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DVD Player Found In Tesla Autopilot Crash, Says Florida Officials (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A digital video disc player was found in the Tesla car that was on autopilot when its driver was killed in a collision with a truck in May, Florida Highway Patrol officials said on Friday. "There was a portable DVD player in the vehicle," said Sergeant Kim Montes of the FHP in a telephone interview. She said there was no camera found, mounted on the dash or of any kind, in the wreckage. A lawyer for a truck driver involved in the accident with the Tesla told Reuters his investigators had spoken to a witness who said the DVD player was playing a "Harry Potter" video after the accident, but the lawyer was unable to verify that beyond the witness account. Lawyers for the family of the victim, 40-year-old Joshua Brown, released a statement Friday saying the family is cooperating with the investigations "and hopes that information learned from this tragedy will trigger further innovation which enhances the safety of everyone on the roadways." Lawyers for the family of the victim, 40-year-old Joshua Brown, released a statement Friday saying the family is cooperating with the investigations "and hopes that information learned from this tragedy will trigger further innovation which enhances the safety of everyone on the roadways." Tesla said in a statement Friday, "Autopilot is by far the most advanced driver assistance system on the road, but it does not turn a Tesla into an autonomous vehicle and does not allow the driver to abdicate responsibility."
What exactly is the point of it? To lull you into a false sense of comfort and security? I look forward to autonomous vehicles, but if it still requires me to keep my attention on the road and ready to respond, I'd rather just be in control of the vehicle to begin with.
Elon Musk's Terminators have claimed their first victim.
It's auto pilot not auto do everything for me. Even an airplane with auto pilot on will run right into another airplane if it gets in the way.
How dare you speak like this about Martian Citizen Zero? He is going to lead the entire human species to Mars! Sure, a few airlocks may open on the way, food dispensers may not work, but think how jealous the people left on Earth will be!
The problem is that if it slightly resembles a full-on AI based driverless system, that's how people are going to treat it no matter how many layweresque warnings you thrust in front of them and no matter how many forms they have to sign telling them it is just fancy lane assist.
It's just human nature: if people aren't actively involved in the driving process, their attention is going to wander. It's how we as humans are wired up. For a long trip, I'm not sure I could stay focused at all times, even though I'd know perfectly well I was risking my life if my attention wandered. If I'm driving, that's one thing, but if the car is doing 99.9% of it, the other 0.1% is going to pose a real serious problem.
If you build "almost an autopilot", that is a recipe for people treating it like what it resembles but isn't.
The car was basically equipped with a stay-in-lane and slow-down-if-you-approach-the-car-in-front-of-you kind of system, which is not an autonomous vehicle, nor can you take your eyes off the road. At best it reacts a bit faster if someone in front of you hits the brakes. Google did a talk on this and said in their tests, as soon as a car seems to be working by itself, drivers stopped paying attention to the road, so half-way-autonomous is a bad idea. People don't want to pay attention and they won't if the car seems to be doing a good enough job.
Only a fully autonomous car will be good enough.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Yes, I know, jealousy of Musk is a big motivation for you people to hate on him, however if we ignore that for a second..
The point here is someone knowingly placed their life in the hands of automation, and paid the price for that. Real world
conditions mean that automation is NEVER perfect, and this is new automation at the cutting edge (sigh) of such things.
The larger issue to me is why the DRIVER did not notice a truck across the road in front of them. Are we to believe that
the software should have spotted it, and yet it was so hard to spot that a driver who was paying attention could not? That
would certainly stretch the bounds of credibility quite far.
It seems quite clear here that the driver was not watching the road ahead - in fact was ignoring it enough to not notice a
whole, large truck trailer unit turn in front of them in clear view. In other words they were, unfortunately for them, doing
something stupid.
But no, people are going to try and blame automation, because otherwise it would be a dead person at fault.. And that is
just not nice, right? However, this is NOT a case where a driver jumped on the brakes and they did not work, or tried
to turn the car and it went straight ahead (at least none of that is being claimed). It is a case where a driver of a car
at speed was not aware of the road directly ahead of them, that makes this border on a darwin here folks..
Porn. Absolutely porn. No 40 year old man is driving down the road in his bad ass Tesla watching Harry Potter. No way, not happening. Porn.
Beware of the Leopard.
Sensing vehicles at a distance can only be done using a camera. Proximity sensors used elsewhere on the vehicle are only suitable for close range sensing. By the time they could sense the truck it was already too late. I do not think Google is any more advanced in this regard.
Although in this particular case it is unclear whether the driver was actually watching a DVD at the moment of the crash, it is pretty obvious that an assisted driving technology that can handle 95% of the driving situations will make users confident enough to be distracted when operating the vehicle, no matter how many warnings and disclaimers are shown telling users they need to pay attention all the time in case they have to gain control to handle the remaining 5% of the traffic situations. This is clearly explained in this TED talk by the head of Google driverless car program: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... (this particular issue is discussed around 4:10, although the whole video is worth watching). This is why Google approach to self driving cars is to release their product when the system is able to handle 100% of the driving situations and never require the user to take control in contrast to the Tesla approach of releasing a system than can handle most situations and make incremental improvements over time.
It is a case where a driver of a car
at speed was not aware of the road directly ahead of them, that makes this border on a darwin here folks..
Not necessarily. Maybe the rest of the automation had been so good that the driver saw the struck, but believed the car also saw the truck. If you are a passenger in a car, you don't pull the handbrake to avoid an accident when you expect the driver is going to press the foot brake.
That said, he was probably just watching Harry Potter.
Real lawyers write in C++
As far as I can see the truck driver was at fault, so why is such a big deal being made about this? Of course automation is going to make drivers lose concentration. Thats been understood for decades.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
It fucking repeats itself. Fuck's sake man, if you guys don't read it why do you expect your readers to?
