Slate CEO talks accessories, third party parts, Slate Marketplace (TechCrunch interview)

[Bayfire2441]

As I pointed out in a prior response of the group of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) are different than the Legacy Driver Assistance Systems (LDAS): Antilock Braking System, Traction Control, and Stability Control. The legacy systems provide passive control of the chassis because through computer assistance and specific mechanical hardware the brakes and engine torque in more precise manner than the driver can provide simply because the controls don't exist and really can't exist because the human only has two feet and two hands. All have limitations based the laws of physics. All fail safe. All can't overcome driver substantial driver error.

ADAS on the other hand take over safety responsibility from the driver, which is a vastly more in-depth mission statement. These systems have been developed in reaction to automakers building in distracted driver systems (i.e. the infotainment screen), which itself was added technology in attempt to control distracted driving from idiotic use of smart phones when driving. The concern here is as you stated, "you can't make a computer understand every scenario", which will eventually lead to drivers who do not have the capability to take over control of the vehicle when the ADAS reaches its limits because they never gained the skills through experience and practice.

@Daemoch mentioned air flight, which is quite insightful (and my area of experience with automation). While both commercial and general aviation aircraft have high levels of automation (along with redundant systems) the ultimate responsibility for control of the aircraft falls on the pilot(s). "Pilot(s)" because there is redundancy needed in the human system too. The difference between aviation and ground transportation is threefold, (1) pilots are constantly trained and retrained and tested for suitability to fly aircraft, (2) aircraft fly in 3-dimensional airspace (vs. 2-dimensional "groundarea"), and (3) aircraft fly in highly controlled airspace - for the most part. But the real foundation of air flight safety is pilot training (i.e. "better pilots").

To answer your question though. My answer is... No, we should demand "better drivers". I think Slate has the right idea, through the machine, make the driver more responsible for safety rather than less. That is the biggest value of the brand, in my opinion.

I would consider SuperCruise to be more of a comparison specifically to autopilot if you want to go that route. Being marketed correctly and used correctly and those stats have already been stated here as well. It works. I personally think that there is a better chance of getting these computers to be adequate in most scenarios than making regulation tighter on driver's license and education. Some people just can't handle driving. Which doesn't work in a country that basically requires it. Not to mention that the amount of drivers that get licensed in a given year is a magnitude higher than pilots added each year. If a computer can fill that gap, that's great if you ask me. All of that being said, I do think ADAS should continue to be devolped. I also must state again, I don't believe the steering wheel should be taken out of vehicles. I also think developing ADAS for the Slate would be a stupid use of the teams time and resources. Not to mention be against the thing they are aiming for. But I also can't say I wouldn't be interested if the aftermarket made it a thing.

 

[E90400K]

I would consider SuperCruise to be more of a comparison specifically to autopilot if you want to go that route. Being marketed correctly and used correctly and those stats have already been stated here as well. It works. I personally think that there is a better chance of getting these computers to be adequate in most scenarios than making regulation tighter on driver's license and education. Some people just can't handle driving. Which doesn't work in a country that basically requires it. Not to mention that the amount of drivers that get licensed in a given year is a magnitude higher than pilots added each year. If a computer can fill that gap, that's great if you ask me. All of that being said, I do think ADAS should continue to be devolped. I also must state again, I don't believe the steering wheel should be taken out of vehicles. I also think developing ADAS for the Slate would be a stupid use of the teams time and resources. Not to mention be against the thing they are aiming for. But I also can't say I wouldn't be interested if the aftermarket made it a thing.

SuperCruise uses all the same sensors and adds mapping and GPS tracking. People can get better at driving if it is forced upon them to be better. Computers can't solve everything and can't replace everything.

Real safe autonomous driving is going to require controlled groundspace and redundancy, which is not affordable nor practical. But engineers can keep dreaming.

 

[Bayfire2441]

SuperCruise uses all the same sensors and adds mapping and GPS tracking. People can get better at driving if it is forced upon them to be better. Computers can't solve everything and can't replace everything.

Real safe autonomous driving is going to require controlled groundspace and redundancy, which is not affordable nor practical. But engineers can keep dreaming.

I disagree with that. Not everyone can handle being a good driver. Impatience and anger will always be human flaws. I can see computers getting better quicker than I can see governments being competent.

 

[Dorbiman]

People can get better at driving if it is forced upon them to be better.

We can't even get people to wear seatbelts, let alone put their phones down. Maybe we should make it illegal! Oh, wait, lol

 

[E90400K]

We can't even get people to wear seatbelts, let alone put their phones down. Maybe we should make it illegal! Oh, wait, lol

Seatbellt use is over 90%. I'd say the campaign, laws and DOT requirements have made that impact.

