You're correct, collecting the data is legal I made a overly broad statement. Scanning a plate and checking for warrants in public is fine, holding that data for use exclusively used to investigate a crime with probable cause is also likely fine. ICE maintaining their own database for data mining, if that is what they are doing, is likely un-constitutional.
As common as overreach is becoming, I think it is wise for the ACLU to assume the last thing is happening. My neighbor had his pickup stolen, and reported it to the police and directly to ICE. A month later it was found in a casino parking lot because it was reported as suspicious by the security there and was recovered with the plates still attached. Turns out it had crossed into mexico and back at least 3 times through numerous ICE plate scanners, without any action. Why is ICE scanning plates, if they are not using it to catch vehicles that have a criminal history?
This is about the federal government conducting surveillance, by collecting data on everyone without first having evidence of a crime. It is unconstitutional for law enforcement people to collect this data, but not (under federal law) illegal for a private company to do it. It seams obvious, if ICE cannot collect this data themselves, it doesn't matter how they get the data, if they maintain it; that is the same as collecting it. They should only be able to request the minimum data directly related to a open case, and delete any un-related data to a open investigation ASAP. ACLU should be allowed to verify this.
Sounds like, from the body of the article, that Apple is mostly a customer in this deal. States they don't have any deal beyond the transit buses, and sounds like the plan is just to run them around the Apple campus. So no need to worry about data sharing... if Apple is mostly just using VW buses for testing.
So it is technically correct the DNC didn't turn over the physical hardware, but they provided a image of everything on the servers. "Everything Requested."
Your link shows new panamax as 366 m long, so you could put 3 MW of panels on each one of those, with all of the maintenance area under the deck, I feel like this would still be pretty awesome setup, to have but yeah rediculous.
Because it would still be 100 of those to meet this capacity, even if you could do these for $3 M each, it would be a $300 M fleet.
I think a diesel tanker is more reasonable for about $6M you would have a much easier time strapping a 7 * 3MW diesel gene-sets, that can be bought commercially probably for a little over $500k each and put on a diesel tanker that would then have no problem producing the needed power for a month.
Also model 3 is RWD only. So regen only happens on the rear wheels. Most consider 2/3 of braking force of a hard stop to be from the front wheels.
It is a (relatively) heavy car, granted the F150 is a couple hundred pounds more, but trucks get some big brakes because they often have to stop some big loads and trailers. The Tesla will need similar to compete. But likely do not have as much room behind the front wheels to put them, or the cooling flow.
Stock model S has similar issues with stopping distance, you need much bigger brakes to stop a heavier car. Most S packages have a seriously up-sized brake package that gets the stopping numbers in the ballpark. Batteries are heavy, tires for heavy cars with low rolling resistance (ie more range) are also not the best at stopping.
Also keep in mind, Model 3 is rear wheel drive only, so regen only happens on the rear wheels. 2/3 of hard braking is generally considered to be front wheels only, so the Tesla needs them front brakes to be solid, regen can't capture much of a hard stop energy from the rear wheels of the car.
Those were over a year ago (apparently from year old data at that time,) and the data was statistically insufficient to conclude if it was safer (but could not have been 5x worse as parent claimed, at that point). IE the AutoPilot miles had been driven that you would expect 1.6 fatalities, and they had 1. But had 1 more accident been fatal, or more than one died in that accident) or a missing accident or 2 could be the abnormality not present. One more fatality would put it at 40% higher rate than without. As stated in this article Tesla is not releasing AP miles, so it is not publicly known (likely not disclosed due to the NHTSA ongoing investigation.)
As others have stated, people would be more distrusting at first, but with familiarity (and Musk saying it is much safer than a driver) the drivers would become less involved. Or changes in AP might have made it work in more places, changing the risks as well.