Lawyers for the family of the victim, 40-year-old Joshua Brown, released a statement Friday saying the family is cooperating with the investigations "and hopes that information learned from this tragedy will trigger further innovation which enhances the safety of everyone on the roadways." Lawyers for the family of the victim, 40-year-old Joshua Brown, released a statement Friday saying the family is cooperating with the investigations "and hopes that information learned from this tragedy will trigger further innovation which enhances the safety of everyone on the roadways."
Apparently a lawyer for the family has mental defect that causes them to repeat statements. Either that or the /. editors are once again showing their true dedication and attention to detail. Either way things that were getting better following the most recent change of hands have begun to erode already.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Police lidars work at a hundred metres or so. Thats enough for avoiding conflicts like this.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I am jealous you insensitive clod !
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
"Autopilot is by far the most advanced driver assistance system on the road, but it does not turn a Tesla into an autonomous vehicle and does not allow the driver to abdicate responsibility."
Then maybe they should start by stopping to use the misleading name of "autopilot" for this functionality.
That bit only makes sense if the car had no idea how far away the truck way. As the car approached the truck the clearance should have increased and the car should have realized something was wrong if it didn't.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
The problem is not the Autopilot feature but the way it has been misleadingly and dangerously marketed.
Musk bragged to the press that Autopilot was "almost twice as good as a person," certainly sending the wrong message. His ex-wife posted a YouTube video of her driving while covering her eyes and dancing around while on Autopilot on a crowded highway. All this has encouraged a bunch of other YouTube videos of people behaving foolishly while on Autopilot.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/tesla-mixes-warnings-bravado-hands-free-driving-002343250--finance.html
Even the marketing name "Autopilot" is probably misleading to some people, who might interpret as "the car drives itself without human assistance". It should have been more conservatively called "driver assist" or some such.
In the end their marketing stupidity is probably going to bite them financially. A dashboard warning doesn't excuse it. I say this regretfully as a Tesla stockholder.
but that does not change the fact that they released a fundamentally flawed and extremely dangerous product.
At this stage, that is your opinion and not a fact. Don't purport it as such.
FYI, it's envy, not jealousy. Jealousy would mean you were afraid of losing Elon. Envy means you wish you had all his cool stuff, fun life, and hot ex-wife. I only make this correction because I found out I was saying it wrong for 30 years...
You (and the other 'blame the driver' posters) have missed the point of the post.
Musk is claiming Autopilot is "the most advanced driver assist system on the road". His exact words, according to the quote.
Yet the thing completely failed to detect a huge piece of machinery driving directly across its path. If Tesla's system is "the most advanced" then you would think it would actually realise there's an enormous hunk of metal right in front of it. How advanced is a system that can't detect another vehicle directly in front, when that's one of the main purposes of its existence?
That's typical Tesla marketing bullshit and he deserves to be called on it.
driver who was paying attention
Probably because sitting there doing nothing is boring as fuck, and the natural result is the attention of the "driver" will wander. You'd probably be busy bent over giving a blowjob to the blow-up Musk you have in your passenger seat. This dude chose to watch Harry Potter. No real difference.
But no, people are going to try and blame automation
Yes, because the bullshit of, "LOL ITZ AUTOMATED AND RULEZ! But uh you had better stare blankly out the windshield for all six hours of your drive..." is just that - bullshit. It's horrifically dangerous, because even if the natural reaction was not to fuck off and let Musk's Magic Moolamobile do its thing... Identifying the random point where the autopilot is going to fail and then trying to seamlessly take over is not going to work.
Really. Someday they might connect it to TCAS
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
the car should have realized
Well, maybe it just having a bad day.
Aren't we getting a bit too anthropomorphic here?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The larger issue to me is why the DRIVER did not notice a truck across the road in front of them.
How can we be sure that the driver did *not* notice the truck?! The fact that he didn't step on the brakes, you say? Maybe he noticed it, but thought "whatever, my Tesla is smart enough to stop if it needs to". And by the time he realized that it's not stopping he just didn't have enough reaction time to lift the foot off the floor and apply the brakes? Every time I see a demo of the smart cruise control, where the car can stop if there's an obstacle, drivers are told to resist stepping on the brakes and trust the car to slow down and stop in time. Or are we supposed to hover our foot over the brake pedal and second-guess the car all the time? What's the point of having an auto-pilot if you can't relax and let the car take care of the brakes?
As much as I like Tesla (my next car was going to be one until this happened), I think they should suffer enough for this, so that every other automaker out there makes damn sure their auto-pilot can handle situations like this. And I'm waiting another 5 years before getting a car with auto-pilot.
The system has a blind spot when it comes to clearance. This isn't the first time a Tesla has driven into an overhang. tl;dr photo from linked TFA.
I thought that high-end consumer vehicles employed Lidar to detect physical objects in front of them?
And isn't it a requirement of Tesla to have the cameras installed before you install the autopilot software?
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Is already been shown the tesla isn't very good at figuring out if it can make it under something. A few months back someone engaged auto park and it smashed it's windscreen on the back of a truck
So Tesla says the auto-pilot actually detected the trailer, but thought it was an "overhead sign" that was hanging high enough. What?! So it appears the sensors on Tesla are not precise enough to tell if the car can safely pass under something if it hangs over the road? I mean, come on, I'd be fine if the auto-pilot couldn't tell if the clearance is 10 feet or 12 feet. But a trailer? As far as I can find the standard floor height of a tractor trailer is 48". That means the clearance under is even less. It didn't occur to Tesla to test if the car can detect solid object hanging 4 feet off the ground?? I don't care if the driver was asleep, Tesla should have handled this.
Also, didn't we already have a Tesla hit a trailer in "auto-park" mode a few weeks ago?
What I know for damn sure is that next time I'm test driving a Tesla, or any other car with auto-pilot mode, I'm bringing a two by six with me.
The other main difference is that Tesla has logged data from 50 million miles of autopilot data from all over the world, while Google has logged data from 1.5 million miles mainly in the Bay area.
I think this gap will widen exponentially, and good enough AI for driving will come only through masses of data, so Tesla have a huge advantage.
My phone has a "lightning" charger. Should I hold it out in the rain and hope for a surge to fill up the battery?
