Comment by Cshelton | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Cshelton | Hacker News Reader

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Same. I love reading opinions about how dangerous or bad the Tesla "autopilot" is, or that it dosen't work, from people who have never owned or driven in a Tesla with autopilot.

I've probably gone about 8,000 miles on autopilot in mine (AP1) and it is truly amazing. After a road trip stint of ~200 miles, I feel much more energized and less fatigued in the Tesla with autopilot 99% of the way than I do in previous non-autopilot cars. It really is a game changer. You may think regular driving doesn't require much brain activity, or that the Tesla cruise control and auto steering don't do much, but you really don't realize how much your brain is working to handle those things until you can take a step back and let the care do most of the work. Then you can focus on other things while on the road that you didn't realize before. The behavior of other drivers for example. I can watch a car near me with greater focus and see what that person is doing.

Regardless, if you have not driven one, I highly encourage it. You really need to take it out on the highway and drive it for 30 miles+ to really understand how amazing it is. I've driven other cars with "autopilot", and just like car reviews say, they are nowhere close. (Mercedes, Cadillac, Volvo, others with just auto cruise control). It's just one more reason why current Tesla owners are so fanatic about their car, there is nothing else like it and most likely won't be until ~2020 (maybe).

>Same. I love reading opinions about how dangerous or bad the Tesla "autopilot" is, or that it dosen't work, from people who have never owned or driven in a Tesla with autopilot.

Would you say the same after if you happen to get involved in a serious autopilot accident though? That's the question.

It's very easy to be all roses before one sees any issues.

could say the same about people "feeling safer" when driving themselves. which is what all the opposing side clings to. (sure isn't statistics)

>could say the same about people "feeling safer" when driving themselves. which is what all the opposing side clings to

Only people have been driving themselves for a century, and have a pretty good idea of how safe it is, including how safe it is for them and their skills / city / etc, as opposed to some "one size fits all" average.

>(sure isn't statistics)

Well, it can't be statistics because all we've got is the BS "statistics" from the self-driving car companies. Only a sucker for new technology would accept those, as there are tons of differences between regular driving. They take the cars out at optimal conditions (not rain, snow etc), they drive specific routes (not all over the US), they often have supplementary humans on board to check (do they count the times when humans had to take control and saved the day as "self-driving accidents" or not?), and tons of other things besides.

So from what I've seen, there have been a few occasions where an owner has used the autopilot as a scapegoat for their own faults, only to later admit they were at fault or wait for Tesla and third party investigators to conclude that autopilot was not even engaged, etc.

For instance, the one single fatality of autopilot to date in a Tesla, where the guy was coming up to a crest of a hill with a white 18 wheeler crossing perpendicular to the highway. Yes, the autopilot misread the 18-wheeler to be a sign above the road. (This issue is not fixed). However at the same time, the guy completely disregarded Tesla's instructions of keeping your eyes on the road at all times. Turns out, he was watching a show on his phone.

But yes, I would still say the same thing if I was using autopilot properly as intended. i.e., not watching movies while in the drivers seat of a moving car (which is against the law regardless.) I don't think there are any serious accidents to date where the driver was using it properly and following the rules. As Tesla states, autopilot is in beta (and most likely always will be), that's not to say it is unsafe, but that the driver must be aware and follow the rules and know what autopilot is and is not capable of.

I'd say it took me about two weeks of first using autopilot to understand its capabilities.

Also the best part, it keeps improving in my vehicle through updates. It's pretty impressive how good the updates from Tesla are.

Just curious - have you driven one in situations that became emergencies in which autopilot disengaged? What was that experience like and how does it compare to emergencies you have experienced without autopilot available?

Not sure exactly what you are asking, as in, an emergency happened while driving with autopilot and then it disengaged randomly? Or I was driving and had an emergency and I had to engage autopilot?

I've never seen autopilot disengage by itself. It will after 3 warnings to the drive where they don't touch the wheel, I've never done that though.

There was one time, not quite an emergency, but basically my contact fell out of my eye, into my lap somewhere, and because I had autopilot on, it allowed me to safely use a few extra seconds needed to look down to find it. Whereas without autopilot, the number of seconds it took to find it normally would be considered very dangerous to look away from the road that long.

I meant a situation where an emergency happened outside your car and autopilot required you to take control (not without warning). Did you feel like you were more or less capable of dealing with an emergency on the road when you had been using autopilot, than you would have had autopilot not been previously engaged?

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