Take away driving privileges for 6 months and a huge insurance premium hit for phone use. That may change behavior patterns.

Yet we do the opposite with apple carplay and android auto integration...

 

[Letas]

Seatbellt use is over 90%. I'd say the campaign, laws and DOT requirements have made that impact.

Take away driving privileges for 6 months and a huge insurance premium hit for phone use. That may change behavior patterns.

Yet we do the opposite with apple carplay and android auto integration...

Gotta disagree here- if you accept the premise that everyone has a phone in their pocket to be plugged in to the world - I think Carplay/Android Auto integration is the best thing to happen in terms of driver distraction. A clear, easy display, transfers perfectly car to car, reduces time eyes are off the road, reduces need to pick up the phone.



I plug my phone in, select my music before I drive, set my route on the screen, skip songs the same as I'd "change the radio" and keep updates on road hazards ahead.

 

[Dorbiman]

Agreed. I have a CarPlay headunit in my '05 Silverado, and use the stock steering wheel controls to skip songs, adjust volume, etc. I typically don't even look at it except for the initial selection before I begin driving.

 

[E90400K]

Gotta disagree here- if you accept the premise that everyone has a phone in their pocket to be plugged in to the world - I think Carplay/Android Auto integration is the best thing to happen in terms of driver distraction. A clear, easy display, transfers perfectly car to car, reduces time eyes are off the road, reduces need to pick up the phone.



I plug my phone in, select my music before I drive, set my route on the screen, skip songs the same as I'd "change the radio" and keep updates on road hazards ahead.

Maybe Ford Sync 4 just sucks then. My Bronco has Apple/Android. I set up Android AutoPlay and tried to use it. In my neck of the woods cell service is extremely spotty, every time the phone lost cell connection the AutoPlay took a dump and I had to go through menus to get it reestablished. Talk about eyes not on the road. The map projected onto the Bronco's TV screen I couldn't read very well and to get a level where I could read it showed about 6 feet around the car - LOL. Useless.

I finally said eff it and removed AutoPlay from my phone, turned off the modem in the Bronco, and just use my phone though Bluetooth. Bluetooth will support hands-free calling and audio from files on the phone (old school). If I'm in a place where I need directions, I just use the Google Maps turn-by-turn audio from the phone.

No rolling software updates from Ford, no screwing with the Sync 4 setup; the Sync 4 screen disappeared somewhere - LOL. But I drive to take a break from tech. I'm now happy being comfortably numb...

 

[Bayfire2441]

Maybe Ford Sync 4 just sucks then. My Bronco has Apple/Android. I set up Android AutoPlay and tried to use it. In my neck of the woods cell service is extremely spotty, every time the phone lost cell connection the AutoPlay took a dump and I had to go through menus to get it reestablished. Talk about eyes not on the road. The map projected onto the Bronco's TV screen I couldn't read very well and to get a level where I could read it showed about 6 feet around the car - LOL. Useless.

I finally said eff it and removed AutoPlay from my phone, turned off the modem in the Bronco, and just use my phone though Bluetooth. Bluetooth will support hands-free calling and audio from files on the phone (old school). If I'm in a place where I need directions, I just use the Google Maps turn-by-turn audio from the phone.

No rolling software updates from Ford, no screwing with the Sync 4 setup; the Sync 4 screen disappeared somewhere - LOL. But I drive to take a break from tech. I'm now happy being comfortably numb...

In my experience, Sync has sucked ever since they moved to touchscreens. The original button based Sync systems are best Infotainment systems I've used.

 

[E90400K]

The numbers don't lie.

Frankly, the data speaks for itself. Take a look at the data for the ONLY fully autonomous vehicle on the road currently that is actively providing rides without a human driver or human safety monitor: Waymo.

Compared to an average human driver over the same distance in their operating cities, Waymo had:

91 % Fewer serious injury or worse crashes
79% Fewer airbag deployment crashes
80% Fewer injury-causing crashes
92% Fewer pedestrian crashes with injuries
78% Fewer cyclist crashes with injuries
89% Fewer motorcycle crashes with injuries

This data is collected in the scale of per million miles. Of which Waymo has been studied over the course of 96M rider-only miles without a human driver. If you want to take a more in-depth look at the data I will link it here.

