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Comment by FireBeyond | Hacker News Reader

> With autopilot engaged, I am monitoring everything - probably with more accuracy then if I was driving, due to the decreased cognitive load.

Almost every study on human behavior contradicts this. When you have no load, your monitoring and responsiveness gets poorer, not better. (Now, you can certainly go to the other extreme and get overloaded, with the same effect).

You may have a _perception_ that you're doing better, because you feel like you're glancing around a lot, and consider that equivalent to "monitoring", but most likely you're admiring / distracted by scenery, and you wouldn't have those immediate reaction times that (remember) you're meant to have, even with Autopilot engaged.

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>> With autopilot engaged, I am monitoring everything - probably with more accuracy then if I was driving, due to the decreased cognitive load.

> Almost every study on human behavior contradicts this. When you have no load, your monitoring and responsiveness gets poorer, not better. (Now, you can certainly go to the other extreme and get overloaded, with the same effect)

With both a plane and a car you still have some load; you are supposed to be monitoring the performance of the systems.

I perceive myself to be safer when I have autopilot enabled on a Cirrus. My thinking goes from having to manipulate the controls to monitoring the performance of the aircraft.

I could be derelict in my duties at ignore the plane and play a game on my iPhone.

I perceive that experience to be very similar to when I engage Autopilot on my Tesla.

I go from having to manipulate the control to monitoring the performance of the car. With over 110k miles on my Tesla I really do feel with autopilot.

Um... there's a whole lot different with airplane autopilot vs being on the road.

Autopilot is normally engaged when there's "nothing". Clear skies rarely have "sudden" obstacles. It's a no-no during severe weather or flying through mountains. I had a fascination with watching airline disaster investigations when I was making regular flights for a year. Around 70-80% of accidents were caused by relying on autopilot during sub-perfect conditions.

Using airplane autopilot as a case to use Tesla autopilot is a terrible, terrible analogy. Let's throw in an extra terrible.

Autopilot (plane) in cruise is much different than using it in the terminal environment.

My perception in sense of safety and workload reduction is about the same for aviation vs automative.

I’m a instrument rated pilot that mostly flys for fun on the weekend.

The big danger is folks disconnect from their duty to actively monitor the systems.

I would never play an iPhone game with either system.

> Autopilot (plane) in cruise is much different than using it in the terminal environment.

A car in "autopilot" is more akin to the terminal environment, though. Things happen faster. Pedestrians run out in front of the car, oncoming traffic swerves to miss a pothole, and a second later you're smashing into them.

These are the sort of hazards that autopilot seems to handle well, the problems have been more about ambiguous lane markings and missing large stationary objects.

As someone with an adaptive cruise control that has no problem seeing stationary objects, that last bit is just plain inexcusable.

> I perceive myself to be safer when I have autopilot enabled on a Cirrus.

What you perceive may not be born out by the stats. It is very important to realize that humans are simply poor at self evaluation. Half the drivers think they are better than average, plenty of people think they do not suffer any adverse effects of consuming a glass of alcohol with respect to their situational awareness and reaction speed and so on.

I have no experience driving a Tesla on autopilot, but as a flight instructor I totally relate to your comment about monitoring.

Same goes for when I’m in the passenger seat of a car - I still monitor. I still look left/right when turning.

I don’t know if there is any additional education involved when buying a car with autopilot, but maybe that would be a good thing to learn about the risks and limitations using the equipment.

> Almost every study on human behavior contradicts this.

I don't doubt you, but do you know of any particular studies regarding this? I am kind of curious about how these studies are designed.

They typical experimental setup is a pilot or train operator that is given the task to monitor a warning sign and to signal periodically that they are still alert. This is then used to throw up possibly critical situations and then to evaluate their responses versus those situations where they are supposed to be in control all the time.

Sorry, I meant does anyone have a link to a study?

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