They got an army of thousands of Indians to watch the road for you?
No, you’re thinking of Amazon.
They got an army of thousands of Amazonians to watch the road for you?
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I would let Xena Warrior Princess drive with a 300ms latency, no doubt.
Ah, the ol’ reddit swi- oh wait…
Ah, the ol’ Lemmy Switcheroo!
Time for snoo-snoo?
No they just got a few dozens good lawyers instead if the lawsuits costts less than the profits and you get publicity out of it then that’s business for ya
The best lawyers are going to use AI to create their legal arguments. And you know what AI stands for. Always Indians.
No matter how you slice it, it’s Indians all the way down.
This is the best comment I’ve read on Lemmy in the 6 months I’ve been here.
don’t come with a requirement that drivers watch the road
Seems it’s like every other Mercedes then
Hey I’m watching it on my mirrors.
And they managed to do it without us obsessing about their CEO several times a day? I refuse to believe that!
…
As of April 11, there were 65 Mercedes autonomous vehicles available for sale in California, Fortune has learned through an open records request submitted to the state’s DMV. One of those has since been sold, which marks the first sale of an autonomous Mercedes in California, according to the DMV. Mercedes would not confirm sales numbers. Select Mercedes dealerships in Nevada are also offering the cars with the new technology, known as “level 3” autonomous driving.
…
Drivers can activate Mercedes’s technology, called Drive Pilot, when certain conditions are met, including in heavy traffic jams, during the daytime, on spec ific California and Nevada freeways, and when the car is traveling less than 40 mph. Drivers can focus on other activities until the vehicle alerts them to resume control. The technology does not work on roads that haven’t been pre-approved by Mercedes, including on freeways in other states.
…
U.S. customers can buy a yearly subscription of Drive Pilot in 2024 EQS sedans and S-Class car models for $2,500.
…
Mercedes is also working on developing level 4 capabilities. The automaker’s chief technology officer Markus Schäfer expects that level 4 autonomous technology will be available to consumers by 2030, Automotive News reported.
…
Hmm, so only on a very small number of predetermined routes, and at very slow speeds for those roads.
Still impressive, but not as impressive as the headline makes out.
And definitely not worth the $2500 a year they’re asking for the feature.
Chances are, If you can afford the car, then that amount is nothing to you.
Having known one, some of their customers love their feature loaded cars to brag about and feel extra special. Some will definitely pay the 2.5k gladly.
Conspicuous Consumption.
If they assume full liability for any collisions while the feature is active (and it looks like they do), then I can see that being fair.
Come on, you have been able to pay the price of that Mercedes in the first place.
These 2500 are not going to hurt.
Many people use credit to buy a car out of their league.
They may do so. I have no mercy for them.
Yes, but it’s actually level 3.
Not the Tesla “full self driving - no wait we actually lied to you, you need to be alert at all times” bullshit.
We’ll wait and see i guess
I’ve seen this headline a few times and the details are laughably bad. The only reason this can be getting any press is because the headline is good clickbait. But 40 mph top speed on approved roads in 2 states only if a car is in front of you in the daytime is entirely useless. I guess it’s a good first step maybe? But trying to write headlines like this is big news is sad.
40 mph top speed on approved roads in 2 states only if a car is in front of you in the daytime is entirely useless.
It’s specifically designed to navigate traffic congestion, which happens under 30 mph. It can keep up with the lane, deal with lane changes, honk if someone backs into you, let ambulances through, things like that. Not sure why the article presents it as generic driving.
The reason this gets attention is because it’s the first level 3 sold to consumers.
The tech is hard, of course it’s gonna start out with laughingly limited capabilities. But it’s the first step towards more automation.
It’s starting in California where there are a meaningful number of high earners who are spending hours per day in 4 lane bumper to bumper traffic.
Having actual autonomy during those hours is still shit. But it’s a hell of a lot less shit than the tedium of the high attention requirements of sitting in traffic at a crawl.
Fucking subscription. No.
U.S. customers can buy a yearly subscription of Drive Pilot in 2024 EQS sedans and S-Class car models for $2,500
yeah, fuck that.
Those cars cost well over $100k each. The demographic buying that doesn’t care about $2500.
