Mercedes First To Sell Vehicles In California With Hands-Free, Eyes-Off Automated Driving (techcrunch.com) 56
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Mercedes-Benz received a permit from California regulators that will allow the German automaker to sell or lease vehicles in the state equipped with a conditional automated driving system that allows for hands-off, eyes-off driving on certain highways. The California Department of Motor Vehicles said Thursday it issued an autonomous vehicle deployment permit to Mercedes-Benz for its branded Drive Pilot system. The hands-off, eyes-off system can be used on designated California highways, including Interstate 15, under certain conditions without the active control of a human driver. This means drivers can watch videos, text or talk to a passenger (or even mess around with any number of third-party apps coming to new Mercedes models) without watching the road ahead or having their hands on the wheel.
Mercedes-Benz is the fourth company to receive an autonomous vehicle deployment permit in California and the first authorized to sell or lease vehicles with an automated driving system to the public, according to the DMV, which regulates autonomous vehicles in the state. The deployment permit allows Drive Pilot to be used on highways in the Bay area, central valley, Los Angeles, Sacramento and San Diego. Drive Pilot is not the same as the fully autonomous systems developed by Waymo, Cruise, Motional and Zoox -- although some of the same principles apply. The Drive Pilot system uses a combination of sensors such as lidar, radar and camera coupled with software to handle driving tasks in certain conditions without the active control of a human driver. Mercedes' system is only available at speeds of up to 40 miles per hour, during daylight hours on certain highways. The system will not engage on city or county roads, in construction zones, during heavy rain or heavy fog, on flooded roads and during weather conditions that are determined to impact performance of the system, according to the DMV.
The DMV has placed other conditions on Mercedes, including that vehicle owners must watch a mandatory video explaining the capabilities of the system and how to engage and disengage the technology before they can access it. Mercedes also has to meet a number of safety, insurance and vehicle registration requirements. Mercedes has taken a conservative approach to its Drive Pilot system, requesting approval from every U.S. state's regulatory body even in cases where there is not a direct restriction from using such technology. The automaker first deployed Drive Pilot in Germany. It received approval from Nevada earlier this year.
Mercedes-Benz is the fourth company to receive an autonomous vehicle deployment permit in California and the first authorized to sell or lease vehicles with an automated driving system to the public, according to the DMV, which regulates autonomous vehicles in the state. The deployment permit allows Drive Pilot to be used on highways in the Bay area, central valley, Los Angeles, Sacramento and San Diego. Drive Pilot is not the same as the fully autonomous systems developed by Waymo, Cruise, Motional and Zoox -- although some of the same principles apply. The Drive Pilot system uses a combination of sensors such as lidar, radar and camera coupled with software to handle driving tasks in certain conditions without the active control of a human driver. Mercedes' system is only available at speeds of up to 40 miles per hour, during daylight hours on certain highways. The system will not engage on city or county roads, in construction zones, during heavy rain or heavy fog, on flooded roads and during weather conditions that are determined to impact performance of the system, according to the DMV.
The DMV has placed other conditions on Mercedes, including that vehicle owners must watch a mandatory video explaining the capabilities of the system and how to engage and disengage the technology before they can access it. Mercedes also has to meet a number of safety, insurance and vehicle registration requirements. Mercedes has taken a conservative approach to its Drive Pilot system, requesting approval from every U.S. state's regulatory body even in cases where there is not a direct restriction from using such technology. The automaker first deployed Drive Pilot in Germany. It received approval from Nevada earlier this year.
So let's check the scorecard shall we (Score:5, Interesting)
Only certain highways.
40MPH max.
No construction zones.
No weather but clear weather.
Daylight only.
Driver required to watch a video.
Yeah, well I guess it has some use but on the highways in the California central valley I know people are going to be honking at you for going 40 when everyone else wants to drive 80+. How relaxing.
This ain't much of a robot. More like a model train with an anti-collision sensor installed.
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Hallucinations (Score:1)
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No construction zones.
How would the driver know if they aren’t paying attention? Sounds like it’s another system where you are supposed to stay hyper aware and able to take over at a seconds notice when the computer can’t handle basic things. With the limit of 40mph you’ll need to be 10x safer than a human driver to be only 10 times less safe as it’s a magnet for being road rage shot at.
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Re: So let's check the scorecard shall we (Score:2)
No it has to be better than a normal drivers who are orders of magnitude better than the average which includes speeding lunatics and drunk drivers
explaining the capabilities but says hands off??? (Score:2)
explaining the capabilities but says hands off???
So does the video say to keep an eye out for fault conditions 1-40? while in hands off / eyes off mode?
Re:So let's check the scorecard shall we (Score:5, Insightful)
The actual use case is commuting at a time when everybody else is doing the same. I don't do this anymore, but when I did it I would've loved having an autopilot for the 30-45 minutes of bumper to bumper traffic at speeds that never reached 40mph. It's the least fun type of driving so it makes great sense to automate. If the traffic is actually flowing at a decent speed, most people with a Mercedes probably prefer to drive themselves.
