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Comment by aresant | Hacker News Reader

I wrote this on a previously buried thread:

Naming their system "autopilot" goes beyond the marketing dept overstepping and into the territory of irresponsibility.

The "average" definition of autopilot per Wikipedia is "autopilot is a system used. . . WITHOUT CONSTANT 'HANDS-ON' control by a human operator being required."

And yet Tesla's disclaimer states:

"Tesla requires drivers to remain engaged and aware when Autosteer is enabled. Drivers must keep their hands on the steering wheel."(2)

The disconnect between the name and the actual function is needlessly confusing and probably irresponsible.

They should change the name to "driver assist" or something more accurate given that mis-interpreting the system's function can lead to death of the driver or others.

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopilot

(2) https://www.teslamotors.com/presskit/autopilot

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> They should change the name to "driver assist" or something more accurate given that mis-interpreting the system's function can lead to death of the driver or others.

While I definitely agree on the name change, it should be accompanied by a feature change. In its current mode, and especially if people know it has been renamed, the same stuff will happen.

When you take your hands off the wheel, it turn on warning lights, break increasingly hard (depending on what it detects behind it) and sound loud warnings in the car. If it's truly an assistive feature where you can't be inattentive, the only scenario in which you stop steering is when you fell asleep.

That's what it does - it alerts drivers, and when their hands are off for some amount of time the car will pull off to the shoulder and stop until your hands are back on the wheel (IIRC).

Ah okay, I don't own a Tesla and this wasn't covered in news articles.

In that case, it sounds like it might actually work more or less as it should. It's just a bit useless in its current form.

What's the interval between when you take your hands off and it decides to pull over? From what I've seen in discussions and videos, it's pretty long. Other car manufacturers seem to only allow a few seconds.

The article seems to imply that the warning is given if driving conditions become "uncertain" and the driver's hands are off the wheel. Perhaps the time interval between warning and the car automatically stopping should be lower. What's the point of the car continuing on autopilot if it's uncertain of where it's headed?

> What's the point of the car continuing on autopilot if it's uncertain of where it's headed?

Haha agreed! I don't know exactly how the system works. My sense is Tesla's AP let's you be hands off for a much longer time than other self driving systems

More details here:

http://www.teslarati.com/what-happens-ignore-tesla-autopilot...

Based on that account, it seems the warning is triggered if the road becomes curvy. There may also be additional triggers.

It seems insufficient to me. IMO there should be an interval of at most 5 seconds before the first warning, and another 5 seconds before the second, and then the car should start decelerating.

I think about three minutes. My VW Passat demands the hands back on the steering wheel after 15 seconds or so I believe. Same experience driving a recent Audi.

Is it even useful if it's merely assisting the driver, though? I haven't used it, but actively steering a car while someone else is also actively steering it sounds pretty terrible.

If you're not actively steering it but just waiting to take over if things go poorly, things also seem like they'd be difficult. Other than getting in an accident, how is a person supposed to know when autopilot is doing it's thing correctly, and when it isn't?

> but actively steering a car while someone else is also actively steering it sounds pretty terrible.

My passat has most assist systems and I like how it steers. It tries very hard to get my attention and get my hands back on the steering wheel. It barely lets me keep my hands 15 seconds of the wheel but this is perfect for what it's designed to do: keep you in the lane if you are being distracted by something (eg: baby).

Even more it has various modes to get your attention back including detecting tiredness and inability to hold the steering wheel on the lane.

> keep you in the lane if you are being distracted by something (eg: baby).

If you can't drive responsibly with a baby on board lane assist isn't going to save your ass. If something happens to your baby which distracts you ask someone else in the car to take care of it, if there is nobody to help pull over at the earliest opportunity.

Lane assist will not save you from anything else but lane departure and there are a lot of other things that can go wrong while you allow yourself to be distracted because you rely on lane assist to keep you safe. That's not the intended use of this feature.

I can't imagine the gymnastics involved in this feat either. A baby doesn't belong on the front seat without some modifications to the car as far as I know.

I absolutely agree. There is absolutely no excuse for the driver to take their eyes off the road to assist a baby in the car. How would you assist a baby in the back seat while driving with a seat belt on anyway?

As I read about people using these features, I'm convinced they shouldn't exist. Yes, crazies will apply eyeliner while going sixty on a highway but I doubt driver assist is an adequate solution for such stupidity should a driver poke themselves in the eye.

