[rob74]

Well, I have to admit that your friend has a point. Humans are bad at reacting quickly and correctly to unexpected situations, and some debris large enough to damage your car showing up from out of nowhere after several hours of boring driving along a largely straight highway with little traffic is definitely one of these situations. But a self-driving system worth its salt should always be alert, scanning the road ahead, able to identify dangerous debris, and react accordingly. So, different pair of shoes...

[root_axis]

I'm not convinced. The debris is clearly visible to the humans a long way off and the adjacent lane is wide open. Avoiding road debris is extremely common even in more congested and treacherous driving conditions. Certainly it's possible that someone texting on their phone or something might miss it, but under normal circumstances it could have been easily avoided.

[wlesieutre]

Even if there wasn't space to swerve, a human would've hit the brakes and hit it much slower

[newyankee]

I feel Waymo's LIDAR might have worked here

[ModernMech]

100% it would have. One of the main things the LiDAR system does is establish a "ground plane", which is the surface on which the car is expected to drive. Any hole or protrusions in that plane stick out like a sore thumb to a LiDAR system, you'll be able to see it in the raw data without much of a feature detector, so detecting them and reacting is fast and reliable.

Contrast with Tesla's "vision-only" system, which uses binocular disparity along with AI to detect obstacles, including the ground plane. It doesn't have as good a range, so with a low- profile object like this it probably didn't even see it before it was too late. Which seems to me a theme for Tesla autonomy.

[xnx]

In addition to detecting the object, Waymo has to make some determination about the material. Rigid heavy metal = slam on the brakes and/or swerve. Piece of tire or plastic bag = OK to run over if swerving or hitting the brakes would be more dangerous. Really hard problem that they're concerned about getting right before they open up highway driving.

[ModernMech]

LiDAR is also good for that because you can measure light remission and figure out how much of the LiDAR energy the material absorbed. Different materials have different remission properties which can be used to discriminate. Which is a compounding advantage because we tend to paint road line markers with highly reflective paints. This makes line markers blindly obvious to a LIDAR.

[Der_Einzige]

Elon's Musk believes that sensor fusion doesn't work and is a fake science.

This is why FSD is still shit in late 2025 and drives like it's drunk.

[HarHarVeryFunny]

Stereo vision might have helped too to assess the size of it, but from the pre-crash display at 0:07 it looks like the Tesla didn't see the object at all, which is a bit surprising since it was large enough, and very clearly looked like exactly what it was - a big chunk of metal.

The car reacted the opposite a human would. If you saw something unidentifed ("road kill?") in the distance then you'd be focusing on it and prepared to react according to what it was. With an empty lane beside you I think most drivers would be steering around it just based on size, even before they realized exactly what it was (when emergency braking might be called for).

[dzhiurgis]

It's great that AI doesn't care about your feelings tho.

[agildehaus]

The humans in the vehicle spotted it fine, and we should not tolerate self-driving systems that are only as good as the worst of us.

[mynameisvlad]

> and we should not tolerate self-driving systems that are as good as the worst of us

The person you replied to didn't do that, though:

> But a self-driving system worth its salt should always be alert, scanning the road ahead, able to identify dangerous debris, and react accordingly. So, different pair of shoes...

[amelius]

They never said they did.

[mynameisvlad]

I mean, those were direct quotes and it was literally half of their comment, but, sure, "they never said they did".

[BobaFloutist]

I think they meant the person you were responding to never claimed that the person they were responding to said that we should tolerate self driving systems that are no better than the worse of us, not that the person that the person you were responding to was responding to never said the thing you very clearly directly quoted.

[orwin]

I think you might have misunderstood someone here. The person you quoted made a generic statement about what we should expect from an autonomous vehicle, but never said (nor implied imho) that the person he responds to didn't expect the same.

[dzhiurgis]

There’s thousands of examples where FSD seen something people did not.

Sad to see HN to give up to mob mentality.

