Hacker News Reader

Comment by afavour | Hacker News Reader

> The car had an incapacitated driver and no one got hurt!

But had Autopilot not been available would he have driven? Or would he have taken a taxi?

The problem (IMO) is the promises Tesla is making even with the name “autopilot”. It makes people think it’s a whole lot more capable than it is.

View on HN

While I think this is a solid point in general, if someone has installed weights to trick autopilot into thinking they're awake and holding the wheel, they probably know that they're supposed to be awake and holding the wheel.

Tesla didn't invent DUI. Consider it this way: if your friend were to stumble out of the pub drunk and drive home, would you rather they did it in a civic or a model 3?

Not the point I’m making. If you misunderstand the capabilities of a product named “Autopilot” you might choose that over a taxi in a way you wouldn’t a totally manual drive. So the scenario would be “your friend stumbles out drunk and drives Autopilot, drives manually or takes a taxi” I’d rather they took a taxi. But if I were similarly mistaken about what “Autopilot” does I might not stop him driving home when I might otherwise.

I question the claim that there are people who are misled. Anyone who has used Autopilot for more than a few minutes will be left in no doubt that it is nothing more than adaptive cruise control with lane centering. Its behaviour describes itself.

The problem in this instance wasn't the driver misunderstand the capabilities of Autopilot, it was the driver being irresponsible with drugs, fatigue and the installation of a safety defeat device.

“The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.”

It's literally right there on the front page of Tesla's Autopilot site: https://www.tesla.com/autopilot

On a page titled “Future of Driving”. The page goes on to be very clear about the features of current cars.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com