• cley_faye@lemmy.world
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      41 minutes ago

      One would expect such a small sample size to lower the crash rates. But tesla is subverting expectations yet again.

    • skisnow@lemmy.ca
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      25 minutes ago

      That’s not how you measure sample size. There were 8 Tesla crashes. The crash is the outcome, not the sample.

      8 Robotaxis crashed, having collectively driven the same distance that human-driven cars average two-thirds of a crash on. That’s statistically significant and then some.

      • Communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz
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        13 minutes ago

        it’s correct that 8 is not the sample size, but they didn’t give the sample size, it would be how many cars there are and the number of miles, not just the number of miles, they also didn’t establish fault and this was with a human in the loop, i’m all for hating elon but this isn’t worth reporting without more info.

  • bthest@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    Feeling a bit smug since I was early adopter of calling “self-driving” cars a grift. Remember when it was an undeniable fact that most cars would be driving entirely by themselves by now?

    • Cybersteel@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      My campus has a self driving mini bus service though there’s a real driver in the driver’s seat jic.

      • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
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        1 hour ago

        musk:

        2016 “We should be able to do 90 percent of miles driven [autonomously] within three years.”

        2015 “A Tesla car next year will probably be 90-percent capable of autopilot. Like, so 90 percent of your miles can be on auto. For sure highway travel.”

        2018 “From a technology standpoint, Tesla will have a car that can do full autonomy in about three years, maybe a bit sooner.”

        2018 “We’re going to end up with complete autonomy, and I think we will have complete autonomy in approximately two years.”

        2019 “I consider autonomous driving to be a basically solved problem. … We’re less than two years away from complete autonomy. Regulators however will take at least another year; they’ll want to see billions of miles of data.”

        there are about 20 more entries like this.

        you apparently haven’t paid attention to the grifter in chief https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autonomous_Tesla_vehicles_by_Elon_Musk

      • Dasus@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        Yeah me neither. I’ve heard claims that automation will take away jobs from drivers in the future, but not anyone actually saying “it’s undeniable that by 2025 most cars will be driving entirely by themselves”. And I remember when GPS was a spy-gadget daydream you imagined having when using maps. (Actual, physical maps. Not Google/Apple Maps.)

        • BussyCat@lemmy.world
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          7 hours ago

          I heard it in the same vane that I heard that we would have a moon base by 2020 a mars base by 2025 and nuclear fusion in just 10 more years

  • scarabic@lemmy.world
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    13 hours ago

    This is pretty much the only metric that matters. There is absolutely plenty of room to improve on human drivers! One crash per 500k miles sounds extremely low to me. But if the cars are not better than humans, they should not be on the road.

  • LoafedBurrito@lemmy.world
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    11 hours ago

    I hate this timeline. We are forced to drive next to these death machines and the corporations that own them take zero accountability and just bribe the president for more welfare and to not ever investigate them.

    Our whole country is bought and paid for by evil billionaires who dont care if we live or die.

  • BeBopALouie@lemmy.ca
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    13 hours ago

    You could not pay me to get inside of any Tesla product. Crappy quality, crappy design, crappy materials, crappy everything. Just another PE for guys with itty bitty weenies.

    • boonhet@sopuli.xyz
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      11 hours ago

      I rented one once for an hour, that was all the Tesla experience I needed tbh.

      Wasn’t a P100D or anything, just a Y Long Range, but I no longer have any curiosity about it. Interior was bland af, ride quality was barely any better than a cheapo Hyundai… The only good things are the giant tablet not being slow as hell, and the powertrain being fun.

      You get a lot more with European cars if you’re willing to pay Tesla level prices. Or you can get a completely OK car from Korea or Japan and pay less (as long as it isn’t a Lexus, those are expensive).

  • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
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    16 hours ago

    Self driving cars have always been a stupid solution to the wrong problem.

    We shouldn’t be investing billions in them. We should be investing billions in creating livable spaces that don’t need cars so much. Then people will be happier and there will be less pollution.

    But I guess that’s not profitable so I guess we’ll just do idiotic garbage that gets people killed.

    • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
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      1 hour ago

      We should be investing billions in creating livable spaces that don’t need cars so much. Then people will be happier and there will be less pollution.

      when someone figures out how to make the better options more profitable than the bad options we’ll finally see progress.

      until then we’re fucked

    • MimicJar@lemmy.world
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      12 hours ago

      I mean the US is heavily car centric. Self driving cars are an attempt to adapt to what the reality of the world currently is.