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"... but when I did it I would've loved having an autopilot for the 30-45 minutes of bumper to bumper traffic at speeds that never reached 40mph."
You mean those times when everyone else is doing their best to dart into and out of lanes and cut people off just so they arrive two cars ahead of you?
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Great fit traffic jams. If property owners get their way, those are coming back.
Keep in mind it also has hands free at higher speeds, you just have to pay attention.
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At least it's something that will work safely under clearly specified conditions instead of steering you into the side of a semi trailer at highway speeds.
If there is an accident? (Score:2)
Whose fault is an accident?
If the accident causes a death, who is indicted?
Re:If there is an accident? (Score:4, Insightful)
Whose fault is an accident?
If the accident causes a death, who is indicted?
The person with the least money.
Re: If there is an accident? (Score:1)
that will not hold up in criminal court! (Score:2)
that will not hold up in criminal court!
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Yes, that's why no one has ever been convicted of vehicular manslaughter before.
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Why do people always bring this up like it's a big deal? Who gets indicted if a car's brakes fail? Who gets indicted if a meteor sideswipes a car? The answer is WHO CARES? It's not a big deal. Why does anyone even need to be liable? If something is a bug in the code, resulting from negligence .. then sue the manufacturer. If it's an accidental bug or unforeseen thing .. then let the insurance company eat the cost.
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Its a big deal because this hasn't played out in court yet, and no one wants to be the first.
The first time this goes to court its going to involve 3 parties, the driver, the manufacturer and the insurer, add an extra spice if the incident left someone dead or injured. The discovery will be brutal, long and expensive; the auto maker may have to open up patents and other documents that normally would be kept secret to prove they are not at fault.
I imagine this is a giant game of business chicken right now,
Regulation/culture change (Score:2)
Its a big deal because this hasn't played out in court yet, and no one wants to be the first.
And the answer is that the regulations and culture have to change. That's all.
If you can show that autodrive is safer than a human operator, it should be straightforward for the US to make the manufacturer free from liability from accidents because that's the added social value.
In a similar manner to aircraft design, the liability waiver should come with regulations of quality: some group investigates the accident (as TSA does for aircraft accidents), a group thinks through the failure circumstances and rec
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The problem with self driving solutions is they do not have common sense. Yes many human driv
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So if stats show that your system runs over 9 people per 1 million kms while humans hit 10, you're safe?
I think if your self-driving car mows down a person crossing the street on green light in the middle of a clear sunny day, you'll get the MAX treatment.
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C'mon, does that statement sound plausible to you? No lawsuits yet? In America? Of course there have been:
https://www.enjuris.com/blog/n... [enjuris.com]
https://www.nbcnews.com/busine... [nbcnews.com]
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Tesla's self-driving product and Mercedes self-driving product are not in the same class.
https://www.jdpower.com/cars/s... [jdpower.com]
Both of your linked examples are Tesla and are at a level 2 SAE standard, the Mercedes systems is at level 3.
Rafaela Vasquez is in criminal court after the sel (Score:2)
Rafaela Vasquez is in criminal court after the self driving failed
at least in an criminal court they can't use an EULA or NDA to block access to logs / codes / etc.
In an death case where someone is facing an criminal court.
They need to demand all
LOGS
SOURCE CODE
MAP / ROAD DATA that was used at the time
and if they can't trun that over then the state will have an hard time proving beyond reasonable doubt.
also the car manufacture can't just give limited access to just the state as that can be an Brady violation
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patents and other documents that normally would be kept secret
Patents are not secrets. That's the whole point of patents. In exchange for the inventor telling the public how their invention works, we give them a temporary monopoly.
Re:If there is an accident? (Score:5, Informative)
Because it is a big deal. A company is telling its customers that they don't even need to pay attention to the road while their car drives itself but they're not disclosing if they're going to take responsibility for any negative consequences caused by defects in the self-driving system. As a responsible consumer, I'd like to know what I'm liable for before giving control over to it.
That's obviously a false analogy since there was virtually no human involvement in such an accident.
I wonder if you would still believe that if you were seriously injured by one of these cars and your insurance company, the other driver's insurance company, and Mercedes all disavowed responsibility and pointed their fingers at each other. Your legal costs will be way higher as you pursue all of the them in court until you figure out which one the courts believe is responsible for covering the potentially huge costs of your medical treatment and property damage.
Whose insurance company? Yours? The other driver? Insurance in the U.S. is a private industry, and like all private companies, their goal is to take in as much money as possible and pay out as little money as possible. Everyone involved has a significant financial motivation to blame the other. And it's not just for this particular incident - when this inevitably happens, how it is handled will set a precedent for all future incidents, so the stakes will be huge.
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> That's obviously a false analogy since there was virtually no human involvement in such an accident.