Pretty much every modern car has a way to deactivate the passenger airbag specifically so you can place a baby seat in the front.

At least in the United States, most state laws dictate that babies are to ride in the back seat (if available) in child seats. Some states also dictate when a child can be turned around to face forward. Varies state to state.

Here's a state-by-state break-down:

http://www.ghsa.org/html/stateinfo/laws/childsafety_laws.htm...

Who said anything about a) baby on a front seat (which is not permitted anyways) and b) assisting a baby.

If you have ever driven with a baby or child in a car you will have learned that they can cry or make a tantrum. Assist systems are intended to supplement and assist the driver in situations of increased stress. The idea that one would actively take their hands off the wheel to do something with a child is so preposterous ghat only commenters on HN could seriously suggest that.

I wouldn't worry about it. Some people just feel a constant need to get up on that high horse whenever possible.

Getting distracted by a sudden cry or a little child throwing an item is precisely what the feature was designed for. It was not designed for watching TV or cosntantly getting your hands of the wheel to do something else.

Also I find it interesting how much you assume about a person or situation from a single word.

Be honest, it's for texting, right? b^)

If you can't drive responsibly with a baby on board lane assist isn't going to save your ass.

You seem really defensive about a pretty inoffensive remark. Maybe you need to reflect on why you are so angry about something so trivial.

Given how many deaths happen due to car accidents, one would think that any car feature that decreases safety should be considered a bug (UX bugs included).

The sad thing is that Tesla has been repeatedly blaming the driver, instead of improving its technology in an openly earnest manner -- an approach that eventually made air travel the safest.

With so many sensors, car travel can eventually become safer than air travel in the future. If Tesla attitude improves, that future will arrive faster.

Of course they're going to blame the driver. Admitting anything else tends to lead to class action lawsuits. They're a business, not a lifestyle.

Has this feature decreased safety? Tesla's first fatality came after 130 million autopilot miles whereas traditions in the US, we have one fatality every 90 million miles. If that continues to hold, this seems to be significantly safer with it's own set of caveats. Not altogether different than getting stuck in a burning car due to your seatbelt.

That's 90 million miles among all cars.

I'd wager that if you compare it with cars at Tesla price point -- mostly luxury cars -- Tesla would look pretty bad.

Really? Bringing guesses to a fact game. We can do better.

Why do you think the accident rate is lower among luxury cars as compared to more common vehicles? I would suspect the opposite. My hypothesis is that the people who seek out and buy cars that go 0 to 60 in 3.2 seconds probably drive faster and more aggressively than average. They therefore are more likely to have an accident.

Most of them have a lot of safety features, like automatically braking if needed.

Several reasons, but again, it is just guessing that cannot replace actual data. That doesn't mean we should take the only data point available (90 million miles) and declare it settled.

Your point about people seeking to drive faster is a valid one.

The counterpoint is there are people who cannot afford luxury cars but also want to drive faster -- they'll end up buying cheaper cars that can drive fast within their price range. Those are likely to be more fatal than the average luxury car.

1) Hypothesis on car age. An accident on a 2002 non-luxury car model is supposedly more likely to be fatal than an accident with your average new car.

This matters because Teslas with autopilot are relatively new compared to overall car population.

2) Hypothesis that low cost cars are more fatal than an average luxury cars.

3) Demographic hypothesis. Because of price point, the buyer demographic of newer luxury cars will be different than the overall demographic. Age group (e.g. teenagers vs. young adults vs. older adults), education level, profession.

Luxury cars do tend to do pretty well among late model cars in terms of fatality rates--haven't seen rates for accidents overall. But the biggest correlation is probably that bigger cars are safer and smaller cars less so:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/report-lists-cars-with-highest-a...

The fatality rates are probably also notably better on late model cars relative to clunkers because of safety features.

But this is overanalyzing, if we use only the "1 fatality in 130 million miles" stat. That 1 fatality was a car driving under a truck at speed and losing its entire top half.

I don't think more expensive cars are less likely to have that kind of accident, nor would it be less fatal.

I was responding to a specific comment. I agree that fatality statistics are utterly meaningless based on one event.

