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Comment by abcampbell | Hacker News Reader

"Consider this: If a Toyota driver had standard cruise control set for 70 miles per hour on the highway and failed to take over and reduce speed for a 25 mph turn, would we blame the cruise control for the resulting crash? Relinquishing full control to Autopilot is no different."

That's why Toyota calls is cruise control and not autopilot

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>An autopilot is a system used to control the trajectory of a vehicle without constant 'hands-on' control by a human operator being required. Autopilots do not replace a human operator, but assist them in controlling the vehicle, allowing them to focus on broader aspects of operation, such as monitoring the trajectory, weather and systems

Autopilot doesn't mean fully autonomous. It was never that originally in aviation either, basicLly just controlling altitude and speed. I'd say Tesla's use of "autopilot" is pretty spot on.

The difference is that "keep height, speed and direction" is a pretty safe way to operate an airplane at altitude: there are no sudden obstacles, and there is a lot of infrastructure to make sure traffic stays nicely separated. A human reaction time of a few seconds is fine.

It's not for a ground vehicle in normal environments.

Agreed, though Tesla's autopilot feature explicitly makes it clear it's not self driving. It's still an assistance, albeit a very good one, somewhat true to the definition that an autopilot system "doesn't replace the human operator".

I do think Tesla have their work cut out in distinguishing what autopilot actually is vs the general Persephone that autopilot means "it controls itself, autonomously".

I agree there's a lot of (potentially dangerous) ambiguity in what the name "autopilot" means and implies.

Personally, I'm not a fan of the name "autopilot" for 2 reasons.

Firstly, the name is sexy and filled with hype. Even for a fully autonomous "driver go to sleep" level 4 driving system, "autopilot" would be a great sounding name (much better than "full autonomy" or anything more explicit in my opinion).

Secondly, the name deviates from industry semi-standard naming such as "cruise control" or "lane assist". I don't believe Tesla's automated features are more advanced than the rest of the industry[0], but the name sounds more advanced. Maybe this is good marketing, maybe this is dangerous and deceitful, maybe both.

[0] I'm not an expert on the state of self-driving systems. If anyone here who is reads this and has some evidence that Tesla's autopilot features are more advanced that what's offered by Audi (for example), I'd love to hear why / see some sources.

If I'm not wrong, autopilot can follow set route also and if the airport supports it, it can land autonomously too. Tesla's use of the term is highly misleading.

No, but granted we're getting into semantics. Feature 1 you describe is provided by the Flight Management System[0], and feature 2 is provided through Autoland[1]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_management_system [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoland

Get a focus group of 100 average Joe consumers.

Ask them whet they think and autopilot feature is.

The vast majority of them will say. "Err... a car that drives itself"

Of course I'm speculating. But if someone did run such a focus group and the majority didn't give a definition which boiled down to "a car that drives itself" then i'll eat my hat.

The pedantic "true meaning" of a term doesn't matter. Particularly when naming a feature that not only has the capacity to kill, but has now actually done so.

But cruise control only means cruise control because someone decided to call that feature cruise control. I find it harder to blame Tesla for an ambitious phrase rather than drivers that are considering nothing beyond the name of the feature before turning it on.

I'd say the bar for writing it off as simply an ambitious phrase is a bit different when you know that particular form of "user error" is literally lethal.

So far one person has faced lethal consequences. As the article states, that person was fully aware of how autopilot worked. Do you honestly think that if that feature was called something else that person would still be alive?

> So far one person has faced lethal consequences.

This is the tip of the iceberg.

How many other Tesla owners aren't fully aware of how the feature works and are just relying on the vernacular usage? Even if 100% of Tesla owners are 100% aware of the feature's capability, what happens when a friend/coworker/spouse/child of the owner borrows the car and uses the feature based on their misunderstanding of the technology?

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