Testing Tesla's Autopilot recall, I don't feel much safer-and neither should you
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
I rented a current model year Audi A4 on my last trip which had the Audi equivalent of Autosteer. I could drive for minutes at a time without touching the steering wheel. And I literally just touched the steering wheel, and that was enough for the car to continue in its way. Where is Geoffrey’s outrage there?
Methinks this journalist has no idea what Autosteer is supposed to do. Maybe this highlights the larger problem of “smart cars”. Most owners have their own notion of what a feature should do which ultimately makes them oblivious to what’s actually happening.
I'm curious what you and others make of the sticker thing -- why is it well-known that specifically a smiley face sticker will disable it? Is the idea that the recognition software just outputs "FACE 100%" because enough is visible on the back?
One of those lessons is that systems must be designed to be operated by real humans. It's remarkably common for organizations to look at an incident and declare the root cause to be "human error." ...They don't end their inquiry with blaming individuals.
No, that's discussing complex systems and important principles to adopt when creating and maintaining them.
>In the context of driving, blame is almost always placed on individuals.
In the context of driving accidents, almost always no autonomous vehicle function is involved, and yet this topic is about an autonomous vehicle function.
Moreover, if we're going to assign blame, there's plenty of blame to go around. Blame individuals if you want, but that doesn't prevent policymakers from analyzing the system in aggregate and mandating changes which, irrespective of which individuals get blamed, saves lives. That's what we want to happen, isn't it? To save lives?
Tesla should probably be in a lot more trouble for falsely advertising these systems as "autopilot" or "full self driving", but even they make it clear after purchase that these are actually just driver assistance systems.
In any case, drivers are not totally responsible. After all, what if there's a defect in let's say an "advanced cruise control" system and it's a factor in accidents? Can you rule out the possibility that a jury in a class action suit would assign some blame to the manufacturer?
I don't want to speculate on what juries might do, but the first such lawsuit was decided recently. The driver's family "blamed a malfunction by the car’s driver-assistance software for the crash", nonetheless Tesla was assigned zero responsibility.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/31/business/tesla-autopilot-...
Because that's not the standard term.
>I don't want to speculate on what juries might do
Put another way, no you can't rule out the possibility.
> In fine print and user manuals most drivers probably haven’t pored over, Tesla says that Autosteer “is designed for use on highways that have a center divider, clear lane markings, and no cross-traffic.” It adds: “Please use it only if you will pay attention to the road, keep your hands on the steering wheel, and be prepared to take over at any time.”
> As the crashes spotlighted by The Post investigation indicate, it isn’t clear to some drivers where you’re supposed to use Autosteer and what, exactly, it will do for you. It’s not nearly as advanced as Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” capability, which requires a $200 per month subscription to access and is designed to be used on city streets.
On every other car, the smart cruise control feature that keeps a car within the lane markings...can also handle slowing down and stopping (though stopping for signage is limited to self-driving systems like FSD).
Where is Geoffrey’s outrage there
Audi wasn't required by the government to issue a massive recall. Tesla was. The outrage is that Tesla is deliberately violating the requirement of the recall.
My point was that Audi is doing exactly what Tesla is supposedly not doing. Everything Geoffrey complained of was exactly what Audi does. Why should Tesla get scrutiny for safety but other car manufacturers don’t?
Cold water, your story. Yikes
Looking at Audi a4 right now, can confirm that this is false...lane centering must be deliberately engaged and is part of Audi's cruise control functionality (but is a separate function from speed management).
Either way, Autopilot and Full Self Driving are not one in the same and it's made pretty clear to the end user that autosteer is not for obeying street signs, etc. It's a simple lane-assist, cruise-control assist, and lane switcher when the turn signal is pressed (if you pay for the lesser of the upgrades).
That being said, Tesla's FSD is also not very reliable and in my own personal testing has aggressively "shot the gap" and flew over speed bumps. However, it at least is made to stop at stop signs and traffic signals and does so.
Personally, I'm less interested in what Tesla owners should then I am in what policymakers should force Tesla to do.
Other vehicle manufacturers do not state you must keep your hands on the wheel to safely operate their ADAS features, instead relying on camera-based driver monitoring systems, and are thus not required to issue any "hands-on" warning.
If Tesla wants to deploy a product as advanced as other manufacturers so they can get rid of the "annoying nag" they can just release a product that can, and legally indicates, it can be safely operated hands-free. But, then they would no longer be able to blame the driver for not keeping their hands on the wheel (as it says in the manual) in the event of a death as they have repeatedly.
I use FSD daily and I’ve never seen it come anywhere close to missing a stop sign. This almost makes Tesla look a lot worse - the technology is able to provide what I would say is a relatively safe driving experience off highway, but it’s not available at the lower price point.
I’ve avoided the new Lexus vehicles as their eye tracking is horrible - just glancing down to get a drink will set off alarms.
Now they’ve made my Tesla just as bad - my drive yesterday had an alert every 10 seconds or so, from “pay attention to the road” to “autopilot speed limited”. Very dangerous and distracting.