Personally Musk statements of it being safer was a huge mistake in liability IMO. As a customer, that tells you that if you are willing to accept slightly less risk as other drivers do every day, you do not need to be ready to take over. After all, if the system is safer than a normal person, a normal person taking over, on average would reduce the safety overall.
> That is why Wall Street isn't investment. When you buy a stock the company doesn't get any benefit. You are buying someone else's stake. Not supporting that company.
If I buy a local restaurant that is for sale and could be bought by anyone, to shut it down, rename it... and I buy and keep it working with the same people, is that not an investment? The Stock owners are by definition THE owners, buying stock is purchasing direct from the owners of a company, directly benefiting some owners, indirectly benefit all owners by supporting the valuation of the company. Owners like Warren Buffet directly purchase shares of companies, to move them in ways to get them to make more money, get them to work together, remove the obstacles, leverages the values to expand... If I buy shares in BRK, direct from Warren, or in the company directly, I am throwing my $ support behind them. I am encouraging the activities if those in charge, I am giving the large owners the option to take some rewards for their hard work by cashing out some, and sharing their future work with me.
Also almost all companies have float shares, shares they can sell to directly fund activities, as well as using their market value to borrow against, or acquire more companies through mergers.
Also by buying stock of successful companies, and keeping their stock value in line with their internal value, it allows the current owners to get value from the growth of that company, without breaking up the company, or using profit to directly pay. IE if they pay dividends, I can choose to reinvest, if they don't pay, no difference, it is just that the money is being directly reinvested internally.
> but it ain't happening today. 10 years from now, maybe...
People are horrible at assessing risk, with 500,000 cars on the road even if it handles a few situations worse, if those situations are rare enough Tesla's on autopilot could still be much safer (or not I don't have the stats.) For example seat-belts and airbags have resulted in many serious injuries, and even a few deaths that wouldn't have happened otherwise. But they prevent many times more deaths in the majority of accidents. For example a friend of mine rolled her truck while not wearing a seat-belt, the entire top of the cab smashed completely flat down to the seat, but she got thrown into the floorboard and escaped with minor injuries. It would have been impossible for her to survive if wearing a seat-belt. Those few incident doesn't equal that seat-belts don't save lives overall.
Personally, that Tesla is doing these autopilot and control system updates over the air, scares the shit out of me. It appears they are done without government oversize, and minimal communications to the drivers. I would really like to know how the validation process is done to insure it is always a positive safety impact, and that process has oversight with criminal enforcement in place for any violation.
> How come no one is focusing on the personal responsibility of the driver?
Why would it be, if Musk is telling the truth? If "autopilot" is safer than a driver as Musk says, then intervening is more dangerous. Musk now needs to truly prove that autopilot is safer than a person driving a similar car with all of the lane assist, automatic emergency braking, Automatic pedestrian braking... that others manufactures are putting out, or take responsibility for these accidents and deaths. If autopilot is saving lives, then it is up to Musk, citizen planers, etc to work out solutions to work out the remaining blind-spots, and deserve their rewards for doing it.
As is Musk has a system that is impossible for humans to handle, to constantly monitor a system you are not in control of, and take over. Tesla doesn't have enough feedback for users to know close call, IE when the Tesla maps were off, GPS was weak, real time camera faults... The Ford system could drive people down the center of the lane, but they have the driver do this task, if they reach a edge, it over corrects, which gives negative feedback to the driver and passenger, and tells everyone in the car when the driver is tired.
It appears some of musk's betta testers are paying the ultimate price for that un-paid position. But I could be wrong, I don't have enough data to honestly know if the Tesla/Elon system of selling as smooth and easy autopilot system is placing marketing over lives. But if it turns out this is marketing over lives, then the liars need to take the blame, not the victims.
> affects Tesla only indirectly... and effects their [viable, prospective] competition equally.
Is that true though? Tesla has the largest battery capacity, and Tesla's batteries are hidden in the lower frame of the car, in over 7000 individually placed batteries, surrounded by cooling. Many of their competitors have battery packs, which is a big part of Tesla's advantage in performance, is the low CG and cooled batteries.
