Robotaxi THIS

[jyl]

https://electrek.co/2025/05/23/tesla-full-self-driving-veers-off-road-flips-car-scary-crash-driver-couldnt-prevent/

I happy to take Waymo. Not so much Tesla’s robo whatever. Have to be convinced it’s completely different from Tesla FSD.

[masraum]

I'm not yet ready for autonomous vehicles. I think there's a strong possibility that it'll be a good thing once it's ready for prime-time. But I don't think it's ready for prime-time, and it's not going to be for a bit. Maybe 5 years, maybe 10, maybe just 3, but I'll not be jumping on the bandwagon to be the first in my neighborhood.

2 or 3 weeks ago, a company started running driverless semi-trucks between Houston and Dallas. The company and Texas gov't has already back-pedaled and are requiring a guy to sit at the wheel.

https://electrek.co/2025/05/24/humans-step-up-as-texas-steps-back-from-autonomous-trucking/

Texas technology firm Aurora made headlines earlier this month by launching the first fully autonomous freight service in the US – but those celebrations may have been premature. According to the company’s CEO, human operators are back in the saddle.

In a blog post written by Aurora CEO, Chris Urmson, the company said the decision to put a human operator back behind the wheel of its tech-boosted Peterbilt Class 8 semi trucks was a result of pressure from the truck manufacturer’s parent company PACCAR. PACCAR apparently wanted a human in place, “because of certain prototype parts in their base vehicle platform.”

In Urmson’s own words:

A core part of our strategy has always been building a strong ecosystem of partners across the industry — from OEMs to logistics providers to regulators. These partnerships are essential to delivering a safe, scalable, commercial product.

One of those partners, PACCAR, requested we have a person in the driver’s seat, because of certain prototype parts in their base vehicle platform. We are confident this is not required to operate the truck safely based on the exhaustive testing (covering nearly 10,000 requirements and 2.7 million tests) and analysis that populates our safety case. PACCAR is a long-time partner and, after much consideration, we respected their request and are moving the observer, who had been riding in the back of some of our trips, from the back seat to the front seat. This observer will not operate the vehicle — the Aurora Driver will continue to be fully responsible for all driving tasks, including pulling over to a safe location if required. And we’ve shown we can do that safely, with the Aurora Driver operating for more than 6,000 driverless miles along our commercial launch lane between Dallas and Houston. This change has no impact on our near, mid and long-term development plans.

CHRIS URMSON, AURORA CEO

The re-introduction of human operators comes just as Texas State lawmakers are reviewing House Bill 4402 – a proposed law just passed out of the Texas House Committee on Transportation and would require trained human operators in autonomous vehicles, effectively banning fully self driving semi trucks in Texas.

“Requiring a human operator in a driverless truck isn’t unreasonable — it’s common sense,” says Brent Taylor, President of Teamsters Joint Council 80 in Dallas, Texas, and Southern Region International Vice President. Adding, that, “there are hundreds of thousands of Texans who turn a key for a living. They have mortgages, medical bills, and families to support. We can’t let out-of-state billionaires steal their jobs with reckless automation. We must protect their livelihoods by passing this critical bill into law.”

[rwest]

Until Tesla starts using LIDAR, I don’t think I would trust their autopilot.

I saw a video by Mark Rober and Tesla failed to detect several oddities that might happen on the road. The other car that they tested that had LIDAR, performed much, much better.

[A930Rocket]

Yeah, that’s why I’m not buying a self driving car anytime soon.

That Tesla, really took a hard left turn, after the oncoming car passed by. It will be interesting, to see what happened, technically.

[speeder]

Waymos are running all over the place in LA and have been for some time. Yesterday, I saw for the first time a new Waymo vehicle...sort of a van for transporting larger parties to compete with Uber XL, I guess?

They are pretty good drivers in general, they keep up with traffic and do not plug things up, better than a lot of human drivers, tbh. The only time they seem to really fk up is when they get stuck behind a double parked FedEx or Amazon truck, something that they cannot see around. Then, they sit there like a wart on a frog when any human would simply go around the thing. There have been other random malfunctions but nothing deadly like Teslas are known for.

The world is starting to see just what a scam artist Musk is, he absolutely never delivers what he promises.

