<story><title>Tesla&apos;s Autopilot Chief Keller Steps Down After Two Years</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-26/tesla-says-autopilot-vice-president-keller-is-leaving-carmaker</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nakedrobot2</author><text>I think the brunt of the &amp;quot;Tesla Autopilot Deaths&amp;quot; problem is not the tech, but the marketing department (which has to include Elon Musk of course). This &amp;quot;kind of autonomous driving&amp;quot; is absolutely deadly, by definition. It&amp;#x27;s never going to work well. &amp;quot;The car will drive by itself, until it can&amp;#x27;t. So don&amp;#x27;t pay any attention, until you need to save your own life. We&amp;#x27;ll give you 2 seconds warning&amp;quot;. I mean, really? I don&amp;#x27;t know why Tesla could possibly think this is a good idea. By extension, anyone who actually uses or trusts autopilot is basically forfeiting their life. I think it is cognitively harder to use autopilot and pay attention, than to simply drive safely.&lt;p&gt;As far as the tech goes, I am in agreement with Elon. I think LiDAR is a short term advantage, but the companies&amp;#x2F;stacks depending on LiDAR will reach a local maximum from which they won&amp;#x27;t recover without totally starting again from scratch. LiDAR is short range, low resolution, and extremely expensive. There is no reason that visible light (+ IR) CMOS cameras can&amp;#x27;t do better by an order of magnitude, at a lower cost.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>NickM</author><text>&lt;i&gt;This &amp;quot;kind of autonomous driving&amp;quot; is absolutely deadly, by definition. It&amp;#x27;s never going to work well.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Instead of just speculating, the NHTSA did an actual study on this, and they reached the opposite conclusion. They investigated crash rates in Tesla vehicles that had the original autopilot hardware installed, both before and after autosteer was enabled via a software update, and found that autosteer reduced accident rates by 40%.&lt;p&gt;When Tesla talks about how much lower their accident rate per mile is compared to other cars, that&amp;#x27;s kind of statistical bullshit, since there are plenty of other uncontrolled variables that are in play that could affect this besides the cars themselves. But in the case of the NHTSA study, they were looking at the same drivers in the same cars, and the only difference was that one day a software update came out and enabled autosteer, and suddenly accident rates went way down. That&amp;#x27;s pretty damn convincing if you ask me.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;static.nhtsa.gov&amp;#x2F;odi&amp;#x2F;inv&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;INCLA-PE16007-7876.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;static.nhtsa.gov&amp;#x2F;odi&amp;#x2F;inv&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;INCLA-PE16007-7876.pdf&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Tesla&apos;s Autopilot Chief Keller Steps Down After Two Years</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-26/tesla-says-autopilot-vice-president-keller-is-leaving-carmaker</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nakedrobot2</author><text>I think the brunt of the &amp;quot;Tesla Autopilot Deaths&amp;quot; problem is not the tech, but the marketing department (which has to include Elon Musk of course). This &amp;quot;kind of autonomous driving&amp;quot; is absolutely deadly, by definition. It&amp;#x27;s never going to work well. &amp;quot;The car will drive by itself, until it can&amp;#x27;t. So don&amp;#x27;t pay any attention, until you need to save your own life. We&amp;#x27;ll give you 2 seconds warning&amp;quot;. I mean, really? I don&amp;#x27;t know why Tesla could possibly think this is a good idea. By extension, anyone who actually uses or trusts autopilot is basically forfeiting their life. I think it is cognitively harder to use autopilot and pay attention, than to simply drive safely.&lt;p&gt;As far as the tech goes, I am in agreement with Elon. I think LiDAR is a short term advantage, but the companies&amp;#x2F;stacks depending on LiDAR will reach a local maximum from which they won&amp;#x27;t recover without totally starting again from scratch. LiDAR is short range, low resolution, and extremely expensive. There is no reason that visible light (+ IR) CMOS cameras can&amp;#x27;t do better by an order of magnitude, at a lower cost.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mikejb</author><text>I fully agree with you, except to the Lidar argument. It holds currently, because Lidars are relatively new (compared to cameras). Considering the progress cameras have made, and apply a similar progress to Lidar. It&amp;#x27;s ultimately a race between learning enough on mostly-visual input, and developing cheaper and better hardware. It&amp;#x27;s a race, and I think it&amp;#x27;s brave to make claims on what tech will develop faster.&lt;p&gt;Also, I don&amp;#x27;t think a &amp;quot;restart from scratch&amp;quot; is required when moving away from Lidar - I don&amp;#x27;t have any hard evidence to make that claim and am happy to change my mind, but I haven&amp;#x27;t found any argument for doing so yet.</text></comment>