Also in the position of being solely dedicated to electric, and the largest electric car manufacture also makes them the most vulnerable (as a company) to changes to electric car standards for battery placement and care.
While it doesn't address what CO2 comes from volcano's, but we can also tell what percent of CO2 is natural vs from burned fossil fuels using carbon isotope ratio from the atmosphere:
> And that's ultimately what OP was proposing -- reliance on stale environmental data in an effort to reduce sensor costs.
No, I am OP, and specifically stated Tesla will need V2V communications. Only with no cameras does it still need to be able to navigate for short periods safely in the event of a system failure in the vision system while at speed it cannot have the camera/radar lose power, or get hit buy a mud shower, then stop in traffic, unable to navigate out of the way to a safe location. Same with loss of GPS, it cannot rely on just a GPS model, it must have exact positions of visual marker to navigate short distances with no GPS (such as laser data would provide.) And you will be the cause of the crash (maybe not legally at fault) if yours is the only car that slows to 5 mph for a corner of unknown navigability. A car with Tesla's sensors will not be able to negotiate at speed several situations, that a laser car can, such as snow covered signs or lane markers, or tunnels/canyons/etc where GPS is lost. But the Tesla can follow/compare it's visual radar data to a recent laser car's 3d model, and then go to those places safely.
> And no car is going to rely on another car to tell it what is a safe route.
Not exclusively, but often it will either by reliant on other cars, or your going to be by far the slowest car to the point of causing a crash.
Almost every day, usually multiple times a day, we go over hills and around corners where we cannot see far enough to see something in time to stop before hitting it. We are either trusting luck, or looking at the cars in front/around, did they hit their brakes? Especially in freezing temperatures after weather, in the morning. We often trust enough cars have driven to keep clear ice, or are driving the usual speeds. Or if the roads are bad, enough cars back up to slow us. Or that we know where the usual risks for issues are.
> make safe operational decisions based not on current environmental conditions but on environmental conditions that existed at some point before it reached a given area.
You probably don't realize we all do that. Not exclusively from the past, but it is important. When I drive to work in freezing temperatures, I have a past knowledge making it safer. I know if it rained/snowed/sleeted, I smell see the affects of water to know where it may flood or freeze, I see it on the wipers, I know what roads are high traffic and were salted, and had high traffic to either maintain a clear surface (or were more likely to turn snow into ice, and to avoid.) I know to look out for road sections that are shaded from sun, or bridges.
Similar with looking at tracks of other cars, and have to trust the cars around me, looking way ahead for brake lights over hills...
If a car system assumes the worst, and thus doesn't get help from off car data, they will be driving 20 mph on all paved roads in freezing temperatures. If it drives normally in freezing temps, and doesn't know these special details, it will not be able to stop on the ice in time for intersections, or go into ice in a shaded corner sailing off the road.
If it blindly follows are car in front, it may not know that car is a dump truck into construction, or has studded tires on ice, or more clearance for deep snow, or if a stock Tesla follows to close to something like a corvette that stops from 60 in under 100 feet (stock model Tesla is around 180 feet) not having the same capabilities are things we can know, but the tesla wont without communications.
> Most cars won't have self-driving capability or car to car communication.
Doesn't take most, just takes enough. Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) was introduced to new cars 2 years ago, and will likely be in all news cars in 2 years. Driver assist (lane assist, emergency braking...) with NHTSA is already recommending CIB, DBS and PAEB braking, and was on a path to make them mandatory, but the current anti regulation path in the US has likely put a delay to that.
With these style of cars, we are a few system updates away from converting them to be part of a smart grid. So 15 years may be optimistic with a deregulation movement likely to slow things for the next 3-7 years. But if we had a hard regulatory push away from petrol cars in 10 years, we could be 90% smart cars in 15-20 years.
