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Comment by oblio | Hacker News Reader

> The main thing is that Mercedes Benz will take liability for anything that goes wrong. But the system as a whole is far less capable than Tesla FSD.

"It's less capable except for the minor fact that if we <<kill>> someone, it's <<our fault, not yours>>".

You know, that minor factor called "life or death".

> ... only when driving under 40 mph on highways. So it is pretty useless.

If Waymo/Tesla/whatever would do this, they'd be the darlings of the internet.

If Mercedes does this, no one thinks: "ah, it's the first iteration, they can you know, <<increase>> the speed later on".

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> If Waymo/Tesla/whatever would do this, they'd be the darlings of the internet.

How exactly do you think Waymo works that they wouldn't take responsibility?

Waymo takes responsibility for all accidents and Tesla is able to drive autonomously at 40km/h on highways, but neither does both. Mercedes does. That's –I believe– the point that parent is making.

Now, I'd argue that Waymo has probably somewhat solved highways already as they're much simpler than city driving, they're just not offering it to the public yet.

Pure speculation but I bet Waymo doesn’t do highways because they can’t safely reconcile the speed limit with the speed of traffic. In CA and AZ (where Waymo is currently operating) typical highway limits are 55 or 65 mph while traffic speeds in light traffic are easily 70+. Speed differential is dangerous; having a Waymo going 55 while everyone else goes 70+ sounds like a terrible idea but they can’t exactly teach the robot to speed the way a human does either. I’d love to be a fly on the wall during that discussion, ethics, human factors, law, you’d have to tackle the whole shebang.

Also known as "draw the rest of the owl"

At least they started with an owl shape. Tesla is starting with a square before "draw the rest of the owl"

Mercedes has drawn a lot more of the owl than anyone else. Accepting liability is huge.

It's putting their money where their mouth is.

Musk is putting his mouth on a lot of things, I guess that makes him a baby?

Changing who holds liability does not make the system more or less capable. Think about it. Was Mercedes system any less capable the day before they declared it L3 than the day before? Clearly not. It was the same system.

If you want to convince me that their system is way more capable than Tesla, you would have to show me evidence that Tesla FSD fails in the same limited environment as Mercedes is certified L3 in, and I have not seen any.

The system was of course the same, but we as the public have new information about Mercedes' level of confidence and are updating our views.

If a magician bets you $1,000,000 that the card he is holding is the one you chose, are you not going to change your position on how likely it is that he's right?

If the local DA decides to prosecute you after your car kills someone, there is nothing Mercedes can do for you. This liability they are assuming must be civil only.

You aren't going to kill people while going under 40mph on a highway (cars only, no pedestrians) anyway. Under 40mph is like stop and go traffic.

This is a marketing stunt. They've taken a well-solved problem (stop and go) and taken responsibility for it, and getting headlines by screaming something about J3016 level 3.

A highway is any public road per legal definition. https://law.justia.com/codes/california/2022/code-veh/divisi...

40mph is more than enough to kill someone.

“Limited access highway” is a different thing, and that’s the roads this system will engage on. Zero pedestrians, unless you know, a climate protest is shutting it down.

Mercedes' system only works on specific listed limited-access highways, not all public roads.

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