They’re also accepting full liability if anything happens while using this feature so it’s actually a type of insurance
I wonder how much cheaper it will make auto insurance. I also wonder if this will open transportation options those who have lost a license.
Not this. It’s limited to specific scenarios on specific roads. So you’re going to need a licensed driver.
Eventually with actually full self driving? I’d hope so, though it’s going to take legislation first.
I kinda like that system because eventually people will put their own OSes on the car, which the manufacturer obviously can’t cover. Having separate insurance/service eliminates having to pay for it if you’re accepting the liability yourself.
Ok, then I’ll do it if I don’t have to pay for other insurance on the car.
The conditions for the system to work are such that if you could find a policy to cover only those conditions, it’d probably just be like a couple dollars a month. Even behaving “badly” you would be unlikely to have an accident and even if you caused an accident, it’s probably just going to be a couple thousand in property damage with no medical implication.
Have you seen Tesla’s price for full self driving? And they don’t take liability
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I think you can afford that if you own an EQS
Love how companies can decide who has to supervise their car’s automated driving and not an actual safety authority. Absolutely nuts.
Assuming a functional legal system, they’d be liable for damages if they lie about product safety.
That’s gonna do the people murdered by an algorithm a lot of good… /s
You can’t have a babysitter following every human to make sure they don’t do something dangerous. Except for high risk areas, liability is the most practical option.
Or maybe, like, regulation?
So you want to read 50 page regulation about how to boil water in your home because boiling water can hurt people?
And how do you regulate AI when you have no idea how it works or what could go wrong. Not as if politicians are AI experts. Driving itself is already heavily regulated, the AI has to follow traffic rules just like anyone else, if that is what you are thinking.
Why do you believe that judges (or even juries made of lay people) can make sense of the very things that you’re so confident legislators or regulators cannot?
I’m not saying regulation is perfect, and as a result, certainly there is a role for judicial review. But come on, man…lots of non sequiturs and straw dogs in your argument.
Quite often, juries don’t have to rule on technical matters. Juries will have available internal communications of the company, testimonies of the engineers working on the project etc. If safety concerns were being ignored, you can usually find enough witnesses and documents proving so.
On the other hand, how do you even begin to regulate something that is only in the process of being invented? What would the regulation look like?
They actually did get certified by an authority
An “authority” of people who fell for some marketing bullshit.
Read the dammed article, it literally said the DMV for California and Nevada. It’s the fucking government.
Spoken like someone who clearly knows nothing about the technology.
Who said there was no safety authority involved? I thought it was part of the 4 level system the government decided on for assisted driving.
Paywalled.
Ty!
Paywalled.
On a different subject, why would someone downvote a one-word comment that accurately describes what the content is behind?
There are people who are pathologically contrarian. I’ve had to end a friendship over it—the endless need to say something negative about literally everything that ever happens and an unwillingness to be charitable to others.
Reddit 1.3 is just like that.
Doesn’t answer my question though.
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Nope. Someone absolutely downvoted him. Because, just like Reddit, the downvote button here is the ‘wow fuck that guy for saying a thing i don’t like’ button.
Also a “I don’t like you/this page/the content and will go out of my way to systematically down vote everything you have done and everything in this particular thread” button.
I have the theory that archive.is, waybackmachine and 12ft.io are no secret anymore, and that just posting “paywalled” comes across as too lazy to copy/paste or (a lot easier) to use this addon to reduce the work to a click. i dont mind, but i can understand why others might see it that way
and that just posting “paywalled” comes across as too lazy to copy/paste
Blaming the victim, and justifying paywalls.
or (a lot easier) to use this addon to reduce the work to a click.
My phone browser doesn’t use add-ons.
i dont mind
And yet, you took the time out to reply, to chastise me for saying it.
sheesh, you are quite aggressive, i did not want to offend. and as i said, i don’t mind it, i even posted the archivelink, for which you thanked me. check your target before firing, mate :-)
(also, theres always firefox mobile. can apple users use it with addons/firefox browser engine now? i don’t follow apple development actively)
Musk: Fuuuuuuu
Wonder how this works with car insurance. Os there a future where the driver doesn’t need to be insured? Can the vehicle software still be “at fault” and how will the actuaries deal with assessing this new risk.
