self-driving cars are generally safer unless they have to turn or operate at dawn or dusk. But that almost never happens, right?
Researchers Mohamed Abdel-Aty and Shengxuan Ding analyzed car crash data from California between 2016 and 2022. California was quick to authorize autonomous vehicles, both for consumers and technology development. So, it has lots of data on the performance of autonomous vehicles.
Tesla Skipping FSD 12.4.1 and Moving to 12.4.2
June 27, 2024 by Brian Wang
Last weekend Tesla FSD 12.4.1 was expected to go to wide release but it did not. This weekend if there is no safety regression there should be a push of FSD 12.4.2.
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It is reported that 12.4.2 is much smoother. The challenge is keeping safety high, while increasing ride comfort. The 12.4.2 build moved into internal testing today.
There is still progress and fairly rapid releases of FSD but we are still waiting for the breakthrough release.
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/07/t ... 2-4-2.html
Tesla’s FSD (Supervised) v12.4.2 is started to roll out to some normal Tesla owners (non-employees) in North America. Tesla FSD having possible rapid improvement is critical for increased attachment rate (the percentages of old and new Tesla owners that adopt FSD worldwide.) Tesla FSD rapid improvement is critical for licensing deals with robotaxi companies and car making OEMs.
Various first impressions of Tesla FSD v12.4.3 are positive.
esla FSD 12.4.3 drives like a professional chauffeur. It executes many maneuvers more smoothly than a human could, and can often react to road hazards before the human driver even notices them
Dave Lee and Whole Mars are impressed and provide more details.
1. v12.4.3 felt overall like a better build compared to v12.3.6 (which most people have). It drove smooth, confidently, and performed maneuvers a bit more confident compared to v12.3.6.
2. For example, turning right into oncoming traffic just seemed better. I’m not going to say it is crazy better, but I’d say it’s better. There’s still a lot of room to go where I think FSD needs to match the level of an average human in terms of the confidence and time it takes to take a right turn onto oncoming traffic, and v12.4.3 isn’t there yet. But it’s much improved.
3. Some of the quirks of v12.3.6 have been fixed. One example, is v12.3.6 would do this head-fake maneuver if there was a median and I needed to turn left at a stop light. It would edge into the median a few times back and forth before going in, and it was cool at first but strange. v12.4.3 handles the median prior to getting into right turn lane much better, just like a human (at least in my initial experiences).
4. It seemed to be able to choose the right lane to be in a bit better than v12.3.6. There was one place I frequently test where v 12.3.6 would get confused between a lane going straight and a lane turning right, but v12.4.3 recognized the correct lane to get into immediately.
5. The nag system in v12.4.3 is a bit too aggressive for my likes as sometimes I’m looking straight ahead but it tells me to pay attention. But nevertheless, it’s better than the old v12.3.6 system where it would give steering wheel nags. In v12.4.3 you just need to keep your eyes looking forward to remove the nag.
6. v12.4.3 is not perfect and that’s not what I think we should expect from it. It still has its weaknesses. On a right turn with a red right arrow, it was a bit confused and went back and forth on whether to go or not.
In a parking lot I was trying to get out of, it went into a dead end.
Ark Invest has observed that Baidu robotaxi is several times bigger than Waymo. They also report that the robotaxi and Tesla FSD systems are already safer than human driving. These are observations that Nextbigfuture has already reported over the past few weeks in more detail.
China Robotaxi Companies are Giving More Rides than Waymo
The top robotaxi and autonomous vehicle companies in China are:
Baidu Apollo – Apollo Go, Baidu’s self-driving ride hailing platform, plans 2024 plans to deploy 1,000 sixth-generation robotaxi in Wuhan by the end of 2024. The fully autonomous robotaxi operation network will reduce operating costs by 30 percent. They are using more in car safety drivers and more remote drivers. Apollo Go, Baidu’s autonomous ride-hailing service, provided about 826K rides in the first quarter of 2024, up 25% year over year. As of April 19, 2024 , the cumulative rides provided to the public by Apollo Go surpassed 6 million. Apollo Go is giving about four times the rides of Waymo. Baidu has already partnered with Tesla on hypermapping for all China.
Elon Confirms Tesla FSD 12.5 is Testing and Near Release
July 15, 2024 by Brian Wang
Elon confirms Tesla test drivers are validating FSD 12.5. This means a new FSD version is soon to be released.
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Chuck Cook is a famous Tesla FSD tester. He has an unprotected left turn near his house which is a challenging and critical test of any self driving system. When Chuck sees Tesla FSD cars near his house he knows that a new FSD release will soon happen. Chuck though it might be 12.4.5 but Elon told him it is FSD 12.5.
An imminent release of Tesla FSD version 12.5 should have an automated car that can do reverse and consistently handle human hand signals.
It could be feature complete with high mileage per disengagement.
Cybertruck FSD Arrives With Tesla FSD 12.5
July 18, 2024 by Brian Wang
Elon Musk confirms that Cybertruck FSD will be released with FSD 12.5. FSD 12.5 finally merges city and highway driving code.
Highway driving has been handled by autopilot. Tesla Autopilot driver assist has one collision every 7.6 million miles which is about 8 times safer than Tesla without Autopilot activated and about 13 times safer than the average US car.
Vayu Robotics has today unveiled its first delivery robot. The One can follow staff around stores to load up customer orders, before autonomously navigating city streets at speeds up to 20 mph to deliver the goods. Commercial deployment has begun.
We've seen a bunch of delivery robots trundle around campuses and neighborhoods over the years, with companies like Amazon, Fed-Ex, Walmart, Uber Eats and others all trying out different solutions. A Californian startup is rolling down a somewhat different path, with an autonomous bot that uses a new low-cost vision system plus AI training to navigate without pre-mapping the route, and does away with pricey sensor suites to boot.
Vayu Robotics was founded in 2021 by "engineers, technologists and business leaders with decades of industry experience developing and commercializing cutting-edge automotive sensing, autonomous vehicles and robotics technology."
Toyota and Stanford University have been pushing self-driving technology beyond the limits of traction for several years now, and they've now released video of two autonomous cars drifting in tandem, getting very sideways with extreme precision.
Drifting as a form of motorsport has been around for some time. Most, if not all drift cars these days are rear-wheel drive cars with a lot of horsepower and stiff suspension. Generally, the steering knuckles have been modified for much sharper turning than a stock vehicle, in order to get more sideways without spinning out at opposite lock.
The two-wheel drift style that we now know as D1 competition was popularized in the 1970s when "Drift King" Keiichi Tsuchiya would practice his sideways technique in the mountain passes of Japan. By the late 80's, it started becoming more mainstream. One of the very first international drift events outside of Japan was in 1996, hosted at Willow Springs in southern California.
Elon Musk will meet Samsung CEO Lee Jae-yong and Hyundai CEO Chung Eui-sun in Paris in early August. It is reported they will dine in Paris this weekend. They will also discuss the development of next-generation technologies and explore ways to cooperate.
The meeting was reportedly made at the suggestion of Chairman Lee Jae-yong.
Elon says Tesla has a clear path to doubling average miles between interventions in August. I, Brian Wang, believe the path to doubling miles between interventions is eliminate the obstacle interventions and merge the highway and city driving software stacks. Tesla would reach 2000 miles between intervention and this would be 10x better than 12.3.6 and 20 times better than v11. The chinese and other car makers have self driving systems at the level of FSD version 11 or worse. Other companies can only advance to Tesla FSD 12.5.X level with 2 billion miles of data.
