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Comment by NegativeK | Hacker News Reader

Unlike an abusive spouse, Tesla's dangerous features are opt in.

I love my Tesla. I think FSD is a horseshit scam with some neat tech that's nowhere near ready for the public. Fortunately, I don't pay for it, so it doesn't affect what I do with my car.

I do find it incredibly frustrating that the vast majority of Tesla conversations devolve into screaming matches between people who are rabidly pro or rabidly con, with both sides doing a pretty poor job of representing the truth. And those in the middle generally wander off to do something far more productive literally anywhere else on the internet.

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> Tesla's dangerous features are opt in.

Not for the other drivers and pedestrians.

This is a key thing that people often forget. Very similar to the shenanigans that social platforms pull on tracking of people that do not use their platforms.

The collateral damage to these types of decisions are invisible to the one actually using the thing causing the damage, and it is very hard to convince that it is real

"Some of you may die but thats a sacrifice I am willing to make."

off-topic, but I'm always struck by how great of a quote that is. I hope whomever came up with it at Dreamworks was given a raise and a promotion after Shrek.

> I do find it incredibly frustrating that the vast majority of Tesla conversations devolve into screaming matches between people who are rabidly pro or rabidly con, with both sides doing a pretty poor job of representing the truth

They sold it as autopilot. If you market something to do X and it does Y, you're bound to get people upset. Especially when it costs a chunk of the moon.

I don't own a Tesla, but if I refused to buy any product with misleading marketing, I'm not sure I'd ever buy anything more sophisticated than a loaf of bread. Then again, I also don't use any driver assist features beyond parking sensors and don't expect to see any actual autopilot within my lifetime, so maybe I just haven't been as annoyed by Tesla's nonsense. Regardless, for a purchase most people regard as rather significant, it doesn't seem unreasonable to expect them to look at least marginally beyond a marketing misnomer.

The people being upset don't seem to be the same as the people owning the Tesla's though? Just gauging from HN discussions, the comments with the most moral outrage seem to be coming from a place of pure principle.

Edit: I scroll down and the first thing I see is a first person account of some one having sold theirs after disliking the overall experience, turning white. Welp, guess this is an opinion I should reflect on.

"There are several paragraphs of warnings and disclaimers both on the sales page and when you use the product that exactly explain the limitations, but I absolutely insist on fixating on this one particular word. Nothing else matters."

Planes have autopilot too. It doesn't mean the pilot turns it on then goes and takes a nap. They still have to be alert.

They weren’t opt in for the children in the crosswalk it would mow down. See, e.g. https://youtu.be/3mnG_Gbxf_w

Did they have their foot on the accelerator?

Teslas always allow human input to override and they don't auto-steer through cones. There were several attack ads that exploited these two very reasonable behaviors to force the car to impact a dummy before blaming the impact on FSD. Is this one of them? This particular video doesn't look familiar from the last kerfuffle, but I see cones and I see a conflict of interest. Is there an interior shot showing the console?

Not FSD. This just tests AEB, Autonomous Emergency Braking. The human is completely in control.

Got it. So Tesla can’t even get braking correct. They should be able to do AEB before they are allowed to do FSD in my opinion.

AEB is damage reduction not prevention. It trusts the user.

FSD is great around VRUs.

Did someone have their foot on the accelerator?

I’m simply con because for the price the build quality is terrible and I’m tired of the hype FSD has been given. It’s all garbage and Elon and Tesla deserve a back hand for the marketing scam.

I'm sorry, but this is pretty much what I'm referring to regarding lack of nuance.

It's not all garbage, and the build quality these days is actually as good as any other car I've had. But FSD is vaporware, and Elon is an actual troll manifest.

Like most things in life, the cars are not 100% gold or 100% shit.

Nuance in an internet argument? Well I never!

Surely nuance doesn't always make for a better argument!

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