We cannot expect humans to be able to pay attention and be able to take over at a moment's notice at all times, simply because that's not how our brains work.
Autopilot is in the danger zone, where it's good enough to make your brain relax, but it's bad enough to require your brain to not do that. So it's fundamentally unsafe.
Cruise control in contrast isn't good enough so your brain will have to pay attention, otherwise you'll crash very quickly.
And this is all made much, much worse by Elon's and Tesla's irresponsible marketing, and the believers who dismiss this as a "worthless discussion".
And yet, this is what ordinary driving requires already. It's not a new requirement. The whole point of this investigation is to figure out the matter of whether a SAE Level 2 ADAS really makes distracted driving more likely. The jury is still out on that, and even if it does it would be reasonably easy to cope with the problem by tuning the system to alert the driver more frequently, especially ahead of impending danger (such as in low visibility conditions, which are expressly mentioned as a key factor in these crashes).
No, it's not. Not at all.
What? No it isn't. Ordinary driving has the driver controlling the vehicle at all times.
Plus, it will always give you the control back in the most difficult situation you can ever encounter as a driver. It's already an emergency, the computer threw a fit and doesn't want to deal with it.
You're on your own, you have 10 seconds, all the best! Better get it right the first time.
Yes, that's precisely what the manual said last time I checked. But it's not how Elon Musk has presented it, nor how innumerable Tesla drivers treat it.
https://www.tesla.com/autopilot
This video was from 2018 or so I think and they pretended the driver wasn't needed.
So if those 8 seconds of "autopilot ain't too sure" actually exist, then the car needs to signal that to the driver so the driver can be ready to take over.
The fact it still doesn't do that, speaks volumes about the kind of "progress" Tesla seems to be making, none of it good.
Isn't that what the name implies? An autopilot keeps heading and speed.
We could just ban personal vehicles to improve overall safety.
I use autopilot every now and then, and when I do, I literally keep my hands on the wheel in a driving position, and my foot resting lightly on the pedal.
Seems a tiny gain compared to the dangers of the system.
I think that I can better observe the conditions if I'm not providing those controls, even though I need to keep a model of autopilot and its abilities running in my head. Having said that, that model is simple - dump out of autopilot as soon as there is any kind of complexity added to the environment.