This belief is hard to reconcile with the Cruise threads. What you’re actually seeing is that other companies aren’t hyping their technology so far in advance of its actual capabilities. If Toyota sold “full self driving” as an expensive add-on and failed to ship it over the time most people owned the vehicle, you’d see plenty of ragging on them, too.
The contrast is especially noticeable when you look at what the market leaders are doing. Waymo owns their vehicles fully and isn’t claiming they’re suitable for general use everywhere, every time. Mercedes has an L3 system far in advance of Tesla but they only offer it in certain conditions and back it with insurance. If Tesla’s product was where their marketing claims it is, they’d do the same.
I dunno man. In my experience, the community of people who are very very very unhappy with Elon is far larger than just HN.
The system is extremely annoying now, but will leave you alone if it sees your face and knows you’re watching the road.
Covering up the camera just makes it nag more frequently.
It’s frankly unusable now, as it’s constantly beeping at me…almost as bad as Lexus, which will beep if you as much as glance down to get a bottle of water.
People like the author of the article and people who misuse autopilot are why we can’t have nice things.
Well - yes - exactly. The software protects us from people who will misuse the technology and hurt others.
Cars are extremely dangerous.
Instead of watching the road, I’m now having to look and figure out why my car is beeping at me. Apparently, I need to “pay attention to the road”, which is what I was doing before the beeping.
After 6 years and hundreds of thousands of miles using autopilot without any issues, I am now considering just getting an older luxury car that doesn’t have any of this “safety” software.
Ah yes, and seatbelts make cars more dangerous too - distracting the driving and impeding their movement. Motorcycle helmets impair vision. And gun safety switches make rapid use very difficult.
Right?
Learn to discuss things without hyperbole and straw-men. My Tesla had so many alerts in a short drive that my passenger asked if the car had an issue that required repairs.
I guess in your world, looking away from the road and at a screen to read safety messages promotes safety.
I'm happy to learn you don't embrace these absurd arguments - it's hard to guess what an internet stranger will claim.
Sounds like you need to ask Elon to fix his terrible safety implementations.
Waymo cars have a shit ton of sensors, cameras, audio sensors, dedicated battery, cpu, cooling systems. Yet even that system is not perfect. Requires a human behind the wheel.
Let’s not forget the Cruise debacle. Tesla system is just a straight up disaster. That system is not worth the price tag.
Stop investing in cars. Let’s reinvest in the urban core, rollback the terrible car infrastructure that has invaded this country, and put significant federal/state/local dollars into public infrastructure and redesign of cities.
I traveled to NYC recently and using the public transportation system was amazing. No need to rent a car. Every destination was accessible by train/subway, ferry, or can rent an e-bike or walk there.
The only thing terrible about NYC was… the cars. Taxis and ride share drivers frequently running lights, blocking the intersections, or blocking the streets for emergency vehicles or commercial drivers. The noise pollution was mostly from drivers honking (whoever invented ANC, thanks bro).
Cars contributed heavily to the poor air quality as well. Tail pipe pollution. Noise pollution. Tire wear pollutants. Brake dust pollution. It was worse than the human contributed aspects.
End the trillions of dollars (indirectly and directly) given to building suburbs.
There was still a wheel, I assume as a cheaper-than-a-tow-truck for if it runs into certain issues, and waymo wants to turn the self driving off til it gets to the shop
Waymo doesn't require a human behind the wheel. They roam all over metro Phoenix without drivers and without issues.
Tesla FSD works fine with appropriate monitoring on city streets and virtually autonomously on freeway driving. Comma and open pilot aren't far behind.
The US is built for cars and thinking that is going to change is a pipedream.
The actual driving day to day i'm in FSD almost 90% of the time, without issues 99.5% of the time, everywhere i go doing 400-800 miles a week, and the few issues i have when in AP tend to be nav telling the car its turn is earlier than it is, or it being a bit more cautious than i want it to be but thats preference not a fault of FSD.
I do generally agree though that the electric car is not the future, more likely we will see much higher usage of cheaper more efficient technologies that don’t require special charging infrastructure like e-bikes in the consumer market. I think things like electric commercial vehicles are more interesting. You aren’t going to transport pianos or logs on the subway.
Endless densification has its own problems, especially considering it may not even be viable to densify somewhere as much as New York which has ideal conditions for building both ports and skyscrapers. New York itself is famously expensive. I’ve used public transit in suburban areas beyond the point most would find reasonable, there are tons of edge cases which can triple travel time compared to a car, and getting rid of those edge cases is outrageously expensive and non-viable. Although one thing that would make it far more viable is drumroll self-driving, as all public transit infrastructure becomes cheaper without the need for drivers.
What do you want to do, demolish entire metro areas? It’s not like the suburbs are in the cities. How do you address the fact that retrofitting public transport has proven to be astronomically expensive?
Much of the cost to transit and active transportation projects is often also car-related as those projects are forced into complicated engineering challenges to avoid taking any space from driving. If you want to roll out transit easily in almost any North American city, converting a single street parking lane into a dedicated bus lane is very cheap, and the revenues from less-subsidized off-street parking will pay for much of it.