Self-driving cars are often marketed as safer than human drivers, but new data suggests that may not always be the case.

Citing data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Electrek reports that Tesla disclosed five new crashes involving its robotaxi fleet in Austin. The new data raises concerns about how safe Tesla’s systems really are compared to the average driver.

The incidents included a collision with a fixed object at 17 miles per hour, a crash with a bus while the Tesla vehicle was stopped, a crash with a truck at four miles per hour, and two cases where Tesla vehicles backed into fixed objects at low speeds.

  • NachBarcelona@piefed.social
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    2 hours ago

    Even for the first piss poor epigone of Neuromancer, the name “Robotaxi” would’ve been laughed at.

    Mulon Esk made the dumbest name happen for the xth time.

  • ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 hours ago

    a crash with a bus while the Tesla vehicle was stopped

    Uuh…wouldn’t that be the fault of the bus? I mean, the system is faulty as fuck so there’s really no need to mix in shit like this, it reduces legitimacy of the otherwise very valid criticism.

      • pHr34kY@lemmy.world
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        2 hours ago

        I’m betting it stopped in the path of it. Either by pulling out in front of it, or sitting on the inside of the truck whilst turning.

      • ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        2 hours ago

        Eh, not really though. Generally if your car is stopped, even in the middle of the road, you are not at fault if someone else hits you. You can still get fined for obstruction of traffic, but the incident is entirely the fault of the moving vehicle.

  • ImgurRefugee114@reddthat.com
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    3 hours ago

    This is a really funny thing to see a few scrolls down from an article about Tesla’s first drivingwheelless vehicle and finally “solving autonomous driving”

  • 👍Maximum Derek👍@discuss.tchncs.de
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    7 hours ago

    They’ll work perfectly as soon as AI space data center robots go to Mars. I’d say a Robovan will be able to tow a roadster from New York to Hong Kong by… probably July. July or November at the latest.

    • RobotsLeftHand@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      I really fucking hate how his fans can just listen to him lie like this over and over and it doesn’t affect their opinion of him. I remember falling for it a couple times before I started asking “Is this like the last time you promised dates?”

      By that time it was a moot point, however, because that “pedo guy” comment was just around the corner. Now anyone who likes him after that needs to go to therapy to figure out a few things.

      I won’t comment on people who support him after the other things.

    • slevinkelevra@sh.itjust.works
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      10 hours ago

      Yeah that’s well known by now. However, safety through additional radar sensors costs money and they can’t have that.

      • tomalley8342@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        Nah, that one’s on Elon just being a stubborn bitch and thinking he knows better than everybody else (as usual).

        • ageedizzle@piefed.ca
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          7 hours ago

          He’s right in that if current AI models were genuinely intelligent in the way humans are then cameras would be enough to achieve at least human level driving skills. The problem of course is that AI models are not nearly at that level yet

          • T156@lemmy.world
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            5 hours ago

            Even if they were, would it not be better to give the car better senses?

            Humans don’t have LIDAR because we can’t just hook something into a human’s brain and have it work. If you can do that with a self-driving car, why cut it down to human senses?

            • 48954246@lemmy.world
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              4 hours ago

              Exactly, with this logic why have motors or wheels?

              You don’t have wheels so you shouldn’t use cars

            • ageedizzle@piefed.ca
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              5 hours ago

              I agree it would be better. I’m just saying that in theory cameras are all that would be required to achieve human level performance, so long as the AI was capable enough

              • embed_me@programming.dev
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                4 hours ago

                “So long as the AI has the same intelligence as a human brain” is a pretty big assumption. That assumption is in sci-fi territory.

      • paraphrand@lemmy.world
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        10 hours ago

        just one more AI model, please, that’ll do it, just one more, just you wait, have you seen how fast things are improving? Just one more. Common, just one more…

      • halcyoncmdr@piefed.social
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        8 hours ago

        I don’t think it’s necessarily about cost. They were removing sensors both before costs rose and supply became more limited with things like the tariffs.

        Too many sensors also causes issues, adding more is not an easy fix. Sensor Fusion is a notoriously difficult part of robotics. It can help with edge cases and verification, but it can also exacerbate issues. Sensors will report different things at some point. Which one gets priority? Is a sensor failing or reporting inaccurate data? How do you determine what is inaccurate if the data is still within normal tolerances?

        More on topic though… My question is why is the robotaxi accident rate different from the regular FSD rate? Ostensibly they should be nearly identical.

        • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
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          3 hours ago

          Regular FSD rate has the driver (you) monitoring the car so there will be less accidents IF you properly stay attentive as you’re supposed to be.

          The FSD rides with a saftey monitor (passenger seat) had a button to stop the ride.

          The driverless and no monitor cars have nothing.

          So you get more accidents as you remove that supervision.

          Edit: this would be on the same software versions… it will obviously get better to some extent, so comparing old versions to new versions really only tells us its getting better or worse in relation to the past rates, but in all 3 scenarios there should still be different rates of accidents on the same software.

      • parzival@lemmy.org
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        7 hours ago

        I’m not too sure it’s about cost, it seems to be about Elon not wanting to admit he was wrong, as he made a big point of lidar being useless

      • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
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        3 hours ago

        Are they even insured like typical insurance?

        If Tesla owns it, don’t they just pay out of pocket as needed, they don’t actually have a monthly payment to themselves or anything?

          • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
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            3 hours ago

            What auto insurance company would insure an unproven tech like this at a reasonable rate?

            If someones willing to insure it, it must cost an arm and a leg at least at this point in time in the cycle?

  • motruck@lemmy.zip
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    6 hours ago

    Are people getto g wttlements who are involved in a crash sounds like a potential payday with obviously risky odds.

    • ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      I mean, people are dying. Including the people who didn’t pay for it. So, kind of a bigger deal than that.