Self-driving safety with lasers
Seeing this link today on Daring Fireball about self-driving reminded me of something I’ve wanted to blog about. Tesla is supposedly set to start their robotaxi service in Austin this weekend. I’m slightly worried about it.
Now that I’ve been in a Waymo — and experienced how smooth a ride it was, as safe or more safe than most Uber or Lyft drivers — it seems like asking for trouble to use anything short of the same technology, with lots of cameras and LiDAR.
Elon Musk said recently, when trying to justify how Tesla only uses cameras and AI:
People don’t shoot lasers out of their eyes to drive.
Funny, except that humans are often terrible drivers. People rarely even check their blind spots when changing lanes, let alone have a 360-degree field of view. We are not exactly the gold standard in driving safety.
It’s sad that we’ve just accepted that tens of thousands of people die from car wrecks every year in the United States. We should be doing more to minimize injuries and deaths on the road. Waymo seems like a step in the right direction, and Tesla’s approach seems like a step back.