      We should absolutely be doing things to make cars less of a requirement by improving public transit and creating more livable spaces that don’t require cars, that can even be the primary goal, but it won’t eliminate cars completely, and if it does it will take A LOT longer than self driving cars.

      Self driving cars are a great idea, but they aren’t a fix everything solution, they just one part of an overall solution.

      Quick edit: Also the cars Musk is developing are not even close to what we need. He’s being deliberately obtuse and creating more problems than he’s solving.

      • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
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        11 hours ago

        Self driving cars are a great idea, but they aren’t a fix everything solution, they just one part of an overall solution.

        Why are they a great idea? What are they making better? How is it worth the real and opportunity costs?

        • MimicJar@lemmy.world
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          11 hours ago

          They’re safer than human drivers. Tesla cars absolutely are not. But Waymo cars? They do seem to be.

          https://www.npr.org/2025/12/12/nx-s1-5634879/why-one-trauma-doctor-sees-self-driving-cars-as-a-public-health-breakthrough

          It’s still early. We still need more data. They should be closely watched. But self driving cars do appear to be safer. That’s why they are a great idea. They are making driving and roads better.

          • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
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            11 hours ago

            I don’t have the means or motivation to do research now from the couch, so I’ll concede you may be correct. However, I think it might be even safer to take those same billions of dollars and invest them in mass transit and other infrastructure changes. That would mean fewer car accidents, less pollution, nicer spaces, healthier people, healthier economies, etc. private car ownership cannot be the long term solution. If it’s not an outright dead end, it’s certainly a side street instead of high speed rail (if you’ll pardon a strained metaphor).

            • xthexder@l.sw0.com
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              4 hours ago

              I’d actually be genuinely curious to see how it compares to taxi drivers, bus drivers, or ubers. Since they drive professionally, you’d hope they’d drive a bit safer than the average human.

              I’m sure nothing will be able to compete with the safety numbers of trains or just being close enough to walk though.

            • johntash@eviltoast.org
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              4 hours ago

              While I’d absolutely love better and more public transit, it just doesn’t make sense in a lot of areas that are too spread out or don’t have enough people per square mile.

            • MimicJar@lemmy.world
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              7 hours ago

              To be fair I don’t have 100% confidence that self driving is safer than human driving. I just believe that based on the current data, it seems to be. If new data comes out tomorrow, then I’ll look at and evaluate that data.

              I also don’t believe that investment is a zero sum game. We should absolutely be investing in both. Both are valuable. You don’t have to only invest in one.

  • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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    21 hours ago

    There was a news story two weeks ago about Waymo taxis in Texas driving through 20 bus stops over a few days.

    The only response was, “company officials treat this very seriously and are working on a fix.”

    It’s bizarre how if you drove through twenty bus stops in three days, you would not only lose your license but be in jail on multiple charges.

    But if a corporation does it it is, “Oops, we will do better next time.”

    Utterly insane.

    No wonder Sovereign Citizens think they can get away with anything with the right paperwork.

    • shalafi@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      Oh! Driving past stopped school busses you mean. Had to look up “driving through bus stops”. :)

    • Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      19 hours ago

      They wrote the legislation that allowed themselves to operate self driving vehicles. Every one of these vehicles is a symbol of the oligarchy at work.

      • anomnom@sh.itjust.works
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        19 hours ago

        Takes roughly a billion $1 pieces of paper.

        Then send a ridiculously small number of those to your state representatives.

    • bthest@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      Pretty sure they make passengers agree to a waiver. Also nobody should be giving money to Elon Musk.

      Just stay away from these things. If you find one parked then flatten the tires.

  • frunch@lemmy.world
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    20 hours ago

    I found this part to be even more alarming:

    All of the Robotaxi crashes so far have occurred with human safety monitors—who have been trained to take control of the car in the event of a software error—present in the vehicles.

    This is significant because, as TechCrunch reported on Monday, Tesla is starting to send out its Robotaxi fleet without safety monitors.

    So despite a pitiful record with people trying to correct the cars mistakes, they’re now ready to move on to running them without assistance?!? I am furious at the idea that our safety on the roads is this negotiable.

    • Soup@lemmy.world
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      18 hours ago

      It’s insane how shit the US is at managing its cars considering how aggressively they’ve forced them as the only truly viable mode of transport. It sucks horribly to drive in North America but it’s the only option given to people. Like, if you’re gunna do the worst option at least do it right and have some pride in the system.

