Tesla Says Autopilot Makes Its Cars Safer. Crash Victims Say It Kills

nytimes.com

21 points·belter··7 comments

Autopilot lulls drivers into a state of incompetence. This is an involuntary physiological response that humans cannot control. It’s like giving alcohol to the driver, where Tesla is the bartender.

"Consumer Reports said in May that one of its engineers had been able to turn on Autopilot in a Tesla and slip into the back seat while the car kept going. The California Highway Patrol said in May that it had arrested a man who got out of the driver’s seat of his Model 3 while it was moving."

Isn't that generalized to all self-driving features? And won't that preclude self-driving taxis, if Highway Patrol wants to arrest passengers when they don't see a driver? The cop has no idea if something is Autopilot versus Full Self-Driving. I suspect the NYT has no idea, either.

This argument is a red herring. Tesla is a decade or more away from full self driving with nobody in the driver’s seat. Other vehicles doing autonomy today (e.g. Waymo) are clearly marked (and sport easily visible LIDAR, no less).

https://archive.is/He4aN

So, why didn't the Tesla acquire the pickup truck and brake? If they really aren't using a front-facing radar to avoid collisions, maybe they really deserve to lose this one.

The radar tells you how far object like the truck are but not if they are moving lane.

One of the reasons they have moved to vision only recently I think is to get better at this sort of stuff - the camera obviously does see the truck move lane.

Tl;Dr a driver in a pickup truck cut off a Tesla at high speed, got rear ended. Pickup truck passenger wasn't wearing a seatbelt and was ejected during the collision.

Rest of the article is copy pasta of all the usual talking points of musk, Tesla, autopilot, etc.

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