Comment by John_KZ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by John_KZ | Hacker News Reader

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If you engage the autopilot in a (certified) plane at cruise level and glimpse over a topographical map of the area, you can practically fall asleep, wake up and you'll still be completely safe (until you run out of fuel). This argument/parallelism with aviation is null.

Airplane autopilot: Engage, divert attention for minutes, not die (consistently). Tesla autopilot: Engage, divert attention for 10 seconds, die (also consistently).

Airplane autopilot!=Tesla autopilot. Name is misused.

Also take a moment to appreciate what you say "It's ok to use this name on cars, because professional pilots know you can't completely rely on plane autopilots. People should know that and if they die it's their fault."

The video you provided shows a very unusual case. Most autopilots on small aircraft are not really running software so such "bugs" are virtually non-existent, and in large aircraft they only use tested-to-death systems and they practically never bug out.

Do most people think that autopilot is used to avoid other planes and obstacles like mountains? I always assumed autopilot was basically like cruise control for planes and just kept it level, at a fixed direction, and constant speed. Same thing as autopilot on a sailboat.

Old autopilots did exactly that, in addition to keeping a predefined climb/sink rate (long ascents/descents are really boring to do manually in small aircraft).

New autopilots in commercial airliners can do many things (follow GPS tracks or radio navigation waypoints, control engine throttle, line up and bring the airplane 50-100ft over the runway etc) but they never do collision avoidance, landings or terrain mapping. Airliners also have alarms for low altitude (most have radar altimeters) but they prompt the pilot for action, they're not supposed to avoid anything on their own. Apparently Tesla doesn't even do that.

Modern airliners can and sometimes do do automatic landings [1] [2] [3] [4]. It's done when visibility is very poor. If it is not required, most pilots prefer manual landing. It's less work. The autoland system is more complicated to set up, and is more work to monitor in order to take over if something goes wrong. But when the visibility is low enough, many airlines require their pilots to use it.

[1] https://www.quora.com/Why-cant-airplane-landings-be-conducte...

[2] https://www.quora.com/How-often-are-airliners-landed-using-a...

[3] https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/columnist/cox/2014/02/...

[4] https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/technical/65056-autoland-...

Autopilot refers to a wide range of capabilities on boats and airplanes. Many of those require an active, attentive opertator for safety.

The car is warning you if you take your hands off the steering wheel. I don't see how anyone but a moron would value their misconceptions about the term "autopilot" over the clear signals that your hands are required to be on the steering wheel.

I wish people would stop bringing this idiotic point about the term "autopilot" and instead talk about how the different designs of autopilot can encourage or discourage attentiveness in operators.

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