Tesla Vehicles Can Now Recognize and Respond To Traffic Lights, Stop Signs (techcrunch.com) 96
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Properly equipped Tesla vehicles can now recognize and respond to traffic lights and stop signs thanks to a software update the company started pushing out to owners over the weekend. The software update had been available to a sliver of Tesla owners, some of whom had posted videos of the new capability. Now, the automaker is pushing the software update (2020.12.6) to the broader fleet.
The feature isn't available in every Tesla vehicle on the road today. The vehicles must be equipped with the most recent Hardware 3 package and the fully optioned Autopilot package that the company has marketed as "full self-driving." The feature, called Traffic Light and Stop Sign Control, is designed to allow the vehicles to recognize and respond to traffic lights and stop signs.
To be clear, Tesla vehicles are not self-driving and this feature has its limits. The feature slows properly equipped Tesla vehicles to a stop when using "traffic-aware cruise control" or "Autosteer." The vehicle will slow for all detected traffic lights, including green, blinking yellow and off lights, according to the software release notes. As the vehicle approaches an intersection, a notification will indicate the intention to slow down. The vehicle will then begin to slow down and stop at the red line shown on the driving visualization, which is on the center display. Owners must pull the Autopilot stalk once or manually press the accelerator pedal to continue through the stop line. Tesla said the feature is designed to be conservative at first. Owners will notice that it will slow down often and will not attempt to turn through intersections. "Over time, as we learn from the fleet, the feature will control more naturally," the company wrote in the release notes. You can watch a demo of the new feature here.
To be clear, Tesla vehicles are not self-driving and this feature has its limits. The feature slows properly equipped Tesla vehicles to a stop when using "traffic-aware cruise control" or "Autosteer." The vehicle will slow for all detected traffic lights, including green, blinking yellow and off lights, according to the software release notes. As the vehicle approaches an intersection, a notification will indicate the intention to slow down. The vehicle will then begin to slow down and stop at the red line shown on the driving visualization, which is on the center display. Owners must pull the Autopilot stalk once or manually press the accelerator pedal to continue through the stop line. Tesla said the feature is designed to be conservative at first. Owners will notice that it will slow down often and will not attempt to turn through intersections. "Over time, as we learn from the fleet, the feature will control more naturally," the company wrote in the release notes. You can watch a demo of the new feature here.
Dupe (Score:4)
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Maybe one day /. will be able to recognize and respond to these duplicate stories autonomously.
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Maybe they should train a Tesla to recognize dups.
Re: Dupe (Score:1)
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It's a glitch in the Matrix.
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Oh, noes! (Score:5, Insightful)
idiotic decision (Score:3, Interesting)
The vehicle will slow for all detected traffic lights, including green
Not even the Waymo cars are doing that.
Braking without reason for a green light should be illegal. It's certainly unexpected and will result in rear-ending accidents, with the poor schmucks hitting these Teslas being left on the hook for the extortion-like costs to repair them.
Re:idiotic decision (Score:5, Insightful)
It's certainly unexpected and will result in rear-ending accidents, with the poor schmucks hitting these Teslas being left on the hook for the extortion-like costs to repair them.
It's their fault. Leave adequate following distance.
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I challenge you to be able to safely brake 100% on time when the car ahead of you keeps braking randomly, without any reason.
But maybe drivers will bake in time into their reflexes to expect that Teslas will act stupidly whenever they're approaching an intersection.
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If you follow standard safe driving leaving a 3-6 second gap between you and the car in front of you. Yes you can be safe.
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3-6 second gap between you and the car in front of you
Riiiiiiight. Then anyone and everyone just pulls in front of you, killing your gap. Then you slow down to restore your gap, pissing off the people behind you, who honk and flip you off. Then someone pulls in front of you again because there's a gap.. rinse, repeat infinitely, until you either get where you're going, get pulled over and ticketed for driving erratically, or just give up and stay home.
Re: idiotic decision (Score:2)
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The entire post is in context and I understood it just fine as such. Are you just forgetting how to read and comprehend?
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Or maybe you just don't drive in California therefore you don't understand how it is *here*.
IDGAF what driving is wherever the hell it is *you* are, that's how it is *here*: unless there is NO TRAFFIC, you can't leave a '3-6 second gap' in front of you, someone will take advantage of it and pull in front of you. Then what I said completely applies. [slashdot.org]
It's not like that where *I* live, therefore it has to be that way *everywhere* too!
Nope. Try getting out of your own state once in a while, I
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A cop can pull you over for whatever when they feel like that.
Your car is too nice for the neighborhood they will pull you over.
