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Comment by tjomk | Hacker News Reader

This is exactly the point why I will never understand people in US and the sort of thing with labels and warnings. You don't microwave a cat just because there is no warning label saying you cannot do that. You do not dry your hair submerged in a bath just because there's no warning label. And knowing how imperfect and faulty this system is (which is what the family says the driver told them), I would avoid engaging Autopilot at all costs even if Tesla had no warnings and instead praised this feature as being the safest.

Unless you absolutely have to (in case with a doctor), you do not outsource the life-threatening decisions to someone else. If you're tired and cannot drive, park and have a rest instead of watching movies while driving on Autopilot.

What I'm trying to say is that in the end it's your decision, and you have to live with the consequences.

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Are you not trusting the engineers who manufactured your cars internal computer system, brakes, etc? What about bridges or elevators?

Tesla markets their vehicles are self-driving cars that are safer than humans, this is dishonest.

It is honest in aggregate. It has statistics to prove that. However, it does make mistakes. But so do humans.

Genuinely curious about the statistics: does it count human corrections as if they would have resulted in the crash? Because if not, they are simply not valid.

Fair enough. But realize these things hit stationary objects. Stationary objects include, as Uber proved, you. Or your car, your worksite, etc. Drunk driving isn't illegal for the safety of the drinking driver...

>I will never understand people in US and the sort of thing with labels and warnings

It's because of the legal system and how easy it is to sue for stuff. It's easier to stick a label on than fight a court case. The US leads the world in the number of court cases https://tentmaker.org/Quotes/lawyers-per-capita.html

> You don't microwave a cat just because there is no warning label saying you cannot do that.

And why don’t you that, precisely? If you don’t understand the physics of the thing how are you supossed to know that using it on low power is different that bathing the cat on warm water, for example?

If you are a mentally functioning adult and you don't instinctively know not to put a cat in the microwave, society has failed you. This isn't a case of special knowledge about how microwaves work, it's just basic safety knowledge like the dangers of sharp knives.

The rest of the world seems to get by okay here.

Because it is for cooking

Can you bath a cat in a large pot? Can you bath a cat (or a baby, for that matter) in a kitchen sink?

Lovely, and I applaud your vision of rugged individualism, right up until the moment I remember that you might not just be killing yourself. No offense, but I don’t want to be the victim of the intersection between your principles and a company’s willingness to risk lives for profit. You might not hit a barrier, you might hit a person.

It’s not just your decision when those choices impact everyone who shares your environment. If you want to beta test features on a closed course, be my guest, but on public roads you need to think of people other than yourself.

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