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Comment by mlazos | Hacker News Reader

The more I read Elon’s responses to these things, the less I feel like he actually cares. Elon’s response for me translates to “It’s not a misunderstanding of the name, it’s a misunderstanding if the name by experienced users” In the end the name Autopilot is a really cool name, but it is by actual definition misleading af. Given I don’t think Tesla’s cars are inherently more dangerous, it just seems like people think Autopilot is more than it is, experienced or not. They absolutely should implement features to make sure the driver is at least in the seat!!

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This is the exact reason why Google/Waymo moved on from a similar system a decade ago to directly making level 4 autonomy work. It provides users a false sense of security. Same with FSD feature set as well. Tesla and Musk’s constant misleading statements and marketing doesn’t help either.

At the very least, these kind of systems must have fairly strict driver monitoring. Musk says it’s not effective because they don’t try hard enough. The wheel nag and seat weight check currently implemented are too easy to defeat. There are literally products you can buy online to overcome that. I don’t know what’s stopping them from implementing an eye tracking system using cameras the way GM Super Cruise does. It’s a much more effective solution IMO.

its pretty wild that you start out trying to automate driving but are on a route that requires you to automate warning a human who is giving too much trust to your automation.

I find the implication highly questionable that naming this feature something else would have prevented this boneheaded incident. Stupid people do equally reckless things in their normal cars every day. As Musk says, experienced Tesla drivers know the limitations of the system and just get complacent. Or for all we know these people were just suicidal.

There's been aggressive self-driving promotion for Tesla cars from the company and the naming of the 'autopilot' feature is just a small part of this. I don't know if this specific accident happened in a way that related to this, but I think it's likely that the general way that Musk and Tesla talk about their cars has led to accidents where people trust autopilot more than they should, or are trying to show off how great their car is because they think it can do more than it can.

Honest question: What is your opinion on the Coca Cola Vitamin Water case [0]? I feel this is pretty much the same thing.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/coca-cola-vitaminwater-settl...

I like to imagine the word pilot in autopilot is the adjective form:

serving as an experimental or trial undertaking prior to full-scale operation or use

Largely frivolous.

If you turn on the autopilot in an airplane no one sane believes you can hop in the back seat and take a nap, and they don’t have eye tracking or control sensors. It’s not reasonable to blame Elon for someone who jumped into the back seat of a moving car.

So what you are saying is that Tesla should require certification with practice sessions with an instructor and a written test for all users of Autopilot? Or do you mean that Tesla should assign a controller to each car to keep it 1km away from other cars?

Those features exist. The article mentions that it is not specified whether or not the driver assist features were even in use in this instance.

> One of the men killed was in the front passenger seat of the car, the other was in the back seat, according to KHOU. Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman told KPRC that “no one was driving” the fully-electric 2019 Tesla at the time of the crash. It’s not yet clear whether the car had its Autopilot driver assist system activated.

How would the car still be moving forward if driver assist was not in use?

Brakes deactivated and rolling downhill?

IDK if this is even possible in Teslas or if there is a safety mechanism that prevents it.

Friend of mine thought they activated the driver assist and let go of the steering wheel, only to go straight and off the road in the next curve of the road.. Had only activated cruise control or so.

If no one was ever in the driver's seat, how did the car begin moving at all?

Is there more than anecdotal evidence confirming that more people than average are getting killed by this? HN is usually so critical of anecdotes and single sample points, unless it comes to Tesla.

There is not even anecdotal evidence. I am 100% sure that the rate of deaths per 1000 autopilot-driven miles is at least an order of magnitude lower than the rate of deaths per 1000 human-driven miles. Tesla has that info and occasionally publishes it... people just like to get freaked out when there is an accident. Sure, someone died doing something dumb with autopilot... but what, 50 people died doing something dumb in a normal car in the time it took them to put out the fire? Why are we even having this conversation? it's ridiculous.

I think his main argument is that if it's measurably safer than a person, that's good enough.

Dunno where the sweet spot is. My fear is that anything that isn't 100.00000% safe won't be allowed autonomy, it's easier to make a thing not happen than to make it happen.

I expect that at this point it's all about data acquisition. Keep pushing out new releases as you learn something, hopefully the system needs less and less driver input. Crashes are probably pretty interesting to the engineers.

Can you point to data that shows these systems are currently safer than people?

As far as I am aware, neither Uber, nor Google/Waymo, nor Tesla has released data showing these systems are safer than people.

I suppose that if I had said that, I might feel obligated to find a study for you.

It feels to me like Job’s response to the iPhone 4’s antenna issues. “You’re holding it wrong” just comes off as “stop besmirching my product...”

Blaming the user for a failure of a product is tacky.

Not really. Even the iPhone 4 wasn’t fatal if held wrong. At worst you might drop a call.

> The more I read Elon’s responses to these things, the less I feel like he actually cares.

He doesn't. Why would he, would you?

While certainly not required, caring about whether one’s company’s products are killing people is generally seen as a favorable quality in a CEO.

Some people do have that ability, yes.

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. We're trying for something else here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Of course he doesn't. Autopilot is already saving lives. It sucks when people die, but THEY DID IT TO THEMSELVES. How many others died in car crashes while OP was typing that question? 20? 50? 100? Where are the tears for them??

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