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Comment by MPSimmons | Hacker News Reader

I have said, and will continue to say, that the greatest sin of Tesla is that using autopilot requires good judgement from the drivers, and that is an unreasonable expectation.

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While I don't have any criticism of you opinion, I've noticed that people who say "I'm always saying ..." usually seem to have a simplistic and rigid understanding of what they're talking about. It's a way to mark yourself as probably a bit of a crank and unwilling to have any interesting conversation about the topic.

That's a fair observation. I may be a bit of a crank :-D

>Driving safely requires good judgement and that is an unreasonable expectation.

Autopilot that requires constant attention of the pilot is not really an autopilot, is it?

If you have ever flown an airplane with autopilot you would realize you are completely wrong.

Most people have never flown an airplane, let alone one with autopilot.

To the layman, autopilot and self-driving are synonymous (as epitomised by this scene from The Darwin Awards: https://youtu.be/PNF7Ru1mMeo)

That might be true, but that is not the user's expectation and marketing at Tesla knows this isn't the user's expectation.

You're right, and they should never have named their driving assistance tech autopilot because it gives a false impression of its capabilities.

>An autopilot is a system used to control the trajectory of an aircraft, marine craft or spacecraft without requiring constant manual control by a human operator. Autopilots do not replace human operators. Instead, the autopilot assists the operator's control of the vehicle, allowing the operator to focus on broader aspects of operations (for example, monitoring the trajectory, weather and on-board systems)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopilot

So the Autopilot in a Tesla is designed to allow the driver to check the weather and plan her destination?

Aircraft don't often cluster together meters apart and travel in the same directions. If they did, Autopilot would certainly be used differently. This is why I think it is irresponsible to use the term for automobiles.

>for example,

Yes, a terrible example, for the reasons above.

I mean, have you seen some of the people on the road?

They're literally calling it "Full Self-Driving Capability" though (with the upgraded version).

hardware

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