Comment by spenvo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by spenvo | Hacker News Reader

The top comment in another comment thread, which has been "duped"[0] pointed out how marking a feature in cars as "beta" is irresponsible.

What's beyond the pale IMO is that when auto-pilot was first demonstrated (at the unveil event) - "hands on the wheel" was not part of the story. Journalists and (what appeared to be) Tesla employees were using the feature without hands on the wheel. It looked like Tesla cashing-in on the positive PR without correctly framing the limitations of the tech.

Furthermore, Tesla includes sensors to map the entire surroundings of their cars, but why can't they include sensors to ensure customers have hands on the wheel? (update: comment says they do, but the check frequency is low. why can't it be high?!) It's not just the driver's life at stake, it's everyone else on the road--Tesla should disable this feature on cars [unless it ensures] drivers' hands are on the wheel. Engineers/execs at other companies taking a more responsible approach must be furious at the recklessness on display. One death is too many.

Tesla Auto-pilot fail videos: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=tesla+autopilot...

It's incredibly unfair to other drivers on the road to let someone else use beta software that could cause a head-on-collision.

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12011635

> hey do the check frequency is low. why can't it be high?!

Because that makes it less useful. I am a Tesla owner. I am an adult capable of monitoring the car and taking control when autopilot gets confused. My hand being on the wheel at all times is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for verifying that I am paying attention and am ready to take over control.

> One death is too many.

I am sick and tired of absolutist statements about risk. Why do you allow cars on the road at all? Why allow cars to have cupholders? Why are drive-through restaurants legal? You make utility-risk trade-offs all the fucking time.

> My hand being on the wheel at all times is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for verifying that I am paying attention and am ready to take over control.

Then you are not using the feature the way Tesla says you should, the only way Tesla says it's safe to be used.

> I am sick and tired of absolutist statements about risk.

Recklessly rolling out tech is screwing the industry-at-large, given the regulatory hurdles that must be overcome.

>> One death is too many.

You took this out of context. When Tesla makes no genuine, up-front attempt to educate users on how to use Auto-Pilot--yes, one death is too many.

Correctly-deployed autonomous driving stands to save thousands of lives annually; what's at risk is some overeager company @#!$ing the regulatory efforts by being irresponsible at scale.

> Then you are not using the feature the way Tesla says you should, the only way Tesla says it's safe to be used.

Sometimes public demand forces vendors to add disclaimers to their products despite the fact that everyone knows the disclaimer is a lie. Drug paraphernalia come to mind.

And then the vendor uses the same disclaimer to wash their hands of responsibility.

You can't have it both ways.

You're ignoring the other half of the quoted sentence.

> a necessary nor a sufficient condition

As in, not only can you pay attention without having your hand on the wheel, but you can also have your hand on the wheel without paying attention. Having your hand on the wheel is "safety theatre"—something done because it makes you feel like you're in control, not something you do because it actually puts you in control.

Cars could do a lot of things to actually ensure the driver is in control. A start would be administering a breathalyzer-like automated attention test (dual-N-back?) before the car will start, and then every few hours of continuous operation after that. Tired drivers would be pulled over to the side of the road and told to take a nap and resume in the morning. (This would probably automatically cover drunk drivers as well, now that I think of it.)

Some models of Volkswagen now include driver fatigue detection, based on analysing steering inputs (and possibly other signals?). It just warns you to pull over, though.

> My hand being on the wheel at all times is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for verifying that I am paying attention and am ready to take over control.

Yes it is. Set your ego aside for a second, forget about how good or bad of a driver you are, and consider how long it would take anyone to move their hand back to the wheel and take control.

Lets be generous and assume half a second. 60 mph * 0.5 seconds = 44 feet, or roughly 3 car lengths before you've even begun to re-assume control of the vehicle, let alone take the appropriate action to handle whatever is going wrong.

First off, you should make a difference between driving alone on a small country road and being in heavy traffic on the highway.

Either way, your calculation does not take into account that moving the hands happens in parallel with the critical (most time consuming) step, namely mental processing of the situation and deriving a resolution. So that makes no difference.

You probably meant to say that the attention itself is missing for a split second? But that's something that can be said about car phones, eating food, etc, too. This is just within your individual responsibility, and this is what the law wants. It is, in fact, a risk-reward weighting. We can't use absolutes here ("not a single death is acceptable"), that would be ridiculous. The guy who wrote the parent comment explained that quite well.

(not a tesla driver myself, I dislike driving in general and use my car very rarely)

Yes! As a fellow owner I agree with you 100%

That's the real scandal here if there is one. Tesla has been capitalizing on their autonomous driving feature, and promoting it in an unsafe way to do so (after all, it'd look a lot less impressive if all the demo videos had alert drivers with their hands on the wheel).

The truth is that autonomous driving is something every major car manufacturer could develop and demo tomorrow, but large companies like Ford/GM/Toyota are way too risk-averse (or some would say, responsible), to promote it in such a way.

Here's hoping that Tesla doesn't poison the well for autonomous driving.

> but they can't include sensors to ensure customers have hands on the wheel?

They can and the car already does that. It just do not check very frequently compared to some of the competitors.

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