I believe Mercedes takes responsibility if there is an accident while driving autonomously.
Which is how it should be. The company creating the software takes on the liability of faults with said software.
Will it pull a Tesla and switch off the autopilot seconds before an accident?
Wow I hope we see some regulation about that kind of thing.
If memory serves, that’s not an intentional feature, but more a coincidence, since if the driver thinks the cruise control is about to crash the car, they’ll pop the brakes. Touching the brakes disengages the cruise control by design, so you end up with it shutting down before a crash happens.
That makes perfect sense. If the driver looks up to notice that he’s in a dangerous, unfixable situation, slams the breaks, disconnecting the autopilot (which have been responaible for letting the situation develop) hopefully the automaker can’t entirely say “not our fault, the system wasn’t even engaged at the time of the collision”
And this is how they will push everyone into driverless. Through insurance costs. Who would insure 1 human driver vs 100 bots, (once the systems have a few billion miles on them)
And that will probably be safer for everyone, honestly. Better or worse will vary by individual perspective.
It’ll be interesting to see how it pans out, with local city traffic being essentially reduced to all taxis and only the countryside 4x4 and farm vehicles being the last hold out of human control because of hilly terrain. Once the lorries go fully self-controlled (note: modern lorries have a lot of driver support aids as it is.) it’ll only be a matter of time.
Totally agree that car incidents will go down dramatically, some police forces will see their entire income disappear. Soo many changes that we can’t even imagine coming.
Farm vehicles are far more automated than any cars these days.
I did think about that whilst I included farm vehicles but meant support rather than harvesters.
I wonder if any lessons have been used and applied from the farm industries automation which is great when applied to a specific area as opposed to general driving.
It’s very GPS driven from what I’m aware with the accurate measuring GPS units being thousands of pounds which obviously restricts it for use in the consumer market.
Good points. I bet local towns are the biggest holdout just because of dependence on ticket revenue.
I included that line thinking of America, it vastly reduces police interaction chance as well which gives me more thought.
You’re probably right. Another decade or two and human driver controlled cars might be prohibitively expensive to insure for some or even not allowed in certain areas.
I can imagine an awesome world where that’s a great thing but also imagine a dystopian world like wall-e as well. I guess we’ll know then which one we chose.
I feel you’re misapplying the advantage. Right now people hit other people in cars and insurance is what it is. It would be more appropriate to say that humans will pay normal rates, while autonomous car companies will charge you an insurance subscription, and work out much lower rates with the insurer.
You would think that’s how it should be right? Not a chance. They’ll find another reason to stiff you.
As long as there is free competition, the cost will be around 10% over the operating cost. After that point it becomes worthwhile for another competitor to step in.
No. I don’t think this is a good solution. Companies will put a price on your life and focus on monetary damage reduction. If you’re about to cause more property damage than your life is worth (to Mercedes) they’ll be incentivized to crash the car and kill you rather than crash into the expensive structure.
Your car should be you property, you should be liable for the damage it causes. The car should prioritise your life over monetary damage. If there is some software problem causing the cars to crash, you need to be able to sue Mercedes through a class action lawsuit to recover your losses.
You’ve been downvoted, but I don’t get why. Are people in denial that corpos will put money above all else?
Oh, there are a lot of Tesla/self driving cars fanboys out here. They’re caught up in the idea that these corporations will save us from traffic congestion/paying taxes for public transit/car accidents/climate change/car ownership/ you name it and self driving cars will solve it. They don’t tend to like it when you try to bring reality to their fantasy.
Self driving cars are a really cool technology. Electric cars as well. However, they don’t solve the fundamental problem of transporting a 200lb person using a 3000lb vehicle. So they’re at best a partial solution. I also don’t really want a future where corporations own more of our stuff and force into monthly payments for heated car seats and “prioritise human life” premium options.
Fanboys gonna fanboy I guess!
Wrongful death and human body damage is a lot more expensive.
Berkshire Hathaway owns Geico the car insurance company. In one of his annual letters Buffett said that autonomous cars are going to be great for humanity and bad for insurance companies.
“If [self-driving cars] prove successful and reduce accidents dramatically, it will be very good for society and very bad for auto insurers.”