Sure, if that's what you think it means, be my guest. However, the issue is not what you or I think it means but whether a jury can be convinced. In your case, good luck.
The fact is that Tesla states that: ""Autopilot is by far the most advanced driver assistance system on the road, but it does not turn a Tesla into an autonomous vehicle and does not allow the driver to abdicate responsibility."
According to the GP, while taking human psychology into account, this is what makes this a fundamentally flawed and extremely dangerous product. People will watch Harry Potter movies in this car, they will have horrible response times because they don't need to pay attention, they will get into accidents when the 'driver assistent' fails, and Tesla will try to abdicate responsibility each and every time based on contractual terms.
"Autopilot" on an airplane means it flies itself, aside from takeoff and landing. To call their car system "autopilot" is indeed very misleading. The word conjures thoughts of hands-free operation. With a name like that, who can be surprised that people won't pay attention when they are driving? I expect this will go to court - then we'll see what the law thinks "autopilot" means.
When you see videos such as this one, you can't help but think that the system seems to have other defects.
Been wondering what it would be like with 10s of cars, across multiple lanes and in both directions, having LIDAR and/or RADAR actively sweeping their surroundings....
Then that is Darwin award territory.
I do not understand. Why would you think they do in the first place? Perfect SF movie artificial intelligence has not been invented and installed in a car. Are you being serious?
People are idiot's. Tesla's mistake was in failing to take this into account in their promotion. They made a very sophisticated driver assist, but if you call it 'autopilot' then you're going to get some idiot who watches a movie while driving because he believes the driver assist to be far more capable than it actually is.
A person died for the novelty of a car that seemed to drive itself.
Who will be next.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
and how did he cause Mr. Brown to NOT pay attention?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
the ONLY reason i want a self driving car is so that i can study during my daily commute. i consider driving time wasted time. i already know the scenery, i don't care for news on the radio, i don't enjoy driving. i really want self-driving cars to get to the point where i can safely pick up an oreilly book and study.
I am a bit surprised about the belief that AIs (or machine learning) will solve all problems given enough data.
What do you think a neural net would have learned to do if trained to use VW's "AdBlue" as efficiently as possible but still to pass the NHTSA conformance test?
Who would you blame then? After all the constraints look reasonable. Would you want to be the engineer sued because he did not predict the neural net might learn something illegal?
Plus, there is obviously a problem with the way Tesla gathers its training data. If Elon Musk promotes a dashcam video taken by the killed driver earlier where the driver admits insufficient attention to the road (the cutting-in vehicle was in front of the driver and clearly visible), people might well take this as encouragement to not pay attention.
130 million miles have been logged by drivers using AP. This is the first fatality and there have been zero injuries up to this point. In addition, a number of accidents have been avoided.
So, how does this compare to the average?
In America, somebody dies every 96 million miles. In addition, there are a large number of injuries, though to be fair, injuries should probably not be looked at as much as accident rate (tesla is the safest car on the road, bar none; they make volvo look dangerous). So, at this point, we can say that there is 50% FEWER fatalities. Considering that NHTSA is investigating, I am sure that they will compare the accident rates on this and will likely find that it is much less using tesla AP, compared to the average driver.
So, yeah, I expect NHTSA will likely come up with suggestions of changes, but will allow AP to continue since the system has already proven that it is safer than the average driver.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The witness says a Harry Potter movie was playing. If he was making this up, then there's a less than one in a thousand chance that the DVD player actually contains a disc with a Harry Potter movie. (The last disc of the series was released on DVD in 2011. A Tesla owner would be much more likely to be watching a more recent release.)
Investigators know which disc was in the player, so they know if the witness is telling the truth.
Its a 2D version if TCAS, where the vehicles have the option of coming to a complete halt if they face an impossible situation. TCAS uses communication between aircraft, so that they can negotiate a solution. So if you have two aircraft approaching head on one will tell its crew to pull up and the other to descend.
In your scenario communication between vehicles would definitely be required.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I am a bit surprised about the belief that AIs (or machine learning) will solve all problems given enough data.
I'm surprised at your surprise. As a consultant I see a ton of demand for "big data" specialists. Companies eager to tap into every database and put sensors everywhere, to optimize or automate or whatever. Many of these projects fail in the end. Because big data is not about gathering, storing or querying the data, that problem has been more or less solved. It is about making sense of the data. Many still believe that simply having the data available in a handy dandy graphing tool will somehow magically provide them with useful insights.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
It doesn't actually. I used to think autopilots are either fully on or fully off, but then this happened.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Or what? You have something against freedom of speech? That is his belief and it's also my belief.
Google is right, semi-autonomous is outright dangerous.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
But no, people are going to try and blame automation, because otherwise it would be a dead person at fault.. And that is
just not nice, right? However, this is NOT a case where a driver jumped on the brakes and they did not work, or tried
to turn the car and it went straight ahead (at least none of that is being claimed). It is a case where a driver of a car
at speed was not aware of the road directly ahead of them, that makes this border on a darwin here folks..
Sure the person was at fault for paying attention while driving.
But people not paying attention while driving is the obvious outcome of giving a car an "autopilot" that operates on highways.
I stole this Sig
TCAS is only a warning system and that's unilkely to change any time soon.
Airplanes on autopilot will happily fly into other airplanes, mountains, buildings, etc... TCAS and GPWS will give aural and visual warnings, but that's it. If the pilots ignore those warnings, the autopilot will just continue on its path.
By the way, TCAS relies on transponders in other aircraft that broadcast their position and altitude. Cars don't have those.
Even in larger planes, all they do is warn ("traffic... traffic" or "terrain.. terrain... pull up!"). It's up to the pilot to take over.
"does not allow the driver to abdicate responsibility"
Perhaps you shouldn't have called it Autopilot then... but I suppose "fancy cruise control" doesn't sell cars.
It's not only about pushing a non-existing brake.
You also have an inborn reflex to brace for impact. A kid see the big thing in front, and a kid know automatically to hold on thing.
