Hacker News Reader

Comment by lolinder | Hacker News Reader

Tesla is just asking for a lawsuit at some point. First "Autopilot" and now "Full Self-Driving"—it's no wonder people keep treating these vehicles as more capable than they are and getting in accidents! You can't tell someone their car has full self driving capabilities and then expect them to listen when you tell them that they also have to be paying attention 100% of the time. The two ideas are antithetical, and people are going to (consciously or unconsciously) believe the one they see pushed the most.

View on HN

Can we please, please stop with the whole "Autopilot is so misleading thing". Tesla's Autopilot is more sophisticated and feature-rich than any other autopilot (i.e. in an airplane) that you've ever experienced.

I can go to sleep on a boats autopilot system. On plane autopilot, I can take my hands off the controls and start filling out landing forms.

you can also do this in a Tesla with the difference that you may make the news /s

Can we get over this trope of "autopilot doesn't mean self driving." Everybody knows what normal people mean by autopilot. And even if they didn't, introducing the new "Full Self-Driving" terminology seems to me to have a pretty unambiguous meaning.

I don't know a single person that thinks planes are entirely flying themselves without pilot intervention?

Not gonna lie you have a very dim view of "normal people". Clearly you do not believe planes are entirely flying themselves, so I'm wondering who these "normal people" are that you are speaking for.

i disagree. you don’t get the name autopilot just because you are doing something sophisticated.

autopilot in a plane is a true autopilot as it truly controls the plane. in fact apart from takeoff and landing most of the flying is done by the autopilot.

is the problem of controlling a plane easier than driving a car? yes. so what?

> autopilot in a plane is a true autopilot

That is only true for modern autopilot systems in commercial airliners and business jets. But the system has been called "autopilot" since the 70s, when it could barely hold pitch and yaw within a tolerable deviation, with no regard to the engine, altitude, yaw or a dozen of other parameters that still had to be maintained manually. Most plane autopilots are somewhere in between these extremes, and require constant supervision by the pilot in command when flying.

i was thinking about the big commercial airplanes.

it’s probably true that airplanes were also ambitious at first, but the difference is that flying (paradoxically) is way way more forgiving than driving. Also, in flying you have a support system that is built to promote safety as everyone understands that mistakes == death when they happen. When was the last time you thought about the fact that you might die when getting into a car?

I think about dying in cars every time I put on my seatbelt.

Autopilot on the old planes didn't require full attention of the pilot. They can take the hands off the controls. Fill out forms, run checklists etc. It is like level 3 self driving. Telsa autopilot requires drivers to keep their hands on the controls. I am not aware of any self pilot system that requires 100% of pilots/drivers/captains focus to be on act of controlling of the vehicle/vessel/plane except Tesla.

Most other car manufactures label similar level 2 systems as lane centering and adaptive cruise control. Cruise calls it super cruise in reference to being a better cruise control system. If it was level 3 capable, autopilot would be a descriptive name.

The issue isn't how sophisticated or feature rich it is, the problem is the expectations it creates for what you can do. As a sibling has pointed out, the other places where autopilot is currently used are places where, once autopilot is turned on, much less attention is needed to avoid a fatal accident.

For this reason, the connotation of "autopilot" is "the vehicle controls itself with no effort needed on the part of the operator", which is simply untrue for Tesla.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_zTZjCCoxo

That's a demo of the new "full self driving", not existing Autopilot. I might be on board with calling that functionality "autopilot", but they already used that term up and had to escalate. With that escalation, the marketing is once again out of sync with reality.

>You can't tell someone their car has full self driving capabilities and then expect them to listen when you tell them that they also have to be paying attention 100% of the time

So its Tesla fault if people doesn't listen?

Not entirely, but they absolutely share a portion of the blame. Their marketing campaign clearly wants people to believe that these vehicles can drive themselves. They're trying to create that belief in people. That makes them accountable when some subset actually do believe what they've been saying.

To create believe is basically the goal of every marketing campaign of any kind. Thats expected and reasonable.

Deceptive advertising is a crime. If you set out to create a belief that is untrue, you're already criminally liable. If the people who believe what you said end up getting killed...

I disagree that its deceptive. Technically yes the car can drive itself albeit not perfect. Tesla never claim it can drive perfectly either.

They claim close to level 5 in public, claim level 2 to regulators. Deceptive or not?

Its not deceptive/contradictory, technically, close to level 5 can be level 2.

Yes, they have some of the blame. For exactly the same reason that a car company can't remove the airbags and just tell their customers "don't crash!"

Car company can't do that because there are law to prevent that.

What law tesla broke in this case?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com