      The US doesn’t give a fuck about its people.

      • Cybersteel@lemmy.world
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        2 hours ago

        Feel like some sort of trap. Being able to drive anywhere feels like it gives you so much freedom, the ability to go anywhere but the reality is there so much opportunity cost and financial cost to live in a car dominated society, even all the small things like convenience and safety all adds up.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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        17 hours ago

        The US has absolutely mad road to traffic laws. Zero concept of lane discipline, you driving whatever lane you feel like. Don’t understand roundabouts even though it’s just a curved road, it’s really not that hard. Still don’t have standardised pedestrian crossings even when other countries had them back in the 1920s. A red traffic light only means stop sometimes, but sometimes you can go if you’re turning right. No one obeys the speed limit, people regularly exceed it, and see no problem with that. And of course no one has separate indicator lights and brake lights because when would you ever slow down and go around a corner, definitely no need to engineer for that eventuality.

        • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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          11 hours ago

          A red traffic light only means stop sometimes, but sometimes you can go if you’re turning right.

          It always means stop. You can turn right on red (in most places) but only after you stop first and you must yield to crossing traffic. Unfortunately, not everyone knows this - I’ve met many people who think “right on red” means you can treat it like a green light as long as you’re turning right.

          What really gets me pissed is the signs that say “right turn on red after complete stop” which implies that isn’t the case fucking everywhere, when it is the case.

    • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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      20 hours ago

      Proof of concept fails in a spectacular fireball?

      Fuck it, owners are too invested, ship it anyway.

      Feels like I work for the same company.

      Why repair the plane on the ground…if it’s a real problem, we can fix it mid-flight.

    • Burninator05@lemmy.world
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      18 hours ago

      Not trying to defend Tesla on this because fuck Musk and everything he touches but are there stats on how, when, and why the human took over? Did they just not take over? Did they take over to late? Did they take over and make the situation worse?

      • frunch@lemmy.world
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        17 hours ago

        You raise an excellent point, one which i was hoping to find out more about as well. It turns out Tesla has been working hard to keep pretty much any pertinent information to answer your questions firmly under lock and key.

        From this Electrek article https://electrek.co/2025/11/17/tesla-robotaxi-had-3-more-crashes-now-7-total/

        Unlike other companies reporting to NHTSA, Tesla abuses the right to redact data reported through the system. The automaker redacts the “narrative” for each reported crash, preventing the public from knowing how the crashes happened and who is responsible.

        Based on the limited information in Tesla’s reports, we know that one of the new crashes involved a Robotaxi driving into a car backing up, another involved a cyclist, and the last one involved an unknown animal.

        So he’s basically fudging the numbers and anytime he’s questioned he points at the fudged numbers and says everything’s great, he’s great, now get out of the way while he deploys a fleet of these un-manned deathtraps to “half the US population” according to a properly ultra-super-inflated kind of claim only a douchebag like Leon can make. No, seriously–he actually claimed that by the end of 2025 he’ll have these things serving half the population of the US.

        https://electrek.co/2025/07/23/elon-musk-with-straight-face-tesla-robotaxi-will-cover-half-us-population-end-year/

        🫠

  • Hemingways_Shotgun@lemmy.ca
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    19 hours ago

    Did Robotaxi just flat out steal the Cyberpunk font in order to try to look cool? It seems like a very Musk thing to do.

    • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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      18 hours ago

      He fired them because he knew his system sucked, and would never be roadworthy, and that was the department that would stop him. So he fired them, and here we are.

      I’m actually looking forward to a lot of good crashes, that they’ll explain away as Sleepy Joe’s fault, or it’s not that bad that a school bus full of children blew up on a fire crash with a Tesla, it happens all the time, or perhaps they’ll just deny it, and MAGA will cover it up. Let them kill a whole bunch of American citizens, and then be all dismissive of any criticism.

      This is the year to let MAGA fully flower, and do their worst. The Dems should just stay out of the way, and do nothing to stop them from themselves, and work the media to point out every disaster. I can’t wait for the Midterms.

      • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
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        18 hours ago

        He fired them because he was under 17 active NTHSA investigations.

        Whatever, poeple who buy Teslas or get into a Tesla cab or buy TSLA deserve everything coming to them.

        • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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          18 hours ago

          Sounds like Obstruction of Justice, and a Cover-up. He didn’t have the legal authority to do that, just because another Sociopathic Oligarch told him it was okay. He needs to serve a few decades in prison.