[close04]

> I have to admit that your friend has a point

Do they? "Many humans" would hit that? The humans in the car spotted the debris at least 8s before the impact. I don't think any humans would hit that in broad daylight unless they were asleep, completely drunk, or somehow managed to not look at the road for a full 10s. These are the worst drivers, and there aren't that many because the punishment can go up to criminal charges.

The argument that "a human would have made that mistake" backfires, showing that every Tesla equipped with the "safer than a human driver" FSD is in fact at best at "worst human driver" level. But if we still like the "humans also..." argument, then the FSD should face the same punishment a human would in these situations and have its rights to drive any car revoked.

[sandworm101]

Or they would hit it if they were busy fiddling with the car's autodrive system. These humans would have avoided it had they not wasted time speculating about whether the autodrive system would save them. They would have been safer in literally any other car that didnt have an autodrive.

[tptacek]

Humans routinely drive from LA to NYC without wrecking their cars. In fact, that's the normal outcome.

[foobarian]

I've been driving on local and highway roads for 30 years now and I have never come across a piece of debris so large that driving over it would damage my car. Seeing that video, I don't have high confidence that I would have dodged that hazard - maybe 70% sure? The thing is, usually there is plenty of traffic ahead that acts very obviously different in situations like this that helps as well.

All that to say that I don't feel this is a fair criticism of the FSD system.

[root_axis]

> I have never come across a piece of debris so large that driving over it would damage my car

More likely you simply drove around the debris and didn't register the memory because it's extremely unlikely that you've never encountered dangerous road debris in 30 years of driving.

[foobarian]

I think it's probably because of mostly driving in enough traffic that other cars would have encountered any critical objects first and created a traffic jam around an impassable section.

[quickthrowman]

You’ve been driving for 30 years and have never seen a semi truck tire in the middle of the road after it ripped off the rim of a truck?

[foobarian]

Honestly no, not in the middle of the road, but plenty on the side. The only things I come across in the middle of the roads are paper bags or cardboard for some reason.

But also, I doubt you would break your swaybar running over some retreads

[franktankbank]

Driving I-5 up to Portland I had to dodge a dresser that was standing upright somehow in the middle of the lane. The truck in front of me moved into the other lane revealing that thing just standing there, I had to quickly make an adjustment similar to what this tesla should have done. Teslas also have lower bellys, my jeep would have gone over the debris in the video no problem.

[dzhiurgis]

30 years of driving doesn't equate same amount of miles driven.

Probably good parable for Waymo vs Tesla here. One is generalized approach for entire world while another is carefully pre-mapped for a small area.

[ModernMech]

> All that to say that I don't feel this is a fair criticism of the FSD system.

Yes it is because the bar isn't whether a human would detect it, but whether a car with LiDAR would. And without a doubt it would, especially given those conditions: clear day, flat surface, protruding object is a best case scenario for LiDAR. Tesla's FSD was designed by Musk who is not an engineer nor an expert in sensors or robotics, and therefore fails predictably in ways that other systems designed by competent engineers do not.

[foobarian]

I don't disagree with that characterization of the technical details. However I felt the task those drivers set out was asking a different question: how good would the FSD system be at completing a coast-to-coast trip? I don't think this can be answered after hitting a singular, highly unlikely accident without a lot more trials.

Imagine there was a human driver team shadowing the Tesla, and say they got T-boned after 60 miles. Would we claim that human drivers suck and have the same level of criticism? I don't think that would be fair either.

[ModernMech]

If you don't disagree on the characterization of the technical details, then you must realize how very fair it is for us to criticize the system for failing in the exact way it's predicted to fail. We don't need 1000 more trials to know that the system is technically flawed.

[foobarian]

What if there is no debris the other 999 times, and the system works fine? The video does not give me that information as a prospective Tesla customer. This looks like a fluke to me.

[orwin]

Unless you're on your phone, with that clear of a view and that much space, 100% you would dodge that, especially in a sedan where your clearance is lower than a truck.

[rainsford]

> Seeing that video, I don't have high confidence that I would have dodged that hazard - maybe 70% sure?

