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Comment by makomk | Hacker News Reader

Elsewhere from the comments: "Yes the lane width detection and centering was introduced in 10.4. Our X does this now as well and while it's a welcome intoroduction in most cases every one in a while in this instance or when HOV lanes split it is unwelcome." So basically, if I'm understanding this right they introduced a new feature that positions your car a little more consistently in the lane at the small cost of sometimes steering you at full speed head-on into a barrier.

Remember Tesla's first press release on the crash and how it mentioned "Tesla owners have driven this same stretch of highway with Autopilot engaged roughly 85,000 times"? I imagine the number that have driven it successfully in that lane since that update was rolled out sometime in mid-March is rather smaller...

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And that's exactly what makes Tesla PR so disingenuous, they know better than anybody what updates they did and how often their updated software passed that point and yet they will happily cite numbers they know to be wrong.

So, now regarding that previous crash: did that driver (or should I say occupant) get lulled into a false sense of security because he'd been through there many times in the past and it worked until that update happened and then it suddenly didn't?

I'm a huge fan of Tesla and I thought that bit of PR was horrifyingly bad. It came across as completely dismissive of any further investigation or accepting of even the possibility of responsibility.

Now that these other videos are showing up, and further details (the update) are emerging, that PR should bite them in the ass hard enough that they decide never to handle an incident that way again.

I don't want this to kill Tesla -- I sincerely hope they make their production goals and become a major automobile manufacturer -- but their handling of this should hurt them.

I'm also curious if any of the people at Tesla saying, "we call it autopilot even though we expect the human driver to be 100% attentive at all times" have studied any of the history of dead man's vigilance devices.

I've got to take issue with you there. Tesla Engineering knows better than anybody what updates they did and how often they update etc.

Tesla PR knows nothing about what updates the engineering team did. At least some people in Tesla PR probably don't even know the cars update their software regularly.

It's bad practice for them to speak out of turn, but I can absolutely see the PR team not having a good grasp of what really indicates safety and their job is to just put out the best numbers possible.

I'm sorry but Tesla PR == Tesla. If they don't have a good grasp on this they should STFU until they do. That would make Tesla even worse in my book.

Their job is not to put out the best numbers possible, their job is to inform. Most likely they were more worried about the effect of their statement on their stock price than they were worried about public safety.

If they do put out numbers (such as 85K trips past that point) then it is clear that they have access to engineering data with a very high resolution, it would be very bad if they only used that access to search for numbers that bolster their image.

Well I kind of came to hope that Tesla PR was less BS than other PR companies. But that memo basically shows they're no different from all other PR, just twisting the truth to avoid negative stories until the fuss dies down.

The entire point of a PR department is to gather that information before releasing it. Yes, they wrangle it to put the company in the best light, but that doesn't mean they should be operating in ignorance. They have access to Tesla employees that outside reporters do not (or at least, should not) have.

> The entire point of a PR department is to gather that information before releasing it.

No the entire point of a PR department is to propagandize the public on behalf of the corporation.

It seems like the collective pack of Teslas would feed telemetry back to the mothership as unit tests for any new versions. In other words, any change has to redrive (simulate) a big sample of what has already been driven, especially where the human had to correct.

Life and death patch notes. I think I'm going to wait a while before using this feature.

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