Which, while growing up, have also adapted to brace for the incoming quick braking.A growing kid/teen see the big thing in front and know to hold on things, because the braking will send thing flying around.
MAIN POINT: You'll see the behaviour even in non-driving individuals
("non drivers" might sound bizarre to the average USian, but assure you that on the other side of the atlantic pond, we have plenty of them in continental europe where the public transportation is good enough).
Then once you start learning to drive, you built the instinct to throw your right foot on the braking pedal to save your life
(if the anti-collision system of the car isn't already doing that for you).
So the sore braking foot is a combination of all of the above:
- you wanting to break inconsciously.
- but also your instinct trying to save you from imminent impact/avoid flying around on braking.
it just that, by now, due to the previous mechanism you tend to preferably throw forward your braking foot.
(instead of say, holding both feet while grasping the hand grab)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Was it... cerulean blue?
My sig will be released in 2015 third quarter. Rating pending.
https://www.teslamotors.com/en...
'What we know is that the vehicle was on a divided highway with Autopilot engaged when a tractor trailer drove across the highway perpendicular to the Model S. Neither Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky, so the brake was not applied. '
It is the most advanced but like all tech it has limits and those limits are astounding once humans realize them.
Most likely the truck had a high center of gravity and an open under carriage. The auto sensing system thought it was seeing noise and ignored it.
You know in movies where a convertible sports car goes under the rig of a tractor trailer in dramatic fashion? That entire space doesn't exist to most computer vision systems. So the tesla figure it had an additional fifty feet of clearance.
Computers don't see things like people do, computers don't think. They only calculate with the sensors we give them and those sensors are really limited.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
He was confused as to where platform 9 3/4 was.
In the words of most Slashdot commenters - Fuck beta! You can't suggest it's OK to say this is a non-production test product only released to the owner after they consent, when it has virtually no chance of being used anywhere else except on the 'production' road system surrounded by non-consenting road users.
How can a web server crash if serving web pages is one of the main purposes of its existence?
It was a high tractor trailer with lots of open space underneath. The radar beam went right underneath (and so did most of the car). Also, the trailer was a light color against a light sky, so the camera missed it as well. And, crucially, even the driver failed to notice it because he did not brake at all, not even in the last fraction of a second before he hit that enormous impossible-not-to-notice hunk of metal.
The fact that the system is not perfect and still makes occasional mistakes, does not negate the fact that it's still the most advanced such system available in production cars today. Other constructors have similar systems in the pipeline but are a little more hesitant releasing them to the public just yet. Elon just barges ahead to get as much real life data as possible to accelerate further development. You can debate whether or not that's a wise choice, but that's another matter.
But uh you had better stare blankly out the windshield for all six hours of your drive...
Six hours? In a Tesla?
While we're at it, let's change "abdicate" to "abrogate"
I come here for the love
Hmmm. I think that systems like the Subaru Eyesight system would have had no problem preventing ta crash like this.
http://drive.subaru.com/win14-...
Unfortunately the Tesla system did not even provide any warnings, you really can't have a similar warning system as planes because you will typically have a lot of cars in the vicinity. So comparing car to plane autopilot is very applish-orangish. Plane autopilot is actually a lot simpler to accomplish.
Allowing the user to have hands off for 30 seconds is problematic for Telsa. A lot can happen in 30 seconds, its an arbitrary duration. Why not 5 seconds?
imho, it should not be called auto-pilot or autonomous driving because its not truly that yet. Assisted control is more appropriate.
Yes, I know, jealousy of Musk is a big motivation for you people to hate on him, however if we ignore that for a second..
Then there are those with an undying love for everything Musk, which is hard to ignore. The auto-pilot's performance was clearly a contributing factor, as was the drivers. To push blame to just one or the other seems biased. Clearly the driver was not paying attention. Clearly the auto-pilot did not detect what we would have expected it to.
Anyhow, its an easy solution for Musk. Just add to the fine print "may not detect large vehicles directly in the path of travel". Then he's legally off the hook and we can blame the drivers whenever this happens.
I have to remember that old joke. From Soviet times, when else
GDR-FRG border. GDR subordinate storms into the office of his superior.
Sub: Comrade! The Russians, they're on the moon!
Sup: All of them?
Sub: No... they just sent a capsule up.
Sup: Then why the fuck do you wake me? Just report when they're all gone.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What you're looking for is called the public bus.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The bus might be a cheaper solution.
This space intentionally left blank
What they SHOULD say is "of course our autopilot system is supposed to be able to detect that a truck has turned in front of you, we don't know why the system failed but we will put every effort into improving it so that nothing like this ever happens again.
So you think they should admit that their system failed, and is not suitable for the design purpose? That would be staggeringly stupid.
Instead of trying to find ways to blame the driver and pretend that autopilot means no one will never take their eyes off the road they should say "mea culpa - our system failed, we take responsibility and we will fix it - and we will pay damages"
Well, it's clear why you're not running anything. Tesla would be out of business in a hot second if you were at the helm.
What is more important to deal with autopilot the way it will be used in the real world and protect public trust or to protect themselves from ONE count them ONE little lawsuit
That's not how the law works. If they admit fault here, then every other lawsuit will proceed on that basis.
They're idiots. They will not sell more cars. They don't deserve to.
You're an idiot. No one will read your slashdot comments. You don't deserve it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
People said exactly the same thing about cruise control when it first came out too. But then it was shown that by taking away the routine throttle adjustments, and the discomfort of holding your leg in exactly the same position for hours on end, driving actually became safer.
Same thing here, I drive on autopilot daily, and by not having to to worry about the routine, I can focus my attention more fully on my environment to better anticipate potential problems ahead.
Unfortunately the world is full of absolute idiots and lawyers who will ruin it for those of us who use the system add it was intended, as it was advertised, and add the warning that you acknowledge every single time you enable the system tells you.
"Autopilot" is an unfortunate marketing name that has been adopted by the Tesla and its owner community to designate the combination of Traffic Aware Cruise Control (TACC, based on radar) and Autosteer (lane following based on a camera), two of the features included in the Autopilot Convenience Features purchase option. Tesla tries to convey that this is far from autonomous operation -- with great success based on owner comments in dedicated forums, but much less success among the curious public.