FYI, the Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) system is in some cars today, by 2020 all new cars must have them.
Bigger to me is these communicate to traffic lights, so auto systems in vehicles will get alerts for things like light changes, crashes, weather and temperature. So it is likely a intersection that commonly has problems with Ice will alert.
I suspect Tesla's method of using less hardware will be the main path in 15 years for autonomy, once we have car to car communications and car to traffic control communications as standard equipment in every vehicle and bugs worked out. Some cars with humans or lasers can communicate safe passages and routes through construction, and other road conditions (wet/ice/snow...) And lesser equipped cars can then navigate recently validated routes more safely.
But now the NTSB is very likely going to step into national standards for autonomy, and it doesn't appear Tesla is ready to meet the likely minimum standard, such as redundant navigation (operate without GPS, or without optical recognition.) and redundant systems.
> CA's overall suicide rate is (slightly) higher than the national average. Which would suggest that reduced access to firearms doesn't reduce suicide rate..
Honestly, them being rural states likely contributes more to the suicide rate. California Rural areas are high as well, Guns are obviously not the cause of suicides. But they contribute to the overall success rate.
I should say, I am not in favor of CA gun laws. I definitely couldn't legally move to CA, without selling a few items. I would like to see a more nationalized commonality in requirements in training and requirements on securing firearms from miners and reduced access by those with history of violence or mental issues.
> Tesla brakes don't wear out. The automatic regen absorbs 95% of braking energy. The brake pads last the life of the car.
False, even the upper limit will be below 95%. Most of Tesla's cars are rear wheel drive. Under hard braking 75% of the braking force is on the front wheels. Braking in corners cannot be unbalanced to the rear either. Teslas due to the heavier weight than other performance cars require much bigger brakes to come close to the same performance as sports cars. The stock Tesla's actually take 30%-50% longer to stop than the better sports cars because of the reliance on disk brakes. Tesla does offer a upgrade package with much bigger front brakes and ducting, to get a better performance at stopping distance. But for example the best performance cars stop from 60 in 100 feet. The best P85 package best is 120 feet, the stock package is reportedly around that of most cars, 180 feet.
Also the Tesla uses AC motors, their output voltage is related to speed, The voltage at speeds below 30 MPH, just isn't going to be high enough to do much recovery. Maintaining speed down a hill, or a relatively slow braking from high speed will recover most of the energy, any emergency stop will recover little.
You're 100% correct, and I agree, and the way my post was worded it does sound like I was saying otherwise.
However California's laws on firearms in general almost definitely reduce firearms deaths, because they reduce the ownership rate to one of the lowest (outside of NY) in the country. Their is no doubt in my mind, reduced access to firearms reduces not only the gun suicide rate, but the overall suicide rate. The reduced access to firearms (mostly hand guns) in CA obviously does have some affect on numbers of firearms homicides (but possibly little or no impact on overall homicide rates.)
However in this case, it would have been very bad for her to have had a AR-15 with a big clip (likely only slightly worse than has she had any other rifle) in the same situation. I obviously cannot say for certain more people would have died... But because this type of scenario comes up less than once a week in the entire country, I agree it isn't a meaningful overall statistic toward the overall safety of Californians. A semi auto AR-15 would have been an ideal weapon for a small girl in a large open campus to cause maximum impact. Luckily that didn't happen.
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You're correct, collecting the data is legal I made a overly broad statement. Scanning a plate and checking for warrants in public is fine, holding that data for use exclusively used to investigate a crime with probable cause is also likely fine. ICE maintaining their own database for data mining, if that is what they are doing, is likely un-constitutional.
As common as overreach is becoming, I think it is wise for the ACLU to assume the last thing is happening. My neighbor had his pickup stolen, and reported it to the police and directly to ICE. A month later it was found in a casino parking lot because it was reported as suspicious by the security there and was recovered with the plates still attached. Turns out it had crossed into mexico and back at least 3 times through numerous ICE plate scanners, without any action. Why is ICE scanning plates, if they are not using it to catch vehicles that have a criminal history?
