Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by AbrahamParangi 283 days ago
I use self-driving every single day in Boston and I haven’t needed to intervene in about 8 months. Most interventions are due to me wanting to go a different route.

Based on the rate of progress alone I would expect functional vision-only self-driving to be very close. I expect people will continue to say LIDAR is required right up until the moment that Tesla is shipping level 4/5 self-driving.

5 comments

Same experience in a mix of city/suburban/rural driving, on a HW3 car. Seeing my car drive itself through complex scenarios without intervention, and then reading smart people saying it can’t without hardware it doesn’t have, gives major mental whiplash.
I would like to get my experience more in line with yours. I can go a few miles without intervention, but that's about it, before it does something that will result in damage if I don't take over. I'm envious that some people can go months when I can't go a full day.
Where are you driving?! If the person you're replying to has gone 8 months in Boston without having to intervene, I'm impressed. Boston is the craziest place to drive that I've ever driven.

Pro tip if you get stuck in a warren of tiny little back streets in the area. Latch on to the back of a cab; they're generally on their way to a major road to get their fare where they're going and they usually know a good way to get to one. I've pulled this trick multiple times around city hall, Government Center, the old state house, etc.

Or when. Driving during peak commute hours really makes you a sardine in a box and it's harder for there to be intervene-worthy events just by nature of dense traffic.
I am curious what vehicle you're driving and whereabouts you're driving it.
Self driving is not the same as "autonomy". Musk lied to everyone with the Tesla self driving, the Boring Company, DOGE...wake up people...
Every company that does marketing lies to you.
I agree, but no one is more obvious with Musk yet people still keep falling for it. Specifically his “investors”.
He's just very good at it, like Steve Jobs was.
> Based on the rate of progress alone I would expect functional vision-only self-driving to be very close.

So close yet so far, which is ironically the problem vision based self-driving has. No concrete information just a guess based on the simplest surface data.

On a scale from "student driver" to "safelite guy (or any other professional who drives around as part of their job) running late" how does it handle storrow and similiar?

Like does it get naively caught in stopped traffic for turns it could lane change out or does it fucking send it?

I don't drive in Boston, but there is some impatience factor and it will make human-like moves out of correct-but-stopped lanes into moving ones. It'll merge into gaps that feel very small when it doesn't have other options.