The term "Autopilot" appears in the Owner's Manual only to designate the purchase option package and the associated hardware. In discussion of usage and cautions, the individual feature names (e.g., TACC, Autosteer) are used.
Why would you expect the autopilot to detect this? Tesla has never advertised it as doing so, they've never advertised it as self driving, they've always said it's just driver assistance, and in fact they warn you of such every single time you enable the system.
Tesla does many things wrong, and I'm frequently pointing them out, but this wasn't one of them.
Did the driver have a medical emergency such that his hands remained on the wheel but he was incapable of reacting to events? The driver could have been incapacitated minutes before the crash. He may have already been clinically dead from a heart attack when the crash happened. If the car did not have the computer assisted driving capability, it may well have stopped miles before the crash, maybe in a ditch, probably at a much lower speed as the driver's foot would probably come off the accelerator.
No matter how good the collision avoidance system, these self-driving cars need a better deadman switch than simply whether a hand is on the steering wheel. Some trains have deadman switches where the train's driver has to deliberately hold a spring loaded lever forward or the train begins braking.
But of course implementing anything that would actually be effective would cause potential buyers to recognize more of the dangers inherent in self-driving cars, and that would have a negative impact on sales.
30+ years ago in college: South African exchange student talking with a female black leftist wearing a 'SWAPO' t shirt:
'I was in the bush 8 weeks ago. I killed dozens, just like you...'
I laughed.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
No, they'll deny responsibility based on the fact they clearly, explicitly state that you shouldn't be using the feature in that way. It's just like people drunk driving, texting while driving and so on: they do stupid shit and pay the price. It's merely one more way for them to win a Darwin Award.
But it will happen again, and it will happen again for various other autopilots. Humans aren't perfect and I don't expect autopilots to be either, especially not something relatively primitive like Tesla's implementation. It's an assistance feature, a supplement to your own driving, and should be treated as such. To accept the blame opens them up for further blame if something goes wrong again, since people will think it was the system's fault again regardless of whether it was used properly.
Look at the tiny V8. It's cute...
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
What I haven't seen is any report from the SHP that indicates whether the truck was making a LEGAL left-hand turn across traffic? Or was he like many a big rig driver forcing his way traffic because. well, he is BIGGER and everybody else should yield to them.
How dare you speak like this about Martian Citizen Zero?
Why not use his official title, the Elon of Mars?
Ezekiel 23:20
"Autopilot is by far the most advanced driver assistance system on the road, but it does not turn a Tesla into an autonomous vehicle and does not allow the driver to abdicate responsibility."
I see Musk is getting a clue that slapping some proximity sensors on a car without a proper 3D radar and any chance of things like road surface detection, adding extra hype to the mix, and selling as coolest whee-zee "autopilot" in the world isn't that cool as it seemed. That is after somebody died even it was told it will happen by many people. Now the question is how many deaths it will take for this genius to realize that other automakers and OEM developers FORCE driver to stay engaged with hands on wheel with their own driver-assistance system, and do not allow any "autonomous driving" Russian roulette without proper hardware and AI for it.
And this comparison to average 11 years clunker on the US with worse crumple zones and no auto-brake features is so lame. You would expect better from new $100k car.
First off, it seems to me that driving on an experimental 'autpilot' in a roadway that has intersections (as is shown in the police report figure in: ( http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07... ) is tremendously more dangerous than using it on an interstate. That, and the reported presence of a dvd player causes one to question the drivers decision making.
But a greater concern, at least for me, is that the truck appears to have turned right in front of the Tesla. One possibility there is that the intersection had traffic lights, whose detection was missed by both driver and computer, which if true, is a bigger concern than missing the side of a white truck on a bright background. The other is that the truck did not yield to the oncoming car when making its turn, that is the truck cut off the tesla in the intersection. Apart from the liability issues raised, that circumstance is much more difficult to react to, either in person or by computer.
Any one have any further info?
We've all used portable DVD players. How many of them would keep playing a DVD after being hit? I expect the disc would fly out of the ones I've used. It is far more likely that the truck driver has lied.
Musk may have a problem here. I wonder in all this analysis if anybody considered the possibility that the driver saw the truck and assumed the car's autopilot would deal with it, and went back to watching his DVD? Even if the Tesla's autopilot recognized that the situation was beyond its scope, would giving control back to the driver have averted the fatality? The answer is quite probably no.
In any wrongful death suit that the driver's family brings against Tesla Motors, what is going to be on trial is not the autopilot technology, but whether or not its capabilities were accurately represented to the public. The fact that a DVD player with content actively queued up was found in the wreckage would support the idea that the driver -- at a minimum -- believed that the autopilot could handle whatever came along. Even if they successfully argue that Tesla Motors created no such expectation with their marketing materials, Musk's lawyers are still going to have to show that the autopilot could successfully transition control back to the driver in time to prevent the fatality. That is where I think Elon is in big trouble, because that particular problem, called the handoff problem, has not been solved, and probably can't be solved, according to anybody involved with autonomous vehicles (just google "driverless car handoff problem.")
If I were on Musk's defense team, I'd be pushing for an out-of-court settlement at this point. The handoff problem is exactly why Google will not go into the business of autonomous vehicles until federal regulations are rewritten so that Google can deploy vehicles on public roads with no human in the loop, period.
I fail to see what the point of this is if you can't take your eyes off the road. Why even bother implementing it?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
The other main difference is that Tesla has logged data from 50 million miles of autopilot data from all over the world, while Google has logged data from 1.5 million miles mainly in the Bay area.
I think this gap will widen exponentially, and good enough AI for driving will come only through masses of data, so Tesla have a huge advantage.
