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Comment by s17n | Hacker News Reader

Question for Tesla owners: if you're actually keeping your hands on the wheel and staying mentally engaged, what's the point of autopilot?

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I test drove Tesla and specifically to test autopilot. I liked it less than Q7 automatic cruise control and line steering. In particular, to my taste Tesla was more/unnecessary aggressive in braking when cars changed lines in front of me.

I use Q7 ACC pretty much all the time nowdays. I do accelerate and sometimes brake manually of course. However I enjoy the fact that I don't need to be 100% focused on driving when it is enabled. It is similar to how I operate autopilot in the plane: monitor it does the right thing but don't bother making constant minor adjustments. I am still mentally in the game, just for a different reason/goal.

Not having to constantly make minor adjustments to throttle position to maintain the correct speed is a big bonus for me, both in traffic and out of it. I find I can focus much more on watching my surroundings, and whats happening 500m down the road, rather than constantly looking at the speedometer. This also makes a big difference to how tired I feel after long trips. The same applies to the Lateral Control part of Autopilot, although I use that less.

(To be fair, many other cars provide adaptive cruise control too, but Tesla's is the best I've tried so far).

I'm interested in trying out one of the current adaptive cruise control systems. I pretty much got out of the habit of using cruise control. Most of the roads I drive on have enough traffic that I find cruise control leads to me prioritizing maintaining a constant speed rather than sensibly staying in the flow of traffic. I.e. shifting lanes rather than slowing down a couple mph.

I've found it akin to being able to ask someone to grab the wheel for a moment, while I do some quick task. I'm still able to feel if the car veers, or suddenly decelerates, so I'm able to take control quickly, but I don't have to worry I'm going to plow into the guy in front of me who suddenly slammed on his brakes, because I took my eye off the road for 5 seconds.

On a lighter note, my dad learned to steer using his knee so he could eat while driving. I can't help but imagine how much easier his life would be with autopilot (probably safer too).

TL;DR: Less mental fatigue, more alert, and more aware of my surroundings. The difference between constantly making micro adjustments and not having to was much greater than I expected.

I wrote up my experience in slightly longer form here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16773903

Thanks for the writeup! Have you compared against a vehicle with a decent adaptive cruise control (but no autopilot)?

Sort of -- in the sense that on some occasions I'll use TACC by itself without Autosteer (most notably because TACC works great in the rain, but Autosteer doesn't). My experience is that TACC alone is still a huge improvement on regular driving. Autosteer is another big improvement on top of TACC. It's a hard thing to quantify but I'd say they are similarly helpful. Obviously the effect is increased when you put them together.

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