> My hypothesis is that the people who seek out and buy cars that go 0 to 60 in 3.2 seconds probably drive faster and more aggressively than average

Highly unscientific anecdotal evidence and personal experience living in an area with an unusually high concentration of such cars shows me that most people that own really fast cars do drive fast and enthusiastically from time to time but do so in a responsible manner and typically respectfully go with the flow, whereas a lot of people with more regular cars (mostly MPVs around here) have a habit of driving a good deal too close and a good deal too fast every single day. Many even engage in some truly reckless behaviour as soon as they feel threatened/frustrated, a telltale sign of power/control issues.

Very anecdotal evidence here commuting in Toronto here: - more drivers in $80k+ cars leave 2-3 times the following distance than other drivers with cheaper cars. Not all, but very noticeable sometimes.

I actually worked out the math on this--Tesla is lying with statistics when they made this comment they did about 1 in 130 million miles.

Here's what I did:

  1 in 90 million rate: 1.1 x 10^8
  Probability of No accident in one mile: 1 - 1.1 x 108 = ~9.9999999 x 10^8
  Probability of No accident and driving 130 million miles: (9.99999999 x 10 ^ 8) ^ 130e6 = 0.24
  Probability AT LEAST ONE ACCIDENT in 130 million miles = 1 - 0.24 = 0.76

If you do the same for a rate of 1 in 130 miles you get: 0.63.

So the true rate could really be worse than 1 in 90 million miles and they just got lucky that no incident prevented itself, which would make it more dangerous than a regular car.

In other words, the exact rate is very uncertain when there's only one crash data point. They might be lucky (or unlucky). Well that's obvious, and I wouldn't call it lying at all.

It is misleading though...

Another guy said on divided roads the rate is only about one per 150 million miles [1]

And, that still includes motorcycle accident rates which shouldn't be included in a comparison to Teslas.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4sgxv1/while_te...

Also, are they counting all previous versions of the software instead of just the latest?

Moreover, I wonder how the human drivers in the statistics fare if you correct for drunk driving / using cellphone, etc. In my opinion, any autopilot worth it's name should be an order of magnitude better than the average human driver.

Averages are a bad way to look at the overall risk.

An example:

  Every time the auto pilot encounters a truck turning in front results in a fatality.
  1 in 10 times a drunk driver fails to avoid the truck turning in time.

The average overall for drunk driver could be 1 in 50 million miles and the auto pilot 1 in 90 million, but you are certain to die in a few instances with the auto pilot, but the human could possibly save himself in the same situation. I imagine the Tesla has lots of these bugs that haven't been found yet.

I would trust a drunk driver over Tesla's autopilot at this point. Don't die for Elon Musk's dream--being one of the first auto pilot fatalities isn't that big of an accomplishment.

Also, I'd give "Technopoly" a read.

I agree that the fatality rate does not allow for any comparisons. Autopilot could cause significantly more or fewer fatalities than humans.

On the other hand, one also needs to consider accident rate. From what I understand, based on US averages, we should have had 50+ accidents out of 100+ million miles driven on AP, but we had about three.

This. It's like they want marketing credit for the engineering feat of creating 'autopilot' while maintaining the narrow legal position that the system isn't actually automatic or a pilot.

I'd like to see a survey of how many Tesla drivers think Tesla advocates complete cession of control to Autopilot.

My suspicion is zero.

It doesn't matter what they advocate for, it matters the perception of the technology. Just because Tesla doesn't explicitly say that it's a perfect system and says that the driver has to be aware at all times doesn't mean that actually happens, and with a lenient time frame without hands on the wheel it's not surprising that drivers would essentially give control to the car.

What I'm saying is I don't think it has anything to do with calling it autopilot, and even less to do with it not meeting the technical definition of autopilot.

People are using it in this way because they're able to, and they'll continue to do so until they're not able to. I think we agree here actually. The name isn't the problem really the issue.

I couldn't agree more. Autopilots of any kind have always required supervision. Tesla doesn't call its car self driving and there are many warnings that it isn't. Ultimately, the system would be called Boris and people would still use it irresponsibly.

Based on the times I've seen people staring down at their phones on the 280, it's definitely much higher than 0.

Well sadly the first casualties was a man that made 3 millions view on YouTube with a video called "Autopilot saves Model S" months before his fatal accident... http://youtu.be/9I5rraWJq6E

At that time I don't recall that Tesla made any statement about how dangerous it was to deliberately push the limit of the system to entertains viewers.

This might have contributed to make him overconfident about autopilot.

RIP

> At that time I don't recall that Tesla made any statement about how dangerous it was to deliberately push the limit of the system to entertains viewers.