This is about the federal government conducting surveillance, by collecting data on everyone without first having evidence of a crime.
It is unconstitutional for law enforcement people to collect this data, but not (under federal law) illegal for a private company to do it.
It seams obvious, if ICE cannot collect this data themselves, it doesn't matter how they get the data, if they maintain it; that is the same as collecting it.
They should only be able to request the minimum data directly related to a open case, and delete any un-related data to a open investigation ASAP.
ACLU should be allowed to verify this.
Sounds like, from the body of the article, that Apple is mostly a customer in this deal. States they don't have any deal beyond the transit buses, and sounds like the plan is just to run them around the Apple campus. So no need to worry about data sharing... if Apple is mostly just using VW buses for testing.
> The DNC did not at any time turn over the affected servers to the FBI or anyone else, as one might expect for such a serious crime as was alleged.
The DNC coordinated with the FBI and federal intelligence agencies and provided everything they requested, including copies of DNC servers," Watson said. She added that the copy contains the same information as the physical server.
So it is technically correct the DNC didn't turn over the physical hardware, but they provided a image of everything on the servers. "Everything Requested."
Your link shows new panamax as 366 m long, so you could put 3 MW of panels on each one of those, with all of the maintenance area under the deck, I feel like this would still be pretty awesome setup, to have but yeah rediculous.
Because it would still be 100 of those to meet this capacity, even if you could do these for $3 M each, it would be a $300 M fleet.
I think a diesel tanker is more reasonable for about $6M you would have a much easier time strapping a 7 * 3MW diesel gene-sets, that can be bought commercially probably for a little over $500k each and put on a diesel tanker that would then have no problem producing the needed power for a month.
Also model 3 is RWD only. So regen only happens on the rear wheels. Most consider 2/3 of braking force of a hard stop to be from the front wheels.
It is a (relatively) heavy car, granted the F150 is a couple hundred pounds more, but trucks get some big brakes because they often have to stop some big loads and trailers. The Tesla will need similar to compete. But likely do not have as much room behind the front wheels to put them, or the cooling flow.
Stock model S has similar issues with stopping distance, you need much bigger brakes to stop a heavier car. Most S packages have a seriously up-sized brake package that gets the stopping numbers in the ballpark. Batteries are heavy, tires for heavy cars with low rolling resistance (ie more range) are also not the best at stopping.
Also keep in mind, Model 3 is rear wheel drive only, so regen only happens on the rear wheels. 2/3 of hard braking is generally considered to be front wheels only, so the Tesla needs them front brakes to be solid, regen can't capture much of a hard stop energy from the rear wheels of the car.
Report in 2011 with several cars made before 2003 22 cars that stop better than 100 feet from 60
That is at least 33 feet better than the Tesla, more like over 50 feet. And in a car that out accelerates half of them????
Those were over a year ago (apparently from year old data at that time,) and the data was statistically insufficient to conclude if it was safer (but could not have been 5x worse as parent claimed, at that point). IE the AutoPilot miles had been driven that you would expect 1.6 fatalities, and they had 1. But had 1 more accident been fatal, or more than one died in that accident) or a missing accident or 2 could be the abnormality not present. One more fatality would put it at 40% higher rate than without. As stated in this article Tesla is not releasing AP miles, so it is not publicly known (likely not disclosed due to the NHTSA ongoing investigation.)
As others have stated, people would be more distrusting at first, but with familiarity (and Musk saying it is much safer than a driver) the drivers would become less involved. Or changes in AP might have made it work in more places, changing the risks as well.
Personally Musk statements of it being safer was a huge mistake in liability IMO. As a customer, that tells you that if you are willing to accept slightly less risk as other drivers do every day, you do not need to be ready to take over. After all, if the system is safer than a normal person, a normal person taking over, on average would reduce the safety overall.