If you are genuinely concerned about the risk of harm to your loved ones from motor vehicle incidents, then you should look at the data for the leading causes of fatal accidents from National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the National Safety Council (NSC). The top three are:
1) Drunk driving
2) Speeding
3) Distracted driving

Autonomous vehicles such as Waymo don't drink and drive, they don't speed, and they don't get distracted or tired when driving. If you were to choose between ordering an autonomous Waymo to take you to take you to the airport or a human taxi driver, the statistically proven safer choice would be the autonomous Waymo. These numbers only speak to Waymo, not Tesla or other companies, but I think Waymo is the best example of the technology as they are the only one that is currently, right now as I write this, actively operating FULLY autonomous vehicles without any safety drivers or monitors behind the wheel or ready to take over.

If you were to pull someone out of their car and "beat them until they were unrecognizable", it would be the drunk, distracted, human that was speeding and killed your loved one. Human drivers are putting more of a "price tag" on human life then autonomous Waymo Drivers. If you genuinely seek a driving experience that is 100% full proof and makes driving completely 100% safe, then autonomous Waymo technology is far closer to your goal then human drivers. Regardless of your personal feelings toward the technology, the data speaks for itself.

The data source for Waymo is from Waymo. Reading Waymo's Safety Impact report, which discusses normalizing their data between Waymo machine drivers vs. the public's human drivers is interesting.

Waymo states:

• Not all human crashes are reported. NHTSA estimates that 60% of property damage crashes and 32% of injury crashes aren’t reported to police (Blincoe et al. 2023). In contrast, AV companies report even the most minor crashes in order to demonstrate the trustworthiness of autonomous driving on public roads.
• All streets within a city are not equally challenging. Waymo’s operations have expanded over time, and, because Waymo operates as a ride-hailing service, the driving mix largely reflects user demand. The results on this data hub show human benchmarks reported in Scanlon et al. (2024) and extended upon in Kusano et al. (2025) that are adjusted to account for differences in driving mix using a method described by Chen et al. (2024). See the “Human Benchmarks” section below for more details.

The first bullet suggests that the gap is even worse since 60% of property damage crashes go unreported and 32% of injury crashes go unreported. I really find this difficult to believe. 60% of incidents where someone's property is damaged is not reported? 60% percent of property damage victims just don't give a shit their property was damaged? Does that make sense to you? And 32% of people injured by another person's vehicle driven by a human do not report their injury? They don't go to a hospital or doctor to get their injury treated? Does that make any sense to you? The Waymo report weights its data to include the 32% under reporting.

The second bullet does it suggest Waymo only drives on the easiest streets of the four cities it operates in and the human driver data is all city streets? Does the human driver data include humans driving in from the suburbs? I see nowhere where Waymo states the human driver data is strictly taxi drivers (including ride services Uber and Lyft). Waymo states it is a ride-providing service, so perhaps the data would be more meaningful and accurate if the human driver data was reporting just taxi service miles driven.

The law firm's data tracks to the NHSTA report "Overview of Motor Vehicle Traffic Crashes In 2023" for alcohol-impaired crashes with a fatality and speeding accidents with a fatality but does not track with the NHSTA report for distracted driving: NHSTA @ 7.9% (2022) and 8% (2023) vs. DeMayo @ 11% (2022).

Now the good news is the NHSTA report shows the trend of fatality rate per million miles traveled has been dropping overall since 1976 from 3.35 down to 1.26 per 100M VMT. Yet the more recent years 2020 - 2023 shows a slight move back up.

 

[KevinRS]

Property damage crashes are going to include those that happen vs a parked car, and the driver just drives away, as well as those where both drivers are present, but decide the damage is minor enough that they don't want a hit on their insurance rates, or they are uninsured.
How many times since you've been driving have you found mystery scrapes and dents on your car, because someone bumped it in a parking lot? It's happened more times for me than accidents I've reported. That 60% is coming from NHTSA, not Waymo. On injuries, if the accident was the injured driver's fault, they may not report it for the same reasons.
I don't see anything to say they are driving on the easiest streets, just that the mix is different so they used adjustments and cited how. They drive wherever they get ride calls for, and human driven is total of all human driven. Getting a significant amount of data from human driven taxi drivers would probably be impossible.

But it doesn't matter much how they are adjusting the data to normalize, when the numbers are that drastic. If they were really fudging the numbers like that, you would see lots of articles calling that out. Even if you take that 32% underreporting back out of the human driven side on every injury category, Waymo would still win significantly.

They have taken distracted driving, driver fatigue, drunk drivers, medical incidents, speeding and other violations out of play on their side.