[stealthn]

Tesla with auto driving should not be allowed on any roads. Imagine if that car would have swerved into the oncoming truck.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by stealthn

Tesla with auto driving should not be allowed on any roads. Imagine if that car would have swerved into the oncoming truck.

In an area with lots of traffic traveling at 70-80...

It would have made a mess.

I rode in a Tesla when I was in Plano for work. After work one day, I rode with one of the other guys to the restaurant that we were all going to. He uses the self driving thing all of the time including after he's been drinking (seems insane, but whatever). He loves it and it clearly hasn't bit him in the aß yet. It seems like one of those things where the "accidents per mile" ratio is probably very low, but the potential risk is pretty big but most folks ignore the risk part.

It's definitely not my bag. I'm sure that there are times that I've been distracted where something self driving would have been safer because they don't get distracted. But for now, I'll take my chances on myself.

[KFC911]

How far ahead are these robo cars looking ... and do they anticipate "stoopid" like most of us do?

Pass

[masraum]

Originally Posted by KC911

How far ahead are these robo cars looking ... and do they anticipate "stoopid" like most of us do?

Pass

Right, if I can see 5-10 cars up or at least 3 or 4, I do. And I always assume that someone is going to change lanes or pull out at the last second (instead of the 10-15 seconds that they've been sitting watching me get closer and closer).

[beepbeep]

This is the tricky part of using cameras only. I have some limited image processing background and I suspect shadows of those overhanging power lines tricked TPU to veer off the road as it does not really know the 3D mesh of the road, it computes it from cameras.

Would not happen with LIDAR. Also, I would not trust it until all cars are also doing self-driving. People do strange things.

[jyl]

Hmm. Cameras can autofocus i.e. determine distance to object. Can an autonomous car using just cameras do that? Or is the resolution too low and the AF process too slow? For that matter, since the car has cameras on all corners, it should be able to range find by triangulation. Again, the resolution may be too poor.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by jyl

Hmm. Cameras can autofocus i.e. determine distance to object. Can an autonomous car using just cameras do that? Or is the resolution too low and the AF process too slow? For that matter, since the car has cameras on all corners, it should be able to range find by triangulation. Again, the resolution may be too poor.

The question is are they focusing at all or are they focused/set to ∞?

[group911@aol.co]

Now in the Waymo cars, you can see the screen that their cameras are looking at and all the objects they are taking into account. I'll take their attention span over 99.9% of the drivers on the road all day long.
You old farts need to turn the funnel around. These things are going to save us from being home bound when we have to or should I say should be giving up driving.

[Arizona_928]

Safety or liberty.


There’s a reason why these cars aren’t allowed on the interstate

[KFC911]

Originally Posted by Arizona_928

Safety or liberty.


There’s a reason why these cars aren’t allowed on the interstate

When someone is actually killed by one of these ... I wonder what the punitive damages awarded will be... for Tesla, etc.

To make it "punitive" for a corporation of that size?

It will be interesting ... for $ure...

Jackie Chiles

[group911@aol.co]

Didn't realize it started this long ago.
https://azmirror.com/2019/08/16/autonomous-semi-trucks-arizona-ups-tusimple/

Originally Posted by Arizona_928

Safety or liberty.


There’s a reason why these cars aren’t allowed on the interstate

[group911@aol.co]

Really interesting stats on Waymo.
https://www.damfirm.com/waymo-accident-statistics.html

[Arizona_928]

Originally Posted by KC911

When someone is actually killed by one of these ... I wonder what the punitive damages awarded will be... for Tesla, etc.

To make it "punitive" for a corporation of that size?

It will be interesting ... for $ure...

Jackie Chiles

They killed a gal by asu in the middle of the night and were banned on campus.

Car didn’t stop, just kept going….

[Arizona_928]

Originally Posted by group911@aol.co

Really interesting stats on Waymo.
https://www.damfirm.com/waymo-accident-statistics.html

Let’s see the data before 2021….


Early data should be telling

[group911@aol.co]

Are you talking about the one in 2018? The Tesla with the driver behind the wheel?

Originally Posted by Arizona_928

They killed a gal by asu in the middle of the night and were banned on campus.

Car didn’t stop, just kept going….