> That is why Wall Street isn't investment. When you buy a stock the company doesn't get any benefit. You are buying someone else's stake. Not supporting that company.
If I buy a local restaurant that is for sale and could be bought by anyone, to shut it down, rename it... and I buy and keep it working with the same people, is that not an investment? The Stock owners are by definition THE owners, buying stock is purchasing direct from the owners of a company, directly benefiting some owners, indirectly benefit all owners by supporting the valuation of the company. Owners like Warren Buffet directly purchase shares of companies, to move them in ways to get them to make more money, get them to work together, remove the obstacles, leverages the values to expand... If I buy shares in BRK, direct from Warren, or in the company directly, I am throwing my $ support behind them. I am encouraging the activities if those in charge, I am giving the large owners the option to take some rewards for their hard work by cashing out some, and sharing their future work with me.
Also almost all companies have float shares, shares they can sell to directly fund activities, as well as using their market value to borrow against, or acquire more companies through mergers.
Also by buying stock of successful companies, and keeping their stock value in line with their internal value, it allows the current owners to get value from the growth of that company, without breaking up the company, or using profit to directly pay. IE if they pay dividends, I can choose to reinvest, if they don't pay, no difference, it is just that the money is being directly reinvested internally.
> but it ain't happening today. 10 years from now, maybe...
People are horrible at assessing risk, with 500,000 cars on the road even if it handles a few situations worse, if those situations are rare enough Tesla's on autopilot could still be much safer (or not I don't have the stats.) For example seat-belts and airbags have resulted in many serious injuries, and even a few deaths that wouldn't have happened otherwise. But they prevent many times more deaths in the majority of accidents. For example a friend of mine rolled her truck while not wearing a seat-belt, the entire top of the cab smashed completely flat down to the seat, but she got thrown into the floorboard and escaped with minor injuries. It would have been impossible for her to survive if wearing a seat-belt. Those few incident doesn't equal that seat-belts don't save lives overall.
Personally, that Tesla is doing these autopilot and control system updates over the air, scares the shit out of me. It appears they are done without government oversize, and minimal communications to the drivers. I would really like to know how the validation process is done to insure it is always a positive safety impact, and that process has oversight with criminal enforcement in place for any violation.
> How come no one is focusing on the personal responsibility of the driver?
Why would it be, if Musk is telling the truth? If "autopilot" is safer than a driver as Musk says, then intervening is more dangerous. Musk now needs to truly prove that autopilot is safer than a person driving a similar car with all of the lane assist, automatic emergency braking, Automatic pedestrian braking... that others manufactures are putting out, or take responsibility for these accidents and deaths. If autopilot is saving lives, then it is up to Musk, citizen planers, etc to work out solutions to work out the remaining blind-spots, and deserve their rewards for doing it.
As is Musk has a system that is impossible for humans to handle, to constantly monitor a system you are not in control of, and take over. Tesla doesn't have enough feedback for users to know close call, IE when the Tesla maps were off, GPS was weak, real time camera faults... The Ford system could drive people down the center of the lane, but they have the driver do this task, if they reach a edge, it over corrects, which gives negative feedback to the driver and passenger, and tells everyone in the car when the driver is tired.
It appears some of musk's betta testers are paying the ultimate price for that un-paid position. But I could be wrong, I don't have enough data to honestly know if the Tesla/Elon system of selling as smooth and easy autopilot system is placing marketing over lives. But if it turns out this is marketing over lives, then the liars need to take the blame, not the victims.
> affects Tesla only indirectly... and effects their [viable, prospective] competition equally.
Is that true though? Tesla has the largest battery capacity, and Tesla's batteries are hidden in the lower frame of the car, in over 7000 individually placed batteries, surrounded by cooling. Many of their competitors have battery packs, which is a big part of Tesla's advantage in performance, is the low CG and cooled batteries.