Really? The people in the video clearly identify a large stationary object in the road a good 7 seconds before hitting it. You don't exactly need lightning quick reflexes to avoid hitting something in that scenario. Maybe more importantly, the Tesla did not seem to see the object at all at any distance. Even if you don't think you could have avoided it, do you think you would have entirely failed to see it and driven right into it at full speed? Because that's what the Tesla did.

Such an event might not be super common, but that doesn't make it an unfair criticism of Telsa's self-driving. Even if they've never seen a large object in the road before or react the wrong way, humans are generally capable of recognizing it when it happens and at least considering it's something they should take action on. The fact that Tesla can't do the same makes this an area where FSD is categorically worse than humans, and "avoiding stuff in the road" feels like an area where that's not a good deficit even if there generally isn't stuff in the road.

[queenkjuul]

Come to Chicago, you'll see some debris in the first few days, and plenty of humans dodging it at high speeds

[cameldrv]

No way. I call in road debris on the freeway once every couple of months. People swerve around it and if it’s congested, people swerving around it create a significant hazard.

[dmix]

I'd imagine the highway doesn't normally have a debris that's nearly the same color of the surface of a highway.

[JohnFen]

I encounter such things a few times a year. Usually a retread that has come off a truck tire.

[cozzyd]

The highway often has debris on it at night which can be even harder to see

[rainsford]

The meatbags riding in front saw the debris about 800 feet away if my napkin math is right. Uncommon occurrence or not, a computer not seeing it ever seems like an unacceptable performance standard.

[cosmicgadget]

I wonder if a non-visual sensor could make the distinction.

[jjav]

> Well, I have to admit that your friend has a point. Humans are bad at reacting quickly and correctly to unexpected situations, and some debris large enough to damage your car showing up from out of nowhere

I read this comment before seeing the video and thought maybe the debris flies in with the wind and falls on the road a second before impact, or something like that.

But no, here we have bright daylight, perfect visibility, the debris is sitting there on the road visible from very far away, the person in the car doing commentary sees it with plenty of time to leisurely avoid it (had he been driving).

Nothing unexpected showed up out of nowhere, it was sitting right there all along. No quick reaction needed, there was plenty of time to switch lanes. And yet Tesla managed to hit it, against all odds! Wow.

My impression of Tesla's self driving is not very high, but this shows it's actually far worse than I thought.

[palmotea]

> Well, I have to admit that your friend has a point. Humans are bad at reacting quickly and correctly to unexpected situations,

This was not one of those situations.

and some debris large enough to damage your car showing up from out of nowhere after several hours of boring driving along a largely straight highway with little traffic is definitely one of these situations.

Again, this was definitely not one of those situations. It was large, it was in their lane, and they were even yapping about it for 10 seconds.

> But a self-driving system worth its salt should always be alert, scanning the road ahead, able to identify dangerous debris, and react accordingly. So, different pair of shoes...

This is what humans already (and if we didn't do it, we'd be driving off the road). Based on what you're saying, I question that you're familiar with driving a car, or at least driving on a highway between cities.

[JimmaDaRustla]

Literally the passenger saw it and leaned it, the driver grabbed the steering wheel to brace himself it seems. That object on the road was massive, absolutely huge as far as on road obstacles go. The camera does not do any justice - it looks like it's 3 feet long, over a foot wide, and about 6 or 7 inches high laying on the road. Unless a human driver really isn't paying attention, they're not hitting that thing.

[ape4]

And a self-driving car should have better sensors than a human (like lidar)

[HarHarVeryFunny]

Even with a single camera (no stereo vision) which is all a Tesla has, it's honestly surprising it didn't see that thing. It wasn't small.

If it can't see something like that in ideal conditions, then god knows what else it'd miss in less ideal conditions.

[samrus]

Bullshit. Some humans might hit thay because they werent paying attention, but most people would see that, slow down and change lanes. This is a relatively scenario that humans deal with. Even the passenger here saw it in time. The driver was relying on FSD and missed it

I dont think FSD has the intelligence to navigate this