This is dumb fanboy argument that we hear again and again. Tesla didn't recorded anything. They don't have any hardware that would provided the data, i.e. laser radar system. They don't have enough connection bandwidth to transfer the data in real time. For autonomous driving, their system is dead (sometimes literaly) end from yesterday that will be replaced soon with better systems that will provide more advanced data anyway. You can't teach a pig to fly no matter how many million miles you will run with it.
You're right, but if it is true Musk and his wife broadcast themselves not looking while using Autopilot then that is way more damning in my book. How mature are these people? How could they not think people would do the same thing.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
If you are putting the tech in a machine that can kill people, then its limits should not ever contribute to killing people.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I suggest you call up this guy's wife and give her your reasoning. I'm sure she'll understand. Maybe throw in a comment like "if you want to make an omelette you have to break a few eggs". She'll like that.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I suspect this is the reason why Autopilot has so much 'success' in the first place. Because people are really scared as hell of it and intervene way before it has to do anything advanced. I suspect this is also part of Musk's calculations in marketing this.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Why would you expect the autopilot to detect this?
Because Tesla themselves called it autonomous driving, they specifically call it auto pilot, and they even allow you to take your hands off the wheel for 30 seconds. Its not about doing the technology wrong, its about deploying it, hyping it as 'auto pilot' instead of drivers assist, and not fully considering the human behavior element. Those were contributing factors. There is no doubt that the technology was a contributing factor, but that doesn't mean anyone was 'wrong' or 'right'. Why the need to assign those descriptors?
Don't compare cruise control to autopilot. Cruise control only claims to do 10% of the job of driving. Autopilot claims to do all of it. Totally different.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Selling cars that kill people isn't enough of a reason to hate him?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I'm sure he listened to everything Tesla said, and this is the conclusion he came to from that.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
By calling it AUTO pilot.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Do you really think at a certain point data will have every single possible scenario? There will always be edge cases that may make AI too dangerous to use ever.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Agreed. According to the article, Tesla claims that the forward looking camera may have had difficulty distinguishing the white truck from the sky. What is concerning is that it appears Tesla is using cameras for forward collision detection. Why not something less prone to noise from sunlight, like Ultrasound or laser rangefinding? Relying solely on cameras is worrying in my opinion.
I believe it is the most advanced. I haven't seen better yet from competitors. A thing can suck and still be the "most advanced". A plan can be a bad plan and the best plan we have.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
According to NPR yesterday, they have radar as well for proximity warning. Tesla hasn't commented on why that failed.
The thing I'm trying to grasp in all of this is how Tesla could think that people would be able to use this as a workable solution. It's obvious people are idiots. Look at the McDonalds coffee cup case, look at all the instructions for electronic devices that specify that they should not be used near water. If you go out in the world it is so blatantly clear that people are idiots that it is almost reprehensible that autopilot was released in this capacity.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I'd guess that ultrasound of a high enough intensity to be reliable in the presence of interference could cause hearing (or other) damage. You don't have to be able to perceive sound for it to harm you.
Laser rangefinding. What could possibly go wrong? An exercise for the student.
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People said exactly the same thing about cruise control when it first came out too. But then it was shown that by taking away the routine throttle adjustments, and the discomfort of holding your leg in exactly the same position for hours on end, driving actually became safer.
Same thing here, I drive on autopilot daily, and by not having to to worry about the routine, I can focus my attention more fully on my environment to better anticipate potential problems ahead.
Unfortunately the world is full of absolute idiots and lawyers who will ruin it for those of us who use the system add it was intended, as it was advertised, and add the warning that you acknowledge every single time you enable the system tells you.
Possibly, but they were wrong. You still have to steer with cruise control so you don't have the option of disengaging from driving. With autopilot disengaging is the default behaviour, you need to actively engage in paying attention even though there's no apparent need to do so. For the vast majority of people growing complacent and tuning out is inevitable.
I stole this Sig
The radar is problematic for stationary objects. It can't really distinguish between a stationary car and stationary traffic signs, stationary asphalt, etc... It's easier to detect a car that's going 3 km/h than it is to detect a stationary car. This explains why the autopilot usually stops just fine when the cars in front come to a stop (it can continue to track them all the way to zero), but will sometimes keep going if the car in front of you leaves your lane while the cars further ahead are standing still. You really do need the camera there (and they really ought to be using a stereo camera).
On top of that, the radar signal probably went right underneath the trailer. The beam has to be relatively narrow because otherwise it would be even worse at discriminating between cars and background. But that means it will occasionally miss things.
Tesla didn't recorded anything. They don't have any hardware that would provided the data, i.e. laser radar system. They don't have enough connection bandwidth to transfer the data in real time. For autonomous driving, their system is dead (sometimes literaly) end from yesterday that will be replaced soon with better systems that will provide more advanced data anyway. You can't teach a pig to fly no matter how many million miles you will run with it.
It seems like for every incident they do somehow get detailed logs of what their sensors recorded. Sure it's not realtime, and sure it's not cases where the system performed fine. It feels like a variation of what ESR said -- "given enough eyes, all bugs are shallow". In this case Tesla is getting a load of real-world "bug reports" about their software.
You seem to be arguing that historical sensor reading data for a system with "X" sensors (and software developed for it) will be irrelevant for a system with "X+Y" sensors. That's a plausible assertion, although I'd bet against it.
Do you really think at a certain point data will have every single possible scenario? There will always be edge cases that may make AI too dangerous to use ever.
Oh no! I just think they'll gather edge scenarios at 50x the rate at which Google gathers them.
What can happen in 30 seconds that can't happen in 5 seconds?
That is where the GP's leap of logic fails. People losing attention makes the system less safe than it would be if people could somehow be forced to focus. It does not necessarily make the system less safe than a car that has no autopilot feature at all.
If Google acts as you claim then it is a financial decision and not an ethical decision. If you do not release a product that will save lives just because it isn't as safe as it possibly could be, then you might in fact be considered evil.
I've said it before and I'll say it again.
