Technology

Humans don’t just use eyes when driving. Sound, and touch also play big roles, for example when it comes hearing ambulances nearing or to feel road conditions. And we have a really good sense for depth and distance, that’s much harder to replicate with just cameras. And even Humans aren’t allowed to drive with headphones on (at least here in Germany), because it’s dangerous to limit the amount of sensors available to us.

Besides that, even our sight is faaaar from perfect either and there are quite a lot of accidents caused by drivers just not seeing another driver or some other obstacle. Our vision is pretty good, yes, but the amount of guessing our brain has to do for us to actually see what we do isn’t exactly small.

I don’t know about you, but I would prefer a self driving vehicle to be safer than a human. Because if it isn’t, why bother? And how could it be safer, if it uses less information than humans, who are shit drivers already?

And yes, lidar is more expensive but so what? It’s cheap enough to add it to phones. Expensive phones, yes but in the grand scheme of things, they’re still quite a bit cheaper than a car and Teslas aren’t exactly cheap cars either. And Tesla used to include radar in their cars until they didn’t. And the cars didn’t get that much cheaper…

And to give a positive example: Mercedes Benz are the first to launch a Level 3 autonomous vehicle. And guess what? It uses Lidar, audio sensors, road condition sensors, etc. and actually achieved L3 autonomy, while Tesla’s FSD is constantly tested to be one if the worst performing Level 2 systems in the industry, despite their claims of greatness…