Actuaries are by definition bad at assessing new risk. But as data get collected they quickly adjust to it. There are a lot of cars so if driverless cars become even a few percent of cars on the road they will quickly be able to build good actuarial tables.
His statement is extremely flawed - insurance companies dream of accepting premiums and never paying out accidents.
He understands there is enough competition in the market that as payouts and accidents go down premiums will have to. There is enough competition they can’t just keep rates high they would be undercut and lose customers.
For BH it’s doubly bad as the large cash reserves GEICO has to maintain are used to borrow against at very low rates. If those reserves drop he has less to borrow against for investing.
If I wanted to be cynical, it’s also that it’s a bit different when it’s not Average Joe asking for a payout, but Mercedes, for example. It may shift the legal playing field with the insured parties not being consumers, but car manufacturers. Even worse for insurers, car manufacturers would be more successful in negotiating the initial deal as well.
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I would agree it’s bad for insurance company employees. But the purpose of an insurance company is to collect premiums and deny claims.
Get hurt in america, your insurer will hold a demo!
When you’re clients are a handful of companies who will more aggressively change insurers than consumers to save a penny and have their own legal teams, it becomes harder to price gouge or illegally deny claims.
Yes, clearly Warren Buffet is the one in the wrong here. 🤔
According to who? Did the NTSB clear this? Are they even allowed to clear this? If this thing fucks up and kills somebody, will the judge let the driver off the hook 'cuz the manufacturer told them everything’s cool?
According to who? Did the NTSB clear this?
Yes.
If this thing fucks up and kills somebody, will the judge let the driver off the hook 'cuz the manufacturer told them everything’s cool?
Yes, the judge will let the driver off the hook, because Mercedes told them it will assume the liability instead.
According to that teal light.
You do realize humans kill hundreds of other humans a day in cars, right? Is it possible that autonomous vehicles may actually be safer than a human driver?
Sure. But no system is 100% effective and all of their questions are legit and important to answer. If I got hit by one of these tomorrow I want to know the process for fault, compensation and pathway to improvement are all already done not something my accident is going to landmark.
But that being said, I was a licensing examiner for 2 years and quit because they kept making it easier to pass and I was forced to pass so many people who should not be on the road.
I think this idea is sound, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t things to address around it.
Honestly I’m sure there will be a lot of unfortunate mistakes until computers and self driving systems can be relied upon. However there needs to be an entry point for manufacturers and this is it. Technology will get better over time, it always has. Eventually self driving autos will be the norm.
That still doesn’t address all the issues surrounding it. I am unsure if you are just young and not aware how these things work or terribly naive. But companies will always cut corners to keep profits. Regulation forces a certain level of quality control (ideally). Just letting them do their thing because “it’ll eventually get better” is a gateway to absurd amounts of damage. Also, not all technology always gets better. Plenty just get abandoned.
But to circle back, if I get hit by a car tomorrow and all these thinga you think are unimportant are unanswered does that mean I might mot get legal justice or compensation? If there isn’t clearly codified law I might not, and you might be callous enough to say you don’t care about me. But what about you? What if you got hit by a unmonitored self driving car tomorrow and then told you’d have to go through a long, expensive court battle to determine fault because no one had done it it. So you’re in and out of a hospital recovering and draining all of your money on bills both legal and medical to eventually hopefully get compensated for something that wasn’t your fault.
That is why people here are asking these questions. Few people actually oppose progress. They just need to know that reasonable precautions are taken for predictable failures.
To be clear I never said that I didn’t care about an individual’s safety, you inferred that somehow from my post and quite frankly are quite disrespectful. I simply stated that autonomous vehicles are here to stay and that the technology will improve more with time.
The legal implications of self driving cars are still being determined and as this is literally one of the first approved technologies available. Tesla doesn’t count as it’s not a SAE level 3 autonomous driving vehicle. There are some references in the liability section of the wiki.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_self-driving_cars
But then it’s good that the manufacturer states the driver isn’t obliged to watch the road. Because it shifts responsibility towards the manufacturer and thus - it’s a great incentive to make technology as safe as possible.
Can’t the entry point just be that you have to pay attention while it’s driving for you until they figure it out?
You’re deciding to prioritize economic development over human safety.
*at 40mph on a clear straight road on a sunny day in a constant stream of traffic with no unexpected happenings, Ts&Cs apply.