I once got pulled over because the cop explained that my Plate number was reported stolen (but from a different State) but a New York cop can't tell the difference of a New York Plate vs another state is really pushing it. It was a boring night, he decided to pull me over to see if I was drunk. Then let me go after finding I was sober.
However normal people stop at Greenlights as
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3-6 second gap between you and the car in front of you
Riiiiiiight. Then anyone and everyone just pulls in front of you, killing your gap. Then you slow down to restore your gap, pissing off the people behind you, who honk and flip you off. Then someone pulls in front of you again because there's a gap.. rinse, repeat infinitely, until you either get where you're going, get pulled over and ticketed for driving erratically, or just give up and stay home.
Yes, humans are idiots, and that is exactly the reason why I can't wait for self driving cars :)
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Oh but Rick we'll BAN all human driven cars and make everyone have SDCs with no controls for them to use!
Keep dreaming, that's all that will ever be is some weird dream. No one is giving up driving, SDCs will never catch on, and I gues
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I would preference that this is based on the weather. I find that I tend to do two seconds myself, however with hills and another road conditions I find 3 seconds good. Rain, Snow, Fog and Ice really makes my gap much further.
Re: idiotic decision (Score:2)
If you are unexpectedly slowly moving or decelerating under a green light that hasn't recently changed from red, you are greatly increasing your chances of getting rear ended.
That's almost up there with speeding past a lane of slower moving traffic. You can do that. You can say the accident wasn't your fault until you're blue in the face and it won't undo the accident. You can come back here and cry about your insurance rate going up when you "didn't do it" too.
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Rear ending is the responsibility of the driver behind you, unless there is some particular circumstances. Such as passing a car, cutting them off then slamming your breaks. But for most driving condiions if there is a rearend it is your fault.
I had rear-ended a car once, this was because there was an other car tailgating me, so I was trying to get some speed and the car in front of me stopped really fast. So I was responsible. After that I will rather be a jerk to the guy tailgating me, and keep my dista
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" bake in time into their reflexes to expect that Teslas will act stupidly"
Why assume or expect for a given. Know that every vehicle sharing the road, is either drunk, aggressive or distracted. It makes it so much easier to operate in a safe and defensive manner.
Otherwise, it's quite the possibility that your placing trust in a human you don't know won't cause you harm. Until it does, and your method of operation causes property or personal harm. At that point you may understand my thought process.
Re: idiotic decision (Score:3)
Fact is, most who have driver's licenses shouldn't, and you're clearly no exception.
Re: idiotic decision (Score:2)
You do know that 'self driving cars' don't have a dick for you to suck, right?
My point had fuck-all to do with self-driving but rather fault/right-of-way, and speaking of male genitalia, do the species a favor and lose yours before you somehow manage to reproduce.
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I challenge you to be able to safely brake 100% on time when the car ahead of you keeps braking randomly, without any reason.
If that sounds like a difficult challenge to you, then increase your following distance. Or else you have a rear-end accident in your future.
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It's their fault. Leave adequate following distance.
In legal jurisdictions I am familiar with, the driver in the rear vehicle will be at fault.
However, it's still an error to stop inappropriately - any accident where the Tesla misinterprets a green light will be terrible publicity.
Re: idiotic decision (Score:2)
If the driver is approaching an intersection and is not cognizant enough to notice and counteract the slow braking of the car as well as any additional internal alerts, I'm pretty sure the shouldnt be driving anyway.
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If the driver is approaching an intersection and is not cognizant enough to notice and counteract the slow braking of the car as well as any additional internal alerts, I'm pretty sure the shouldnt be driving anyway.
My point is the car in front shouldn't be driving either. And not all braking is slow.
Re: idiotic decision (Score:1)
Nice try blaming the victim behind the badly programmed Tesla but the law and the insurance companies both say you're dead wrong and so is Tesla.
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No. In some states, like California where Tesla is HQ'd, intentionally hitting your brakes with a car behind you in a non-braking situation is an offense. And if anyone gets hurt badly or it was determined to be malicious then it can be charged as a felony.
Oh yeah? You're going to prove that the car was malicious?
Re: idiotic decision (Score:1)
I shall explain s-l-o-w-o-l-y.
The poster I replied to said it is the responsibility of the driver in back to not hit the driver in front.
I corrected that by explaining what the law is in the home state where Tesla is head quartered and does their build and design work.
This means the poster was wrong.
No one said the car was committing a malicious act.
I can't explain any slower if you still don't ge
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You may have pointed out the law in the state Tesla is headquartered (I don't know, citation needed) but you did not correct the statement that it is the responsibility of the driver in back to not hit the driver in front. The poster you tried to correct was not wrong
Re: idiotic decision (Score:1)
You may -feel- otherwise but the facts are different than your feelings. I have now explained this several times. Feel free to google for California law if you still care. I'm not
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The poster I replied to said it is the responsibility of the driver in back to not hit the driver in front.
