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Comment by redserk | Hacker News Reader

It’s disappointing to see the US continuing to foster negligent driving attitudes by attributing blame to a brand name (Autopilot) instead of attributing blame where it belongs: inattentive drivers.

Regardless of what assistive driver tool is used, it doesn’t change the fact that the driver is the only human-thinking operator behind the wheel of a 2-4 ton vehicle. Sensors and cameras can fail. Software can crash. Humans are the only realistic failsafe right now for consumer driver assist.

Attempting to shift blame to a driver assist continues our decades-long path of refusing to admit that we have a careless and underskilled driver epidemic.

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The problem is this tool (Autopilot) advertises itself as something other than what it is. (Driver assist.) The report also states that this tool in particular behaves differently from its peers in that it discourages the driver from participating in corrective driving while it's engaged, leading to less attentive use of the tool.

See my other reply.

A name change will not fix inattentive drivers. You’re falling into exactly the same trap I’ve described: excusing everything but the driver.

If there are issues with getting drivers to pay attention to what they're doing, would you say that's likely to be helped or hindered by a tool which allows them to ignore the road entirely 99% of the time?

Sure, I think ADAS simply existing is responsible for encouraging inattentive driving. I don’t have a solution for this, though, since almost every automaker has some form of ADAS available now.

Many of us are developers or in the line of work. We should know first-hand how difficult it is to guide end-user behavior.

Let's say you are right that there is an epidemic of careless and underskilled drivers. Is it then ok to give those people a drive assist system named "autopilot" and "full self driving" with strong wink and nudge that people can drive with less attention ? Regardless of legal responsibility, with your assumption, it seems it's totally fair to criticize Tesla for making an already terrible problem worse.

You’re ignoring almost all of what I typed.

The fact of the matter is, the name does not matter. Multiple warning messages get displayed that get ignored by drivers. You’re doing exactly what I called out: blaming everything but the driver.

Are you proposing a mere name change is all that is required to improve reading comprehension on warning labels?

People are generally proposing all of at least (1) a name change, (2) a stop to the false claims and marketing and (3) better driver monitoring. Some people are proposing additional things, like (4) changing the way it reacts to corrections in order to not discourage active involvement, or (5) limiting the situations in which it can be enabled, or even (6) changing how it is turned on.

The amount of people driving with a cellphone and a thumb actively moving is absurd

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