That's how dumb this argument is.
If a driver ignores the requirements of their driver license AND the vehicle's clearly worded warnings, then the driver is entirely responsible. Claiming that the driver is not at fault because they interpreted the word "autopilot" to mean "I can disregard my responsibility as a driver and ignore the vehicle's very clear warnings" is deeply absurd.
Tesla's own Autopilot page video has this disclaimer in bold at the very start of the video: "THE PERSON IN THE DRIVER'S SEAT IS ONLY THERE FOR LEGAL REASONS. HE IS NOT DOING ANYTHING. THE CAR IS DRIVING ITSELF". Then there are multiple videos of Elon Musk driving hands-free on Autopilot for extended periods of time, like this one:
https://youtu.be/MO0vdNNzwxk?t=123
So Tesla can bury whatever carefully worded legalese they want in their terms and conditions, but they know that these videos will get shared and watched millions of times, and that they strongly convey the message that "Tesla's drive themselves on Autopilot". These videos set the expectation of how Autopilot should function, and I don't blame Autopilot users for not understanding this.
> All new Tesla cars come standard with advanced hardware capable of providing Autopilot features today, and full self-driving capabilities in the future
What's more, when you activate AP in a Tesla, a message appears to keep your hands on the wheel and be ready to take over at any time.
The park-parkway analogy is about as good as cruise control vs. cruise ship. It’s a coincidence of words that nobody will ever confuse.
So, no problem changing the name then - because in your opinion the name isn't effecting the purchaser or driver expectations.
They could name it Jeff.
Boy are you going to be in for a shock when the investigations start. "Autopilot", with the way Elon has promoted it, shouldn't slam into stationary objects.
Has Tesla ever said that Autopilot will stop for stationary objects?
Has Tesla ever said that Autopilot is intended to allow the driver to take his focus off the road?
I do think that Tesla can do more to emphasise that Autopilot isn't a synonym for full self driving, but that isn't an excuse for people who are supposed to be acting in accordance with their driver license.
We have a serious problem if "autopilot" cannot avoid an object in plain sight. Everyone interprets "autopilot" to be self-driving capabilities. Some people understand that the performance of this system is tied to the conditions of the road. If you cant handle the most perfect road conditions then you shouldnt call it autopilot. It is gross negligence. Tesla can add whatever warnings they want -- they will not win that case in the long run. Either they will lose in the court of law or in the court of public opinion.
I wonder how Tesla feels about lidar now.
No car on sale today has lidar, and yet plenty of them perform speed-adaptive cruise control with varying degrees of steering assistance, from none to hands-off-wheel. They use radar. Tesla cars also use radar. The question is whether the various software algorithms that interpret sensor information are being too quick to dismiss the apparent presence of stationary objects on the road.
My understanding is that most—if not all—adaptive cruise control and autonomous emergency braking systems are unreliable when it comes to reacting to stationary objects at highway speed.
What the hell is the point of it then?
You keep your attention on the road. AutoPilot “takes the strain” off micromanaging the vehicle in the lane while you do the executive planning.
It’s a supremely comfortable way to drive. But you are still responsible for driving the damn car.
You can, for example, adjust the radio, or take a sip of coffee.
If a warning makes a feature less than advertised, or is impractical in general, the company has still come short of their duty. The problem with Autopilot is that basic human nature will make you less attentive if it's taking that level of control. You can't warn that away.
The warning message says "Be prepared to take over at any time." That is clearly the exact opposite of "You may now focus your attention to that laptop on the passenger seat."
Yes it is a concern that Autopilot is failing in some circumstances. But whatever Tesla says or does, the road rules say that the human driver is always responsible in cases like this.
Seems that would be easier to me.
However I don't see why having a camera pointed at my face necessarily means that Tesla have to willingly provide information to insurance companies. As long as it is only available to law enforcement after being granted a court order, I'm fine with that.
(Note: I do not live in the USA. I trust the law enforcement in my country. My answer would be very different if I were in the US resident. I've heard enough about law enforcement in the US to know that I'd never live there, and if I did, I wouldn't ever trust the police.)
>In 1947 a US Air Force C-54 made a transatlantic flight, including takeoff and landing, completely under the control of an autopilot.
Airplane autopilots are already at the fully autonomous stage. They have the advantage of air traffic control removing obstacles from their path, but IMO this just means ATC is part of the autopilot system. An autopilot is something that gets you from point A to point B with no input from the pilot/driver, and if it's not capable of doing that reliably then it's not an autopilot.
Also, this is completely ignoring that a) autopilot doesn’t work at all without lots of infrastructure on the ground (try landing on autopilot when the airport ILS is down or absent, for example), and b) there’s a non-trivial set of flight conditions in which autopilot cannot be used at all.
People really should stop comparing plane autopilot to autonomous cars, the technologicalies share almost no similarities whatsoever. Plane autopilot doesn’t do any object recognition, AI, machine learning, adapting to the environment, etc. At the very best it will tell you when there’s another plane flying too close (based on an explicit location sent from the other plane or the ground), or when you almost run into the ground. That’s it. Everything else the autopilot does is just setting the flight controls to follow a preset path, and ensure the plane stays within the flight envelope.
I think this is what people expect from AP now, because that’s how it’s marketed: to do the heavy lifting 90+% of the time and when it fails and disengages It should give plenty of time to react.
Going forward AP will start to mean more and more “fully self driving”. Because that’s what some manufacturers claim it can do short of pesky legislation. So no supervision, no disengagement, just “piloting automatically”. And everyone pretty much has similar expectations from “automatically”.
Agreed, but it's Tesla doing that for marketing purposes that's the cause of these comparisons, not the people objecting to Tesla doing that for marketing purposes. Aircraft autopilot systems are relatively simple systems with a lot of instrument support and redundancy that relieve pilots of the need to hold a yoke in normal flight (with the latter bit being what the public tends to focus on). Tesla offers extremely complex software which makes more decisions based on less straightforward inputs and relies entirely on the driver holding the controls at all times in case it makes a bad decision.
That is not even remotely true. Pilots must babysit the autopilot and do. When flying on autopilot you still constantly check instruments to make sure that the plane is going where it should, how it should, as fast as it should. They sometimes have faults, and they have caused crashes. Pilot training is VERY clear that AP can never be relied on.
Eg: If you tell your AP to climb at 2000 ft/min, many will happily stall you trying to maintain that climb well above where your engine(s) provide(s) enough power to do so; if you tell your AP to descend to 3000 ft over sea level, most will happily fly you into a mountain that is in your way and rises to 4000 feet above sea level (in a better-equipped plane, TAWS will beep at you to tell you about this, but most APs will press on); if you tell your AP to maintain altitude, many will happily overspeed the aircraft in a large updraft, nosing down to avoid the climb.
And yet autopilot on cars is expected to intervene in those cases and far more. (Of course, cars are often in those situations far more often, which is partly why the expectations are different)
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collision_avoidance_sy...
You can get autopilots for boats as well and they can even do collision avoidance using radar, but its non obstructed 2D space with no real lanes in open water and lanes measured in 100's of feet in or more in channels.
Cars share such close proximity with obstructed curved paths that makes a safe "autopilot" orders of magnitude more complex which should be obvious. There is just no comparison due to the space constraints cars must navigate actively.
Perhaps a PR battle is better than no PR at all.