This is 100% true.
I corrected that by explaining what the law is in the home state where Tesla is head quartered and does their build and design work.
Do you have a legal citation? We can look at it and investigate how it might apply in this situation.
Re: idiotic decision (Score:1)
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In the UK it will go 50/50 at best if someone brakes for no reason, at worst they could be entirely liable.
Re:idiotic decision (Score:4, Insightful)
"with the poor schmucks hitting these Teslas being left on the hook"
Except, one is required operate a vehicle at an appropriate speed and distance. If you rear end a vehicle, you are 100 percent responsible for the damage you cause to the vehicle you damaged due to not operating your vehicle in a safe manner.
He stopped too quickly, breaked for no reason, doesn't cut it. Even if the driver in front of you breaked for what you think is no reason, you're still 100% responsable.
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"Brake checking" has been prosecuted (typically as reckless driving or similar).
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Re: idiotic decision (Score:1)
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"If you rear end a vehicle, you are 100 percent responsible for the damage you cause"
Nope. Hooray dashcams. I've caught a dickhead pulling in front of me and slamming on their brakes. When they pulled in front of me, there might have been three inches of space between my bumper and theirs.
Court ruled the dickhead driver to be at fault and also filed charges of reckless endangerment against him.
And I get a 'new' Saab out of the deal from the dickhead's insurance company.
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Rear end collisions are not always the car behind's fault, at least not in the UK. If they brake for no good reason they are at least partially liable. If they reverse they are liable. If they cut you off and then brake they are liable.
The video is pretty scary. See how the car doesn't notice cyclists? And around the 6 minute mark it starts to glitch out really badly, with the autopilot icon flickering as it drops in and out. Then it doesn't seem to recognize the traffic lights at all and the display stars
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At this point this feature is in beta. So stopping (or require manual intervention) is a safer method then just driving pas a light it thinks is green.
Self driving isn’t 100% set your destination and go to sleep. It still requires intervention and attention. Consider auto pilot is like teaching a teen ager to drive a car. They can rather quickly stay on the road, but they will freak out at different points. Where the adult will need to provide instruction or tell them to stop.
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It's not really beta, it's making their customers do free work training their AI for them. They obviously failed to come up with decent training data any other way so are now trying to get drivers to provide it for them.
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How is this different from any other Beta public releases.
Beta Testers normally want to see the latest and greatest. Often the software company will either sell it to them at a reduced cost or sometimes for free. With the idea that they will provide bugs and suggestions to the product.
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Main difference is that usually beta software at worst will format your hard drive by mistake, where as Tesla beta software can cause a deadly crash and kill other people.
Uber demonstrated that a while back. Tesla has so far only managed to kill its own customers.
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Good thing you:
1. have to opt in to turning this on
2. are told in no uncertain terms that it will do this, and you have to press the autopilot stalk to cancel the slowing
So guess what, nobody is turning this on that doesn't want to help collect data.
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It seems to me a slight coast with an indication the driver needs to assess the situation and verify continuing through the light makes sense.
I know in drivers ed and defensive driving that's basically what we were taught.
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Remember that sometimes the driver will be asleep. Since Tesla refuse to make the driver attention more sensitive they have to make the feature fail-safe, which apparently means stopping in the middle of the road waiting to be read-ended at high speed.
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But also, I can see how an indication of upcoming intersection, and an easy intervention after double checking safety is a nice feature.
It doesn't lull into false safety, and it allows for one to be more alert for cross traffic, and if the light is red, to allow it to stop.
It's like the ACC in my current car (generally needs intervention to start after a stop), but treats all intersections as slowing/stopped traffic.
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Slowing for green lights shouldn't cause accidents directly (but, yes, it may because of inattentive drivers). However, doing so will delay traffic and create traffic congestion when the road is near capacity. This will increase CO2 emissions, waste time, etc. I would consider such unnecessary braking to be in the same category as impeding traffic or not keeping in the right lane if going slower than others in your lane or just jamming on one's brakes when driving down the freeway at 75MPH for no reason.
In
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The reason is it's a traffic light and it may change. But I do feel that braking is going too far unless it was driving at an inappropriate speed already. Sometimes for traffic lights I coast in anticipation of the lights possibly changing but braking for a green light is a step too far.
TBH I think Tesla owners are fools for believing the hype about self-driving and paying for it years before it is ready or proven possible with the cars that were sold. Tesla has done an amazing job of going from nothing to
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The rule of the road is that if you hit the car in front of you, it's your fault; you were too close, going to fast, or not paying attention. It can't be illegal to use your goddamn brakes, for fuck's sake.