Also in the position of being solely dedicated to electric, and the largest electric car manufacture also makes them the most vulnerable (as a company) to changes to electric car standards for battery placement and care.
This is about the "Alcotest 9510" it is not a roadside test unit, this is the final verdict machine that is at question.
While it doesn't address what CO2 comes from volcano's, but we can also tell what percent of CO2 is natural vs from burned fossil fuels using carbon isotope ratio from the atmosphere:
http://www.realclimate.org/ind...
> Where did you get the 2020 date?
Thanks for that, It was in a article from around January 2016. posted to /. so likely just a planned date, as yours is newer.
> And that's ultimately what OP was proposing -- reliance on stale environmental data in an effort to reduce sensor costs.
No, I am OP, and specifically stated Tesla will need V2V communications. Only with no cameras does it still need to be able to navigate for short periods safely in the event of a system failure in the vision system while at speed it cannot have the camera/radar lose power, or get hit buy a mud shower, then stop in traffic, unable to navigate out of the way to a safe location. Same with loss of GPS, it cannot rely on just a GPS model, it must have exact positions of visual marker to navigate short distances with no GPS (such as laser data would provide.)
And you will be the cause of the crash (maybe not legally at fault) if yours is the only car that slows to 5 mph for a corner of unknown navigability. A car with Tesla's sensors will not be able to negotiate at speed several situations, that a laser car can, such as snow covered signs or lane markers, or tunnels/canyons/etc where GPS is lost. But the Tesla can follow/compare it's visual radar data to a recent laser car's 3d model, and then go to those places safely.
> And no car is going to rely on another car to tell it what is a safe route.
Not exclusively, but often it will either by reliant on other cars, or your going to be by far the slowest car to the point of causing a crash.
Almost every day, usually multiple times a day, we go over hills and around corners where we cannot see far enough to see something in time to stop before hitting it. We are either trusting luck, or looking at the cars in front/around, did they hit their brakes? Especially in freezing temperatures after weather, in the morning. We often trust enough cars have driven to keep clear ice, or are driving the usual speeds. Or if the roads are bad, enough cars back up to slow us. Or that we know where the usual risks for issues are.
> make safe operational decisions based not on current environmental conditions but on environmental conditions that existed at some point before it reached a given area.
You probably don't realize we all do that. Not exclusively from the past, but it is important. When I drive to work in freezing temperatures, I have a past knowledge making it safer. I know if it rained/snowed/sleeted, I smell see the affects of water to know where it may flood or freeze, I see it on the wipers, I know what roads are high traffic and were salted, and had high traffic to either maintain a clear surface (or were more likely to turn snow into ice, and to avoid.) I know to look out for road sections that are shaded from sun, or bridges.
Similar with looking at tracks of other cars, and have to trust the cars around me, looking way ahead for brake lights over hills...
If a car system assumes the worst, and thus doesn't get help from off car data, they will be driving 20 mph on all paved roads in freezing temperatures. If it drives normally in freezing temps, and doesn't know these special details, it will not be able to stop on the ice in time for intersections, or go into ice in a shaded corner sailing off the road.
If it blindly follows are car in front, it may not know that car is a dump truck into construction, or has studded tires on ice, or more clearance for deep snow, or if a stock Tesla follows to close to something like a corvette that stops from 60 in under 100 feet (stock model Tesla is around 180 feet) not having the same capabilities are things we can know, but the tesla wont without communications.
> Most cars won't have self-driving capability or car to car communication.
Doesn't take most, just takes enough. Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) was introduced to new cars 2 years ago, and will likely be in all news cars in 2 years. Driver assist (lane assist, emergency braking...) with NHTSA is already recommending CIB, DBS and PAEB braking, and was on a path to make them mandatory, but the current anti regulation path in the US has likely put a delay to that.
