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Comment by dmode | Hacker News Reader

This is just not true. It provides immense value in stop and go traffic and long distances. I have driven 18,000 miles using Tesla Autopilot and it is a life changer if you have a tough commute. One fatal crash doesn't change that.

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While this is a good point, the obvious solution is to limit it to say under 20 mph and require constant hands on the wheel.

If you want to have your hands off the wheel and your nose in your phone, then you are driving recklessly.

That will not be very useful. Stop and go traffic usually moves between 0-40 miles an hour. AP2 initial rollout was limited to 35 miles / hr. I couldn't use it even in the Bay Area as traffic would speed up to 40-45 and slow down to 0 continually. People have their nose in their phone even without autopilot. You can't change that.

You could fix the speed to whatever would allow a person to jump back when warned. But I suspect that speed is pretty low.

The answer is tough shit, you don't get to not pay attention while driving. Get an uber then.

Having adaptive cruise control that manages stop and go will absolutely change the number of people on their phones.

i agree. not useful for you at 20? bad luck. for most folks in traffic 20-30mph is plenty to help "auto" navigate through the traffic jams.

my average current driving speed on car display is something like 25mph. thanks to constant traffic. the car is rated to 160mph top speed. how useful is that.

It is not useful because it is not usable with a 20mph limit. This is from personal experience. Stop and go traffic speed changes continuously. Let's say you are driving at 10mph and traffic then starts moving at 30mph, but your Autopilot will limit you to 20mph. Then you have to disable AP and starting driving. Again when traffic slows down, you will have to re-enable it. At that point it is not very helpful

they have plenty of data from deployed cars to figure out what speed range covers 75% of the vehicles and set a slow moving car speed limit based on that.

We should limit humanpilot to those conditions as well. Or will you special plead that lives lost because of humanpilot mistakes is morally less bad somehow?

A humanpilot that is shown to be unable to spot a truck trailer in front of them would have its driving license revoked.

Just looked it up and cell phone use while driving leads to 1.6 million crashes each year. I'm guessing they don't all have their licenses revoked.

Fair enough, but they should :)

The trade off speed for the increased risk is less time on the road.

The trade off for autopilot is that you don't have to move your foot 2-3inches every 20 seconds. That's not worth the increased risk.

Could you explain more how it's a life changer? What exactly do you do in the car?

As in, are you not watching the traffic outside because of it, and concentrating on other things? If that is the case, are you not worried about something unexpected happening?

I have a 30 mile one way commute, a lot of it is in stop and go. A major stress in stop and go is actually braking and speeding up all the time. With AP you can simply let the car do the slow down and speed up while you focus on the road ahead. Also, when you are on a road trip and in rural highways with very few cars around it is easier to let the car drive as you are not continually focused on maintaining speed and keeping the car within lanes.

"it is a life changer...one fatal crash doesn't change that"

Yeah it doesn't change that fact, it verifies it.

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