Any system designed to detect and respond to vehicles or objects in your path MUST BE ABLE TO DETECT ALL SOLID OBJECTS DIRECTLY IN THE PATH OF ANY PART OF THE CAR, period! To do otherwise is irresponsible, dangerous, and just plain stupid! There have been multiple "accidents" like this already, luckily none had been fatal until this one, but there will be more to come unless Tesla (or, more likely the NTSB, since Tesla is all about denying and covering up flaws and blaming the victims at this point) puts an end to it.
If you're too fricking cheap to put another sensor on the roof, or too focused on "design" to allow it because you think it won't be pretty enough, you are WRONG!
That's why other manufacturers put more sensors on their cars and STILL do not make the same bold claims as Tesla. They know that otherwise stupid people will make stupid decisions. Comparisons of the sensors in the Tesla model S and the Mercedes S class of the same year: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-87qz...
Why does it matter if some abuse the autopilot system if it safer overall? If there were evidence that autopilot caused more damage than it prevented it would be quite reasonable to delay the technology (by legal order if necessary), and I am reasonably sure that if Elon sincerely believed that it was killing people he would.
You mean he purchased an automobile?
The airbag blew up in his face?
No. It is a common tactic in most industries to imply human error was the cause immediately after an accident. This quickly placates the general public. When the results of the investigation prove the claim was unfounded, that information doesn't get remotely as much publicity, and nearly everyone has the incident committed to memory as 100% human error.
People driving completely non-autonomous cars have accidents all the time, including ones just like this. The quote from Musk in the first story was that the car's sensors couldn't distinguish a white trailer on a bright day. Obviously that can be difficult for human eyes as well, particularly around sunset.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Nice photo. To be legal, a load extending that far over the end of the truck bed needs a red warning flag.
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I'll leave this here - https://tech.slashdot.org/story/16/04/28/1524230/volvo-engineer-calls-out-tesla-for-dangerous-wannabe-autopilot-system/
These are not some abstract sensors but very specific ones made by known OEM with specific set of data that they can and can't provide. In particular they can't provide 3D map with coordinates of all objects and road surfaces that are not level. :/
Some experience from gathering primitive data like speed/latitude/longitude may be useful long term, but it is usefulness is the same as taking crash PHP programming courses at local technical college expecting to become 3D modeling and AI expert
Yep. And those warnings do not even come from an autopilot.
As of 2016 you can buy a car from pretty much any manufacturer without cruise control.
Oh, or even air conditioning, if you so wish.
6 seconds
Please show me any car in the world that is expected to have zero fatalities on the road. The car wasn't ultimately responsible for the safety of the passengers. The DRIVER was. So the flawed technology in the car failed to see the truck. Why did the DRIVER fail to see the truck? Apparently because he wasn't driving. You can tell his wife it is his own fault he's dead. How is it possible for people to so completely miss the point?
Perhaps he was more confident of the car's collision avoidance system than he should have been. He was *too loyal* a customer.
It's worth noting that Tesla's main feature is being an e-car. The self-driving features are something separate.
(||) Nehmo (||)
Only if you don't care about getting there on time. Buses takes 3 times as long to get anywhere as cars. 1 hour commute? It's now 3 hours long with 4 bus changes. Subways are only faster than cars because they bypass the traffic. Buses can't even do that.
Someone was going to be the first, and there are bound to be many more. But the good thing about automated driving tech, is that every time it happens engineers can go back to the lab and figure out how to prevent that situation from happening in the future. And thus little by little (but in rather short order by comparison to the age of the automobile) automated cars will take over the roads.
:T:R:A:N:S:
I am guessing that the radar system in the Tesla Model S is tuned to monitor a certain plane a few feet above the ground. There have been some videos of Tesla's running into suspended obstacles. I suspect that the radar system saw clear under the trailer.
-rd
The U.S. needs to catch up to other parts of the world in regards to tractor trailer safety. http://www.treehugger.com/cars... Hopefully mandatory side rails is one of the NHTSAâ(TM)s recommendations. We need to do as much as possible to prevent accidents but also as much as possible to mitigate the severity of accidents.
Yes they do. This has been on /. several things as well as other IT news sites and the Main Stream Media.
Please try to keep up.
not where i live. in UK, coach costs 4x as much as petrol for my car. train, depending on time and kind of season ticket, can be 6-10x more expensive. UK actively discourages the use of public transport.
see my comment below.
The crash victim was known to record everything whilst driving.
What happened to his camera?
and, for that matter, how would a trucker in an 18 wheeler _hear_ a video playing in a car, over his own engine noise?
Is it possible to drive an automatic like a manual gearbox?
What do you mean?
Is to possible to manually decide when the vehicle changes speed, like on a manual gearbox?
Yes. As long as the vehicle has actual gears (i.e.: a car with an internal combustion engine) the car will have, in addition to the fully automatic mode ("D" on the gear shift) also have a "sequential gearbox"-mode ("+" and "-" on the gear shift).
Depending on the model, you either tap the stick side ways, or you move the stick to a different position (sometimes called "M") and tap up and down.
This way, your manually control when the gearbox moves to a higher or lower speed.
Depending on your driving style, that might come handy when driving in the mountain.
But the car usually prevents you from destroying it. You can't accelerate to 100km/h while still in 1st gear, the system will shift gear to prevent you from staying too long in over-rev.
On the other hand, this option doesn't exist on vehicle that don't have actual gears (obviously):
(i.e.: there isn't a list of fixed of gear ratio that you select from with a stick, the ratio is a continuously changing real number depending on the speed)
(there's only one fixed ratio ever. But the electric motor itself is always working best no matter its RPMs)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
another tragedy, the result of Godless Harry Potter pandering to Satanic Witchcraft.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Show me where Tesla has ever claimed that Autopilot does all the driving? They've never claimed that.
It's not the "default" behaviour, it's the idiotic and suicidal behaviour. So far, the "vast majority" of people have used it the way it's supposed to be used. But a couple of idiots have been stupid and tried to Darwin themselves.
Actively being engaged is still the default behaviour, and there's a very apparent need to do so if you've ever tried using it.
Tesla has NEVER claimed autonomous driving. Not a single time.