With these style of cars, we are a few system updates away from converting them to be part of a smart grid. So 15 years may be optimistic with a deregulation movement likely to slow things for the next 3-7 years. But if we had a hard regulatory push away from petrol cars in 10 years, we could be 90% smart cars in 15-20 years.
FYI, the Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) system is in some cars today, by 2020 all new cars must have them.
Bigger to me is these communicate to traffic lights, so auto systems in vehicles will get alerts for things like light changes, crashes, weather and temperature. So it is likely a intersection that commonly has problems with Ice will alert.
I suspect Tesla's method of using less hardware will be the main path in 15 years for autonomy, once we have car to car communications and car to traffic control communications as standard equipment in every vehicle and bugs worked out. Some cars with humans or lasers can communicate safe passages and routes through construction, and other road conditions (wet/ice/snow...) And lesser equipped cars can then navigate recently validated routes more safely.
But now the NTSB is very likely going to step into national standards for autonomy, and it doesn't appear Tesla is ready to meet the likely minimum standard, such as redundant navigation (operate without GPS, or without optical recognition.) and redundant systems.
> CA's overall suicide rate is (slightly) higher than the national average. Which would suggest that reduced access to firearms doesn't reduce suicide rate..
Or you could be wrong, Between 1999 and 2009, the suicide rate in California averaged around 9.4 per 100,000 individuals; national averages are around 11.1 per 100,000.
or https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/previ...
I wonder what happens when we look at the states with the highest Suicide rate, wonder where they lie in Gun ownership:
1 - Wyoming 5th highest ownership
2- Alaska #1 highest ownership
3- Montana 6th highest
4- NewMexico 7th highest.
Honestly, them being rural states likely contributes more to the suicide rate. California Rural areas are high as well, Guns are obviously not the cause of suicides. But they contribute to the overall success rate.
I should say, I am not in favor of CA gun laws. I definitely couldn't legally move to CA, without selling a few items. I would like to see a more nationalized commonality in requirements in training and requirements on securing firearms from miners and reduced access by those with history of violence or mental issues.
> Tesla brakes don't wear out. The automatic regen absorbs 95% of braking energy. The brake pads last the life of the car.
False, even the upper limit will be below 95%. Most of Tesla's cars are rear wheel drive. Under hard braking 75% of the braking force is on the front wheels. Braking in corners cannot be unbalanced to the rear either. Teslas due to the heavier weight than other performance cars require much bigger brakes to come close to the same performance as sports cars. The stock Tesla's actually take 30%-50% longer to stop than the better sports cars because of the reliance on disk brakes. Tesla does offer a upgrade package with much bigger front brakes and ducting, to get a better performance at stopping distance. But for example the best performance cars stop from 60 in 100 feet. The best P85 package best is 120 feet, the stock package is reportedly around that of most cars, 180 feet.
Also the Tesla uses AC motors, their output voltage is related to speed, The voltage at speeds below 30 MPH, just isn't going to be high enough to do much recovery.
Maintaining speed down a hill, or a relatively slow braking from high speed will recover most of the energy, any emergency stop will recover little.
You're 100% correct, and I agree, and the way my post was worded it does sound like I was saying otherwise.
However California's laws on firearms in general almost definitely reduce firearms deaths, because they reduce the ownership rate to one of the lowest (outside of NY) in the country. Their is no doubt in my mind, reduced access to firearms reduces not only the gun suicide rate, but the overall suicide rate. The reduced access to firearms (mostly hand guns) in CA obviously does have some affect on numbers of firearms homicides (but possibly little or no impact on overall homicide rates.)
However in this case, it would have been very bad for her to have had a AR-15 with a big clip (likely only slightly worse than has she had any other rifle) in the same situation. I obviously cannot say for certain more people would have died... But because this type of scenario comes up less than once a week in the entire country, I agree it isn't a meaningful overall statistic toward the overall safety of Californians. A semi auto AR-15 would have been an ideal weapon for a small girl in a large open campus to cause maximum impact. Luckily that didn't happen.