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Comment by IgorPartola | Hacker News Reader

Look from a consumer standpoint why would I want a system like this? I mean aside from the toy factor, why would I trust it? I can’t take a nap while it’s driving. I can’t look at a screen or read a book. I have to in fact be more on alert than when I am driving because when I am driving I know what my inputs into the car are and I just need to worry about the external inputs (shape of the road, traffic, signs, road conditions). With this system I also need to guess what the car’s brain will do which is a lot harder. This would be like always driving with a nervous teenager who is actually operating the car but expects you to take over at any moment because they might mess up. And for the price difference would at some point it be cheaper to just hire a driver?

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I would love something like this for the longer, boring, predictable drives.

For example the I5 drive from LA to SF. That's a pretty straightforward, predictable and mostly uneventful 6h drive that seems straightforward to delegate to a machine. There are no pedestrians, no intersections, nothing crossing the street. The main dangers would be around objects on the road, other vehicles getting in a crash or doing something unpredictable next to you, animals running onto the path of the vehicle. As a human you might actually be worse equipped to react to in time compared to a car.

That one use-case alone where the car drives itself on the I5 while I read a book or watch a movie would be worth something. The human can handle the quirks of the more treacherous local roads. I'd still prefer a bullet train of some kind, but in its absence, this would be a decent climate-friendly alternative that doesn't require a giant plane getting up in the sky for a 50 min flight.

I've done enough really boring driving to find that about once in every N hours (depending on the road) a very NOT boring event will occur, requiring immediate and correct response. I don't think any road exists without that happening.

Yes this is making the assumption that, when the unexpected occurs, an experienced human driver still outperforms whatever self driving code may be running.

Not even Tesla is saying their system could or should be used that way. You're making quite a few assumptions about the capabilities of the system and going outside of the instructed and permitted use of the system if you are going to go read for 6 hours while the car drives itself.

Unexpected situations can and will happen. They are not at all as simple as "well the car will just detect it and break faster than me" by a long shot. What if there is debris on the road and the car misreads it? What if there are actually pedestrians because somebody got into an accident and decided it would be a bright idea to take a little walk?

I could go on, and I'm sure you or somebody else could answer every hypothetical I could come up with. That's not the point. The point is that even a "boring, predictable drive" is anything but. We put in a ton of processing power that makes that drive (usually) seem boring and predictable. A level 2 system is not designed to be let loose even in these circumstances.

You'd be required to pay attention continuously and be able to do immediate takeovers at all times for that LA-SF drive at L2. You simply wouldn't have to actually drive. L3 is where your attention is "allowed" to wander. Quoting NHTSA guidance:

> Therefore, the L2 driver is expected to be alert and monitoring the road continuously. The L3 driver is not expected to be paying attention to the road at all times, but is expected to be takeover-ready with advance notice.

The included autopilot seems good enough for this usecase, many report it makes long drives less tiring.

Level 2 FSD honestly seems worse from a human UX standpoint that it seems like an anti feature to me. I'm a fan of tesla and I've come around on autopilot being a nice feature but I think this FSD focus is silly and overhyped at least in regards to providing any value to customers anytime soon.

That would be a level 3 system (ie one where the driver can disengage but be ready to react immediately when the car tells them to). This is a level 2 system; ie you must be alert at all times in case the car tries to kill you. You can’t watch a movie in a car like this.

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