Only on closed courses. The best AI lacks the basic heuristics of a child and you simply can’t account for all possible outcomes.
This is also the company that promises to prioritise the vehicle occupants over pedestrians.
I mean that’s exactly what the driver would do, I’m not sure why this is controversial
Yeah, for real, “Someone will 100%, do you want it to be your friends/family/people you know or some absolute random stranger?” Some lemmitors would surely answer “My people, for sure”
The human does it out of self preservation, but the car doesn’t need to feel too preserve itself.
By getting the in the car, the passengers should be aware of the risks and that if there is an accident, the car will protect pedestrians over the occupants. The pedestrians had no choice but the passengers have a choice of not getting in the vehicle.
I feel like car manufacturers are going to favour protecting the passengers as a safety feature, and then governments will eventually legislate it to go the other way after a series of high profile deaths of child pedestrians.
You’re probably over-estimating the likelyhood of a scenario where a self driving car needs to make a such decision. Also take into account that if a self driving car is a significantly better driver than a human then it’s by definition going to be much safer for pedestrians aswell even if it’s programmed to prioritize the passengers.
On the flip side, if you know a car will kill a passenger to save an outsider, it becomes very easy to “accidentally” murder a passenger and get away with it…
Nah, I think most people would crash into a tree rather than clear a sidewalk. Cars are designed to protect you in a crash. Pedestrians don’t have seatbelts, crash zones, and airbags.
I think you’re way over estimating driver reflexes and reaction capabilities. I don’t think most accidents give a good long time to consider the next step.
Who would buy a car that will sacrifice the passengers in the event of an unavoidable accident? If it’s significantly better driver than a human would be then it’s safer for pedestrians aswell.
It’s not really an issue. 99.9% of the time the passengers will already be safe and the pedestrian is the one at risk. The only time I see this being an issue is if the car is already out of control, but at that point there’s little anyone can do.
I mean, what’s the situation where a car can’t break but has enough control where it HAS to kill a pedestrian in order to save the passengers?
Tesla on their autopilot during night. All the time basically. There were number of motorcycle deaths where Tesla just mowed them down. The reason? They had two tail lights side by side instead one big light. Tesla thought this was a car far away and just ran through people.
That’s a problem with the software. The passengers in the car were never at risk and the car could have stopped at any time, the issue was that the car didn’t know what was happening. This situation wouldn’t have engaged the autopilot in the way we are discussing.
As an aside, if what you said is true, people at Tesla should be in jail. WTF
Tesla washes their hands of any wrongdoing with terms of use where owner agrees he’s responsible bla bla bla.
Here’s a related video.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Yes. As it should be. I’ll buy the car that chooses to mow down a sidewalk full of pregnant babies instead of mildly inconveniencing myself or my passengers. Why the hell would you even consider any other alternative?
pregnant babies
🤔
I’d consider a 5yr old a baby https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lina_Medina
if it can drive a car why wouldn’t it be able to drive a truck?
I’m surprised companies don’t just build their own special highway for automated trucking and use people for last mile stuff.
We could make it work on a guide line and attach a bunch of trailers to one truck. You’re a genius.
This idea seems to be getting some steam. I’m all aboard it!
A monorail of course.
That’s more of a Shelbyville idea
yeah that would be great. Say, you can save on that a little if you put wheel guides on the road since theyre all headed in the same direction, and maybe you can replace the tires with something that fits into that guide pretty well so that you don’t have to replace them as much. Matter of fact, all of these trucks can become electric if they run electricity through the track or above it. This is a revolutionary idea!!
It’s called a train, no?
On private roads in Canada, the mining giant Teck is starting to use autonomous transport trucks.
To me this is less frightening for public safety and more for reasons related to climate change, since this kind of industrial expansion will be less contingent on worker availability.
Mind you, the whole push toward driverless vehicles seems insanely redundant as a concept, since driverless tech in the form of high-speed rail has been around for decades in an infinitely more efficient way than could ever be offered by personal vehicles.
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They are testing them already. I only have a German article that came out this week https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/technologie/fahrerlose-lkw-man-test-autobahn-100.html
The truck division of Mercedes (Daimler) is already testing the trucks in the US. They plan commercial usage in 2027. MAN is testing in Europe in wants to start commercial usage in 2030.