Temporal vortex (Score:2)
Can it recognize when it sees the same traffic light twice in a row?
Next up for Tesla... (Score:1)
Green Light (Score:1)
The vehicle will slow for all detected traffic lights, including green
Elon Tusk does not understand traffic lights.
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Elon Tusk does not understand traffic lights.
No, his brother might be going the other way!
AutoPiliot TechCrunch... Ouch! (Score:2)
Perhaps a bad confluence of words?
Does it slam on the gas when green turns yellow? (Score:2)
I bet it is not good enough yet.
Slow but steady progress. (Score:5, Interesting)
I thinks Tesla method towards self driving is probably the best we can do. Give partial self driving where there is a benefit. Use it to record results and improve and release a better partial self driving.
The Google and Uber self driving has little to show for over the past few years. Just more tests.
Tesla is at least giving us progress that we can digest.
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As for Uber, let's just hope they don't kill more people.
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Where can I buy my google car?
Oh I cant. Because it isn't ready for consumer use yet.
Google is relying on high-quality maps and lidar. These high-quality maps are in essence GPS based rails. However, when roads change and there are additional concerns the software may not be as flexible.
Tesla's design is far more flexible and adaptable to different problems. And I can buy technology where it is today.
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That's not true. Waymo just completed a "1000 mile challenge" where they car did it entirely autonomously without any human intervention.
Waymo has a live taxi service and is now rolling out the latest version of their driver software and vehicles that will let them expand it. They are way, way ahead of Tesla with a reliable, safe level 4 system. Tesla is stuck on level 2 and even than isn't very reliable.
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That's not true. Waymo just completed a "1000 mile challenge" where they car did it entirely autonomously without any human intervention.
I think you're referring to the recent blog post about the series of 1000-mile challenges that Waymo (then Google) completed in 2009-2010.
Waymo has a live taxi service and is now rolling out the latest version of their driver software and vehicles that will let them expand it. They are way, way ahead of Tesla with a reliable, safe level 4 system. Tesla is stuck on level 2 and even than isn't very reliable.
Agreed. Tesla makes great cars (I own one and am contemplating buying another), but I think they're overly optimistic about AutoPilot.
They can stop signs? (Score:1)
Corner (no pun) cases (Score:2)
I am not that interested in the simple intersection places. I am pretty sure it would work pretty reliably with that.
I would like to see how it works when you have a 5-street intersection where one approach has 4 possible independent green/red lights: left, shallow left, straight, and right. And then for the fun of it another 4-way intersection less than 50 feet after the first. A RR grade crossing separates those two intersections.
I am describing intersections I have driven. Yet I don't see Tesla
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This first beta (wide release not early access) is about 50%/50% whether it will stop for flashing caution "Be ready, be alert, traffic pattern changing ahead!" signs ahead of actual intersections or merely detect them and slow for a non-descript traffic control device.
The reason of making this wide release is to train the computational model for those kinds of oddball circumstances.
Driving with the feature enabled takes some adjustment from the driver. It feels more like a video game at every intersection.
CAPTCHA (Score:2)
So all those traffic light CAPTCHA images I've been clicking are finally being used?
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Man, I was just going to post that!
Yes now they know what
- crosswalks
- traffic lights
- pedestrians
- bicycles
are. Now if only they'd have CAPTCHAS with pictures of famous political figures (choose your country and figures) and we could put big target signs on them... that would be awesome.
E
Well, it's not Skynet yet, but... (Score:2)
"Tesla Vehicles Can Now Recognize and Respond To Traffic Lights, Stop Signs"
This puts Tesla's machines ahead of about half of the 80-and-over human drivers I know.
"Full self-driving" (Score:3)
How can something be marketed as "full self-driving" when stopping at traffic lights and stop lights comes later as an experimental software update? Unlike "autopilot" or "cruise control", this cannot be interpreted as "full self-driving (note: not actually fully self-driving)". So what else is missing? This is begging for accidents and lawsuits.
Now? (Score:2)
Tesla Vehicles Can Now Recognize and Respond To Traffic Lights, Stop Signs
Uh, what the hell were they doing before this update?
The vehicles must be equipped with the most recent Hardware 3 package
So if you have an older vehicle you'll never have a fully self-driving car? Hasn't Musk been telling us all these years that your car will increase in value because of his software updates to make it fully driving?
Can't wait for the day... (Score:1)
... when all vehicles are fully autonomous, and there are no lights (at non-pedestrian intersections). Just vehicles flying through the intersection at silly speeds, all carefully coordinated by our AI overlord(s).