Elon Musk thinks that street cars are the reason there are no self-driving Teslas in Toronto
The SpaceX founder sparked quite a bit of debate
For years, many experts have put the blame on bikes for the reason why driverless cars would never work in cities. Self-driving cars have sufficient programming to avoid other cars travelling at similar speeds, but the one challenge for them, some have suggested, are bikes.
“Bicycles are probably the most difficult detection problem that autonomous vehicle systems face,” UC Berkeley research engineer Steven Shladover said.
Cycling and public transit go hand-in-hand as viable, environmentally options to get around the city. Transit is also very helpful to safer cycling if enough people use it, there’s decreased congestion. On Saturday, Elon Musk tweeted that in fact, street cars are a hindrance to the possibility of driverless cars in Toronto.
In the tweet, the Tesla boss said that “Toronto streetcars are not yet handled well by FSD.” (FSD stands for full self drive.) According to BlogTO, the people who have been testing FSD have been able to try out traffic-aware cruise control, automatic steering, automatic lane changing and automatic parking among other features. These tests have always been with driver supervision, for safety’s sake.
An option for both transit and bikes to safely exist with self-driving cars, is the idea that they can “talk” to the vehicles. According to NPR, those who believe that self-driving cars will make the world safer, relies very much on what cyclists will do. Many researchers believe that bikes and transit need to feed information to cars.
The infamous Toronto streetcar. A big challenge for the Tesla FSD team. Not even a stop sign on the door just a red light bar. How do you solve this @elonmusk @karpathy pic.twitter.com/mEiH6n0Ba9
— North≡rn T≡sla (@northern_tesla) March 31, 2022
“You want to predict what they’re going to do next,” Nathaniel Fairfield of Google said. “That’s something Waymo’s vehicles have learned to do over 1 billion simulated miles of testing and 3 million miles of driving themselves.”
For FSD to succeed in TORONTO, @Tesla labeling must process these unique realities with the streetcars in the core. @elonmusk @karpathy @WholeMarsBlog @DriveTeslaca @Model3Owners @WhatsupFranks https://t.co/QqfLuaeRlz pic.twitter.com/Wae0Lk6MYE
— Gary Mark?Blue Sky Kites (@blueskykites) March 27, 2022
Both street car users, as they exit the train, as well as cyclists, like pedestrians could be the ones most at risk if a self-driving car couldn’t predict their movements. “”Cyclists, like pedestrians, are some of the most vulnerable road users,” Fairfield added. “And so we do want to treat them with extra caution and care.”
