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Comment by psunavy03 | Hacker News Reader

At some point, I just don't get how a lot of this is Tesla's problem. I'll buy that they should have called it something other than "Autopilot" and "Full Self Driving." But ultimately if it's in the manual saying "this is not fully automated and you must pay attention to the road," it should be on the driver to be held liable for abusing the system.

Sure, go after Tesla if the system endangers people via spurious inputs or dangerous maneuvers. But it's also not Tesla's responsibility to nanny people any more than alcohol manufacturers are held liable for drunk driving. If some idiot zones out on their phone or tries to "drive" from the back seat, their negligence is not Tesla's responsibility.

Self-driving systems shouldn't need all these "are you paying attention" bells and whistles. Just hammer the people who abuse them with reckless driving charges.

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> Just hammer the people who abuse them with reckless driving charges.

That surely helps the now dead people they crash into. The manufacturer can prevent deaths by adding safety features, so it should to a reasonable extent.

So we are also going to require breathalyzer interlocks on everyone's car as well?

Honestly not opposed to this.

Why are we even going there when the article, and the NHTSA report note some very easy first steps?

As Ars has noted time and again, Tesla's Autopilot system has a more permissive operational design domain than any comparable driver-assistance system that still requires the driver to keep their hands on the wheel and their eyes on the road, and NHTSA's report adds that "Autopilot invited greater driver confidence via its higher control authority and ease of engagement."

I remember back in 2013 when I first drove a Tesla, they were really pushing the self driving features at my local dealership. I can't help but feel like they were overselling their capabilities, and their staff could well have made a gullible person believe the car really does drive itself perfectly.

Autopilot did not even exist as a public feature in 2013. It was first mentioned as being in development then, but the cars didn't even have any hardware for it until September 2014.

> it's also not Tesla's responsibility to nanny people

Yes, it is. An L2 driver assist system must ensure that the driver is always actively supervising, and Tesla's systems failed to do that. That's why they recalled 2 million cars.

It seems to me that there are 10s of millions of "L2 driver assist" as defined by synopsys that have zero driver supervising checks such as most cars out there with lane-keep and cruise control.

And you believe that federal regulators have simply never heard of these other systems? A more likely explanation is that the driver attention monitoring in a Honda or Cadillac or whatever works better than Tesla's.

You seem to have misunderstood me. I'm talking about vehicles without attention monitoring systems. Most cars sold in the past ten years technically have "Level-2" driving features but with no driver monitoring systems.

Tesla autopilot / FSD is immensely more capable than 99% of LKAS systems, so maybe that's why regulators care more. But from a pure attentiveness standpoint, 1000 other car models have grossly worse safety in this regard.

However, my argument is that your original claim that the "L2 driver assist system must ensure that the driver is always actively supervising" is demonstrably false, given that, by pure numbers, "Level-2" capable cars, by large, do not have driver monitoring features. However, the government continues to focus solely on Tesla.

Can you name such a vehicle? My personal car with lane keeping and TACC insists that you keep your hands on the wheel.

I might be mistaken about cars requiring no input, but isn't just steering sensing a problem? The car does not know if it is you or a weight on the steering wheel. Or if you are on your phone touching the wheel with your knee.

According to the NHTSA, Tesla was forced to enable driver monitoring via a camera because sensing driver steering input was insufficient.

So, without a doubt, 10s of millions of cars have "insufficient" driver monitoring while having "level 2" capability. Should those cars not be recalled and the feature be disabled (or updated to more aggressive monitoring if appropriate hardware exists)?

To be clear, I fully support driver monitoring for ADAS to whatever extent regulations require. But picking and choosing who to enforce the rules suggests they aren't working for the general public's best interest.

The NHTSA insisted that Tesla switch to camera monitoring because Tesla repeatedly monkeyed with the nag interval via OTA software pushes. All the other manufacturers, except Tesla, complied with NHTSA's 2017 rule on the issue.

If you sold alcohol called "Safe Drive Juice", implied in advertisement that you can drive safe while drinking it, even made you a better driver, in tweets and press releases said that this is the future and everyone should use it, and if they did they'd be safer drivers, it doesn't matter if you put a note at the bottom that said "doesn't actually let you drive safe, please don't drink and drive"

> But it's also not Tesla's responsibility to nanny people

It literally is.

> Self-driving systems shouldn't need all these "are you paying attention" bells and whistles.

It's not self driving at all. That's the problem.

A lot of Tesla marketing over the years has been super deceptive to the point that a lot of people assume the car is capable of fully self driving itself. I've had a model 3 since 2018 and the number of people that have asked "do you ever drive yourself?" is too damn high.

So Tesla actively does everything they can to make people thing the system is way more capable than it really is. Then shows a small popup the first time you use it that tells you "j/k it doesn't really do any of this, goodluck". I feel like eventually they'll be held accountable for it, but the bureaucracy moves veryyyy slowly.

> A lot of Tesla marketing over the years has been super deceptive to the point that a lot of people assume the car is capable of fully self driving itself

The thing is, it's not just marketing that's contributing to these misunderstandings. The car actually is capable of fully driving itself... most of the time. So it's not so much that their marketing is misleading as it is that the reality of the situation is itself misleading, if you don't pay close enough attention to the system's limitations and caveats.

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