Ancedote: this evening in Mountain View, the driver of one of Waymo's test vans had to take over (I watched her grab the wheel).

The van had come to a complete stop with room to pass a USPS truck (it appeared safe to me from 25 feet away), and didn't begin moving again for a few seconds. She then took control.

The waymo cars have always been timid. That's why most of the collisions involve the waymo car getting rear ended. They don't move when other drivers expect them to.

Of course, this is annoying, and being so timid that you get rear ended is unsafe, but the Tesla approach would be the delivery truck is detected as a stationary object and ignored, so the vehicle would accelerate to the set speed in 3 seconds and slam into it. (See the many reports of Teslas running into stopped emergency vehicles). Of course, Tesla will tell you that their car isn't really self-driving with one side of their mouth, while telling you your car is equipped for self-driving out of the other side.

> Of course, Tesla will tell you that their car isn't really self-driving with one side of their mouth, while telling you your car is equipped for self-driving out of the other side.

This is my biggest worry with the way this is promoted. It’s false advertising and misleading to consumers. I wish more companies (in all industries) would be held accountable to accurately portray what they are selling.

Tesla promotes autopilot as safer than a human driver but blames the driver when there is an accident. How can autopilot be safer than a human if the only way to safely use is with a human monitoring it?

It's hard to extrapolate anything from this, as they may have intentionally been testing some new variation on an algorithm that made it more reticent. Besides, it doesn't sound like the car was unsafe, just timid. A crash would be way worse.

In one very small geo, waymo is maybe 1-2 years ahead.

Tesla hasn't even started the certification process for self driving in any state. Without seeing disengagement reports and looking at how long it took summon to get released to market after initial preview(3 years), 5 years is being optimistic for Tesla. Realist would say they'll never be self driving with the current sensor setup. All the cars that farthest along by looking at miles driven between disengagements are all lidar based cars.

Quick question: if you summon Model 3 and car gets in an accident, would Tesla pay for the repairs?

No. You agree that you are in control of the car.

How do you control the car if you're not even in it?

If you release the summon button, the car comes to a stop. You are supposed to be able to see the car visually at all times so you can release the summon button and avoid problems.

In addition to stopping when releasing the button, it also shows you the path it plans to take on a satellite map on your phone. So you know where it is going.

Some people have problems with it, but it works great for me. It's pretty awesome to have the car pull up to me on a rainy day. Part of it is parking in a smart place on the way in.

This already happened several times after they first rolled out the feature a few months ago (minor accidents). No, Tesla did not pay (nor would I expect them to).

I wonder how courts decide on that...

Of course the software running in the current Model 3 can't compete with Waymo, that's a idiotic demand. That is just arguing in bad faith. We have no clue how far they are as that software is internal.