"The only two living saints in the USA today brought a class-action lawsuit against all sinners for causing God's wrath to descend upon us all in the form of a meteor..."
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Because I don't want a felony conviction because some jackass wrote bad code.
If I eat felony I want it to be because I made a mistake; something different than I bought a car with buggy software that killed a pedestrian.
movie idea (Score:2)
movie idea
buggy software leads to an man losing his own son in an self driver crash and he is the one to do the hard time after the courts let him down due to lack of funds to get an good court defense to prove that the software failed and maybe gets life.
Say he gets out some how and then he hunts down the CEO of the car manufacturer and kills his son just so that the CEO can feel what it's like to have there son taken away from them.
Re: movie idea (Score:1)
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source code or you must ACQUIT!!
Just save yourself the trouble (Score:2)
Nomenclature (Score:3)
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Re:Enjoy it while it lasts (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple is making its car and it will beat Benz. For one thing, they ALREADY have a chip that can process inputs from multiple lidars and 12 cameras (you saw it in the Vision Pro). Tesla only has 8 cameras. Apple's car will have side facing cameras on the front bumper unlike Tesla which relies on the B-pillar .. this buys a few milliseconds of time to during side impact collisions at intersections the Apple car can protect the passenger compartment by braking or acceleration just prior to side-impact.
The significance of Mercedes' announcement is that they are signaling sufficient confidence to sell and stand behind a commercial product. Tesla doesn't want to publicly and legally say Level 3. Cruise and Waymo have Level 4 mostly working but are unwilling to stand behind a commercial product (i.e., non-robotaxi, privately owned). Apple is a huge mystery. They could be way in front of the competition or miserably behind.
One thing is clear. Whoever has a huge lead will do that based on software. Simply having more TOPS or memory bandwidth or more sensors is not enough. Hardware is not the bottleneck, at least not yet. If it were, we'd already see commercial products with 50 cameras, 10 lidars, and multiple processor chips. The problem isn't cost (since there would be a small but profitable market for super expensive but functional L4/5 cars). The super beefy processor and sensor configs don't exist because the bottleneck is software.
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I don't think that is clear. It's certainly possible for example that Tesla's software is well ahead, but somewhat hobbled by lack of LIDAR.
can't really depend on an network / cloud in car (Score:2)
can't really depend on an up 24/7 network / cloud in moving car must less the issue of that car needing an full time low lag (and maybe good bandwidth) network link at all times.
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Software mostly exists to compensate for hardware (processing power and sensors) sucking. If a car had sensors to give it the exact 3D layout, hardness, and trajectories of every surface and object around it .. processing power needed to plan a route would be very low. As things are now, lots of processing power goes into figuring out whether something is a shadow, where the lane/road edges are .. what objects are moving and may intersect etc .. what objects are occluded behind a parked van and may suddenly
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processing power needed to plan a route would be very low.
This is true for a world with purely static objects. However, other cars, pedestrians, traffic light signals, etc. change state. So, a car's planner has to predict behavior and map out a trajectory based on that probabilistic behavior. And that doesn't even consider the reaction of other objects to each other and to the autonomous vehicle or perception error or occluded objects. Depending on how completely the car searches out this space, it can be a lot of compute cycles.
Indeed (Score:3)
"The DMV has placed other conditions on Mercedes, including that vehicle owners must watch a mandatory video explaining the capabilities of the system and how to engage and disengage the technology before they can access it."
OTOH they are allowed to watch it during their first drive.
Seriously? (Score:2)
It's called the DP system? No wonder California approved it.
Something didn't add up at first (Score:2)
40 mph is below the legal speed on I-15. As a general rule, you're not allowed to go less than 45 mph on the Interstate, with reasonable exceptions for things like trucks going up hill (and there are dedicated lanes on steep slopes for that).
Then it clicked. There are times when I've been on I-15 to/from Vegas and *wished* I could go 40 because the traffic is so bad. So there's the killer app for this--sparing you the tedium of getting off and on the brake and gas while you do the casino crawl.
This is a
I can't drive 40! (Score:2)
I can't drive 40!
what used to take hours now takes all day and all night
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Do you mean:
What used to take two hours now takes all day [duckduckgo.com]?
What makes this so hard? (Score:2)
Both Cruise and Waymo are operating vehicles with no human driver at the controls already (vehicles that in some cases you can actually take a ride in). What's the difficulty in taking what Cruise and Waymo are doing and making it a thing that can go anywhere?
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Cruise and Waymo are not building anything that can go "anywhere." Their products go where they have routes mapped out and nowhere else. These are sometimes called "software rails."
This Mercedes product is the same thing. It can only be used where they have mapped routes for it to follow. Note that it cannot operate in a construction zone.
The "anywhere" product is what Tesla and only Tesla is trying to achieve. A much much harder engineering task.
Warning: (Score:2)
Warning: The State of California is known to The State of California to cause cancer. Oh, and motor vehicle fatalities as well.