Yeah who knows. I think Musk retweeted his video. Hindsight is 20/20. Tesla can still move forward and learn from this.

That's going to hurt in the lawsuit, isn't it?

I'm not a lawyer, so, I don't know

Do you have any evidence at all that any accidents have been caused by misinterpreting the functions name? Do you think if it were called something different these accident wouldn't have happened? I see little reason seriously to believe that.

If it's a good enough name for airplanes, it's a good enough names for cars. Both require users to be ready to take control at any moment.

Yes but one has a much higher barrier to entry.

Pilots (require certification and extensive training) are different from car drivers.

Flying a plane is more difficult, therefore requires more training. But driving a car requires licensing (certification) and training.

Meaningful training is not required to get a driver's license in the U.S. In most states it is completely adequate for a parent to teach you to drive, with no minimum number of hours in a classroom, public or private.

Pilots also receive ongoing currency training. This doesn't exist for automobile drivers. Maybe some states require a written test every few years? But in the three states I've lived in, no written, oral, or in-car test it recurrency training required since the original was issued when I was 15 or whenever.

I had to pass a 20 question multiple choice test, drive at 15mph on a short course and parallel park to get my license at 17 years old. That was my only certification process. Unless laws change, I will never have to go through a training or certification process again in my life.

Comparing pilot certification to that of a driver's is disingenuous.

Thankfully, it's not that easy in all countries. For my test, 3 failures in any category was an instant fail. It's fairly hard to pass the first time.

Although if US drivers are so untrained, perhaps auto-pilot is even more relevant.

No doubt, but both groups need to supervise their Autopilots because autopilots of any kind have always been supervised. That's the point the grandparent is making.

The supervision required for the airplanes is not the same. If airplane autopilot flies you straight into the ground and turns off half a second before hitting it, that won't count as an acceptable behavior on it's part.

Going beyond the plane analogy everyone is going with, all major transportation systems that utilize autopilot systems (planes, ships, trains) require training that teaches the pilots (or conductors for trains) to know how to stay alert and when to take over.

Perhaps it is true that the semi-intelligent autopilot is good enough for these trained activities, but the untrained public doesn't realize that autopilot today is not full automation.

You're far less likely to suddenly encounter unexpected conditions when flying though; the sky has a tendency to be nothing but air, while the ground has a tendency to be filled with things you have to avoid, many of which are moving.

I would argue that the time frames involved are very dissimilar. In a Tesla, you need to be able to take complete control in under a second if the system fails. The closest I can think of in a plane is during an assisted landing, which is a relatively brief period where the pilot is fully engaged anyway.

The clouds are rarely full of rocks. The planes have pilot/copilot and cabin crew. The pilots are highly trained professionals. The systems on the planes pass extremely rigorous testing to be certified.

Chances of gaining control and awareness of the situation in a timely manner on an airplane are higher.

Airplane autopilots do not require millisecond reaction times from the pilots during the control hand off, while Tesla 'autopilot' apparently does.

> If it's a good enough name for airplanes, it's a good enough names for cars

* The real autopilot doesn't require hands-on-the-yoke while it is engaged, but 'autopilot' does.

* Airplanes don't have to deal with complex traffic conditions requiring interaction with other airplanes

* Airplanes do not smash into lane barriers/trees if they veer a few feet off the expected course

* "Taking control" on an airplane could safely take tens of seconds, but for a car, that is far too long.

So no, autopilot isn't good enough for cars. Cars need something much better.

Aircraft (with over 9 passengers) are required to have TCAS[0]. TCAS issues a resolution advisory if conflicting traffic is detected, and if the approaching aircraft also maneuvers, TCAS can issue a "Reversal" if needed.

Airport Runways have typically have edge lighting, and if an aircraft is off-center during takeoff or landing, can hit them and do damage[1]. Airliners land at 150mph+ so it doesn't take much deviation to hit the edge lights. Occasionally, this also happens during a gusty cross-wind landing while coupled to autopilot (auto-land), or immediately after a touchdown after a coupled landing.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collision_avoidance_sy...

[1] http://www.emirates247.com/news/emirates/etihad-plane-hits-r...

Autopilot for planes came from a culture where failures weren't denied because of profits. Public safety and being surer than sure that incidents never happened again were and are the utmost concern. Pilots are professionals who went through training and certification.

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