 

[E90400K]

Property damage crashes are going to include those that happen vs a parked car, and the driver just drives away, as well as those where both drivers are present, but decide the damage is minor enough that they don't want a hit on their insurance rates, or they are uninsured.
How many times since you've been driving have you found mystery scrapes and dents on your car, because someone bumped it in a parking lot? It's happened more times for me than accidents I've reported. That 60% is coming from NHTSA, not Waymo. On injuries, if the accident was the injured driver's fault, they may not report it for the same reasons.
I don't see anything to say they are driving on the easiest streets, just that the mix is different so they used adjustments and cited how. They drive wherever they get ride calls for, and human driven is total of all human driven. Getting a significant amount of data from human driven taxi drivers would probably be impossible.

But it doesn't matter much how they are adjusting the data to normalize, when the numbers are that drastic. If they were really fudging the numbers like that, you would see lots of articles calling that out. Even if you take that 32% underreporting back out of the human driven side on every injury category, Waymo would still win significantly.

They have taken distracted driving, driver fatigue, drunk drivers, medical incidents, speeding and other violations out of play on their side.

Well let's look at the data crash-type categories. Waymo says its machine drivers are 96% below the "Average human benchmark" for vehicle-to-vehicle crashes at intersections with an injury involved. So what Waymo is saying is in the four major metropolitan cities it operates in, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Austin and Phoenix, 32% of accidents in intersection where the human(s) is(are) injured, no police come to the aid of the injured driver and police do not come to direct traffic around the accident when either one or both vehicles become inoperable due to the crash. Nearly the same statistic (91%) is posted for V2V intersection crashes where airbags are deployed. 32% of these accidents are not reported? I'm not sure what cities you have driven in, but I do not believe any crashes in intersections where one or more humans are injured are not reported, especially when airbags deploy. Any accident in any intersection in a major metropolitan area would cause a traffic backup/anomaly where police/EMT would almost immediately respond to support traffic control and medical attention.

Same for pedestrian injury accidents, and motorcycle accidents. For all three accident types with injuries Waymo says it is at least 89% or more below the human threshold, which includes weighting the data with 32% underreported human driver error accidents. Nah.

And I'd like to see the car-service data normalized for cities where the weather is much worse that the warm dry year-round climates of LA, San Fran, Phoenix, and Austin. Ah, Waymo doesn't operate in such climates with poor weather conditions.

 

[KevinRS]

They did not say that 32% of every category of accidents are not reported. Underreporting is often due to factors like minor property damage, lack of significant injury, or situations occurring outside of public right-of-ways.
This misreading of the math is besides the point. Even if they were applying that 32% to intersection crashes, they would still be 64% below the human driven vehicles on crashes at intersections.

The NHTSA only uses in it's database accidents where there was a police report, and it must involve at least one motor vehicle traveling on a traffic way, and the result must be property damage, injury, or death.
No police report, it's not reported
In a parking lot or driveway, no report
Those would be the categories where they normalized the numbers.

Doing some algebra on that serious crash or injury 91% fewer (20 fewer) finds that what they are calculating from is 22 serious crashes per million miles for human drivers, and 2 per million for Waymo. Again, because serious crashes do get reported, they will not have normalized this calculation. Even if they were assuming that 32% of serious crashes weren't being reported, and you take that out, they would still be ahead.
The 32% mentioned by waymo is because driverless systems report everything. Down to a distracted pedestrian walks into a parked car and walks away. If you want to go deeper click on and read the actual cited papers where they are getting their benchmark data from, they are freely available to read.

 

[atx_ev]

If a technology cant contend with literally ANY scenario it can ever come across, its not mature enough for the real world. full stop. thats just a real cold fact. Its why aerospace still uses human pilots after 50+ years of autopilots; its not ready to deal with "that one scenario" still and the lawsuits that would (rightfully) follow.

If someones Tesla 'auto' ran over your wife and you pulled them out of their car and beat them until they were unrecognizable by their own dog, then sued them and Tesla, I'd acquit you and then fine Tesla into oblivion to send a message to every other AI dev company out there. If a life is precious and beyond value, then why do we keep putting price tags on them? Otherwise...how much you want for your daughter? Asking for a friend.

If you want to use it, have fun. But if it literally steers you wrong and you spend the rest of your life eating through a tube, or in jail because you caused someone else to, I dont want to hear your cries of "I didn't know" "I'm so sorry" or "It always worked before". You rolled dice you didn't have to after all the warnings and lost. If driving is SOOOO tedious, dont buy a truck, take a taxi.

Thats not how risk works.
That is like saying power door locks and windows are not safe and shouldnt be used because sometimes they fail when a car gets immersed so the people die

Risk calculations are constantly done and there is often an element of risk in everything

You can eat contaminated food and die from listeria
You can run a table saw over your hand and cut it off
You can fall out a window and die (happened to my daughters friend)

Technology doesnt have to be perfectly safe. It just needs to match the safety of other options.