I, For One, Welcome Our New Self Driving Overlords

10 Replies to “I, For One, Welcome Our New Self Driving Overlords”

1. Is there a way we can convince Blackie to get a Tesla?.

2. Clearly operator error. The hipster driver accidentally hit the “gas” pedal … and caused a whiplash injury to the driver ahead of him. Can’t wait to see his insurance rates spiral out of affordability. Yep. Operator error. That’s Elon’s go-to excuse.

   Meanwhile … all the “socially conscious” public pension investors have driven Tesla’s stock price up to levels that guarantee Elon a $600M bonus payment prescribed by his contract. Because he’s a “genius” who deserves it.

3. People have been suing for close to 50 years for stepping on the gas pedal instead of the brake. In all cases the brake pedal will stop a car that is floored. End of debate.

4. Everybody knows my opinion of self driving anything.

5. Tesla cars should be driven behind prostate massaging cretins blocking traffic. That way two problems can be solved at the same time.

6. Self-driving will only reach the point of being reliable by relying on thousands of incidents like this, and then analyzing the failures, and then figuring out the remedies. There are many road, traffic, object and lighting configurations that are rare, but can fool the system, some of them likely a true engineering challenge to overcome. We see some of them when there is video associated with posts like this. If and when they have managed to overcome the vast majority of these many scenarios, only then will self-driving be safe (that is to say safe with a 100% functional system). Then there is the issue of what happens to the system with wear and tear, cameras getting foggy, electrical parts becoming unreliable, and so on, that is a whole new can of worms.

7. Check those floormats – could be made by Toyota!
   We all remember ’09 and the issues they had. Acceleration without accelerating, etc.

8. We went through something like this decades ago.

   IIRC, the vehicle that was being cursed was an Audi; auto transmission, of course. The were several cases of “sudden, unexplained acceleration”, with cars suddenly leaping from their garages, across the street an into someones front fence.

   The Ralph Nader types went into their usual tizz.

   Only problem was that most European cars have the accelerator located right beside the brake. The idea is that as the same foot operates both, why would anyone remove the elegance of being able to keep a heel on the floor-mat and just be able to angle the foot to press the correct pedal as required. This also works for manual transmissions.

   Trading up from a land-barge with the two pedals separated by a considerable distance, to a lighter vehicle with a much more responsive engine and transmission and closer pedal spacing appears to have been a bit of a stretch for some folk.

   In the couple of seconds it takes for a properly-engineered car to reach ludicrous speed when the accelerator is floored, such a vehicle can do a surprising amount of damage to, not just the neighbour’s petunias, but the car-driver’s own garage, passing traffic or just about anything or anybody likely to be encountered on the street.

   Not sure of the Tesla can accelerate like a scalded Audi, but if the driver just keeps pressing hard on what they have mistaken for the brake, something unpleasant will eventually happen.

   1. Tesla model S accelerate like supercars. 0-60 in less than 3 seconds. The model 3 is a little slower, 0-60 in 3.2 seconds, 11.7 second quarter mile.

9. A bit like the economy.