I like to imagine somebody in a call center remotely driving your car.
Fine print will say it’s still your fault though if they crash
On a lever 3 system it’s not. If it is then it’s level 2.
How is that legal?
Because it’s an extremely narrowly defined set of requirements in order to use it. It’s “approved freeways with clear markings and moderate to heavy traffic under 40MPH during daytime hours and clear conditions” meaning it will inch forward for you in bumper to bumper traffic provided you’re in an approved area and that’s it.
How is that different than LKAS + ACC?
Those still require your full attention and hands on the wheel.
In theory. In practice, it just beeps at you if your sandwich hand is steering.
Well, not always hands on wheel. I have spent over an hour straight on an interstate with hands off. Ford’s system watches your eyes and lets your hands stay off if it’s decent conditions and on a LIDAR-mapped freeway. Note I wouldn’t trust it at night (there have been two crashes, both at night with stopped vehicles on freeway), but then I wouldn’t really trust myself at night either too much (there are many many more human caused crashes at night, I’m not sure a human at freeway speed could avoid a crash with a surprise stationary vehicle in middle of the road).
Right, this is an insurance product more than a tech product.
Still seems not legal to not pay attention to the road. Wouldn’t fly over here at least.
Correct, it only flies in California and Nevada, where the DMV approved it
They got certification from the authorities, and in the event of an accident, the manufacturer takes on responsibility.
lol, ‘manufacturer takes on responsibility’ so… I’m just fucked if one of these hits me?
see a mercedes, shoot a mercedes. destroy it in whatever way you can.
No you’re guaranteed that the Mercedes that hit you is better insured for paying out your damages than pretty much anyone else on the road that could hit you.
lol corporations don’t have responsibility though. that’s the whole point of them. they’re machines for avoiding responsibility.
Please touch grass soon.
more likely glass first, if I try. not in a pedestrian friendly area.
In this case the responsibility to pay will ultimately fall on everyone, not just on the pedestrian getting hit. Still not good, but you won’t be SOL.
If these have lidar (unlike teslas) then they might be better at detecting obstructions but I feel like real world road conditions are not kind to cameras and sensors.
Fixed lidar sensors are not as reliable as it’s made out to be, unfortunately. Dome lidar systems like those found on Waymo vehicles are pretty good, but way more advanced (and expensive) than anything you’d find in consumer vehicles at the moment. The shadows of trees are enough to render basic lidar sensors useless, as they effectively produce an aperiodic square wave of infrared light (from the sun) that is frequently inseparable from the ToF emission signal. Sunsets are also sometimes enough to completely blind lidar sensors.
None of this is to say that Tesla’s previous camera-only approach was a good idea, like at all. More data is always a good thing, so long as the system doesn’t rely on the data more than the data’s reliability permits. After all, cameras can be blinded by sunlight too. IMO radar is the best economical complementary sensor to cameras at the moment. Despite the comparatively low accuracy, they are very reliable in adverse conditions.
been hit before, not buying it. gonna be proactive about self defense.
I’ve been hit 4 times
The sad part of this is somehow thinking that payment solves any problem. Like, idk what they would pay me, just bring back my dead wife/child/father whatever. You can’t fix everything with money.
It only works on a small handful of freeways (read: no pedestrians) in California/Nevada, and only under 40 MPH. The odds of a crash within those parameters resulting in a fatality are quite low.
Human drivers are far more dangerous on the road, and you should be applauding assisted driving development.
This presumes the options are only:
- Human and no autonomous system watching
- Autonomous system, with no meaningful human attention
Key word is ‘assisted’ driving. ADAS should roughly be a nice add, so long as human attention is policed. Ultimately, the ADAS systems are better able to react to some situations, but may utterly make some stupid calls in exceptional scenarios.
Here, the bar of ‘no human paying attention at all’ is one I’m not entirely excited about celebrating. Of course the conditions are “daytime traffic jam only”, where risk is pretty small, you might have a fender bender, pedestrians are almost certainly not a possibility, and the conditions are supremely monotonous, which is a great area for ADAS but not a great area for bored humans.
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that paid for it to be, like everything else that’s legal?
