Hacker News Reader

Comment by econochoice | Hacker News Reader

> If they're not explaining this to customers, it's negligent.

Offering a footgun to consumers which puts other people in danger is a questionable choice.

How is this a footgun significantly more than the plethora of other vehicles with the same functionality?

The problem is calling it "Autopilot" in the first place compared to other brands. If you call it "Autopilot", people expect it to be an autopilot.

This is kind of a kicking-a-dead-horse discussion, because as others have pointed out, "autopilot will fly you into a mountain" (complete with warnings).

But does the average driver know that? It is their perception that's important here. The Utah driver expected the car would not fly her into the mountain, so to speak. Naming, marketing context of self driving alongside this feature, and driver instruction are all likely part of the puzzle.

If you think the name has nothing to do with it, would you also say that if it had the name "Deluxe Cruise Control" people would treat it the same? I'm not so sure about that. Engineers maybe.

I agree that the name issue is a red herring, but not for this reason. Autopilots are operated by people who are trained in their use, and, for the most part [1], understand their limitations. 'Understanding their limitations' is exactly the issue here.

[1] Following a number of WTF-type accidents, there is some concern that airplane automation has become too complex for pilots to reason about when it partially fails, but if that is actually the case, it raises the bar for all partial automation, including for cars.

Pilots are professionals who are trained and paid to use autopilot.

It's a dangerously misleading name in aeroplanes too.

You are confusing autopilot with unmanned vehicle.

That's what autopilot means to me, both look synonymous and their marketing also plays on that confusion. They could just call it "assisted driving" to be more honest.

autopilot has a technical meaning which this is totally compatible with, however it has a common meaning that diverges.

The common meaning has been derived from the technical and is affected by some common misunderstandings, such as:

autopilot flies planes all over the place and hardly ever runs into anything becomes autopilot is very safe and not autopilot doesn't run into anything because in the sky there is not very much to run into.

I guess Tesla should have named it something else, but this kind of mistake is quite easy to make and I would say is the norm if anything.

I heard about significant number of plane crashes with autopilot involved, however I'm 42 year old. Maybe meaning of the word was changed with new generation. How old are you?

There is nothing in the post you are replying to that suggests this is any more of a footgun than genuinely similar cases. Any potentially lethal and undisclosed or insufficiently emphasized corner case is a footgun, and not responding to stationary objects is not even a corner case for collision avoidance: it's front-and-center.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com