They specifically call it AutoPilot in reference to the aircraft systems which require pilots to maintain full control at all times, and which make zero attempt at all to avoid any form of collision.
Tesla has always been perfectly clear that this is a driver assist feature, akin to autopilot in planes, they've never claimed any form of autonomy here.
There's one person, and only one person, that was 100% responsible for this incident, and that's the idiot who drove in to the side of a truck while watching a DVD.
As I said before, I'm no Tesla fanboy, they do LOTS wrong, but this simply isn't one of those cases.
Elon Musk, chief executive, once bragged that a car could almost drive itself from San Francisco to Seattle “without touching the controls at all”.
Saying stuff like this, and calling it 'auto pilot', contributes to the problems of misuse. Not responding to the many irresponsible owner videos of misuse with offsetting public messages of driver responsibility also contributes in an indirect way. Its not about 'doing something wrong', its about what contributed to the situation that resulted in a death and making changes. Legally they did nothing wrong, but maybe they didn't do it right either.
The alternative being that the system detected the huge piece of machinery directly in front of it and decided to plow into it at full speed anyway?
That's actually a parked trailer, and the car is under the front of the trailer where the truck would normally hook up to it. Since it was parked, I'm not sure what the legal requirements (if any) would be.
The safest car is the one that's always in the shop?
I would need to see context. Elon often talks about the future of transportation, I'm not sure that that quote was in relation to any current product.
As for "calling it auto-pilot"... I'm not sure how that's in any way confusing. Autopilot is generally an aeronautic term, however has also been used in nautical situations in the past. It refers to a system in many ways less advanced than that which Tesla has implemented. Neither the marine, nor aircraft versions of autopilot do ANY collision avoidance. So why would you expect the automotive one to drive by itself when the airplane and boat ones don't????
It doesn't matter what i would expect, it matters what the perception is by Joe Public owners and things that influence human behavior.
Considering the vast majority are using autopilot as it was intended and advertised, it seems that "Joe Public" has the correct perception.
But in every group there will be the occasional idiot, and it appears we've found one here.
1) Many people have said that 'autopilot' to them means driving
2) YouTube videos of Elon Musk's wife closing eyes while driving.
3) Tesla markets this like it is the most amazing thing ever, thus leading people to believe it does something amazing (driving on it's own) which it does not.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Considering the vast majority are using autopilot as it was intended and advertised,.
Actually, we don't know how often drivers are using the system improperly. We don't have that information. All we know is this is the first death reported.
Well, normally I change speed using the accelerator (errr, "gas pedal") and brake - I suspect you mean changing gear selection, rather than changing speed.
Ooops, sorry. My bad. English isn't my first language, and some of the laguage I speak tend to use the same word for both concept.
'D' for drive ; 'P' for park ; '1' for ultra-low speed (pedestrian-designated areas), '2' for low speed (traffic jams), and 'R' for reversing, as I recall. I don't recall ever seeing a "+" or "-" on the mode selector.
Whoa! I haven't seen "1" and "2" in ages... (And I change frequently cars as I mostly drive them from car-sharing)
1 & 2 are an older simpler and coarser concept:
- instead of the transmission being fully automatic (like in "D") and choosing any possible gear ratio from the list
- 1 and 2 are restricted: they're still automatic but limit the transmission to only a smaller subset of the list of gear ratios.
Nearly any modern non-electric car that I've driven recently has the sequential type of control that I've described before:
- either + or - sign that you tap on the sides of the "D" mode
- or a separate "M" mode that has + and - above and below it
With that, you manually ask the automatic transmission to force gear up and down.
Oh, hang on, I'm not sure if that was an IC engine or an electric - I didn't have any reason to ask.
Usually electric cars won't have old-style 1 and 2 or new-style + and -. Because they only have one single gear ratio and just spin the motor faster or slower without problems.
(In fact even "D" and "R" are purely software. No gears are shifted, only a different pattern is sent to the electro-magnets so the rotor spins in the other direction)
The closest thing I've seen to a mode is an "eco" button sitting nearby the selector that will limit the power consumption of the motor (It will never eat more than xx kW, unless you floor the accelerator pedal) which make it accelerate slower and might limit the top speed, but vastly increase the range.
You've got to press a button on the side of the mode selector before you can change modes - "tapping" it anywhere is prevented by an interlock in the selector. I remember having to figure that out first time I found myself with the keys to an automatic.
So more recent cars have a special mode (either D or M) where tapping is not prevented, but actually signals your wish that the automatic transmission changes gear. (When in the corresponding mode, the selector isn't firmly locked in place, but some wiggling is allowed to convey such commands)
Most more modern cars I've seen tend to have the button not on the side, but so placed (under the forward facing part) that you'll automatically press it when you grasp firmly the selector.
(Also, the mode selector is where a normal gear selector is - not on the steering column, as I see in the movies.
I've never seen a steering-column selector. (Except for specially adapted cars for disabled people, or some weird construction machines)
Which movie do you refer to ?
Or do you refer to the letters display on the dashboard itself ?
The machines don't seem to know when to drop down a gear in order to increase engine revs and power. Totally gutless response in consequence.
More modern car might react if you press the accelerator pedal more firmly and automatically drop gear and rev up to give you more power.
The auto cruise
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Have you driven it? I have. If the vast majority were using it inappropriately we'd be seeing hundreds of these stories.
1) never in the history of transportation, in any mode, has autopilot even vaguely resembled autonomous. Autopilot has existed on boasts and airplanes for decades and does not attempt to avoid a collision in any way shape or form. Tesla's autopilot system is way ahead of anything else that bears the name autopilot. But only a complete and utter moron would believe that it can drive itself.
2) I have not seen such videos, but they wouldn't prove anything unless tesla claimed that this was A) a production vehicle and B) a recommended practice.
3) autopilot is something amazing. It's a better cruse control system than exists on any other production car in the world. That doesn't imply in any way that it does more than that. "Amazing" is a qualifier not a quantifier. It says how well something does a task not how much of a task it does. Tesla have never claimed it drives itself. Not a single time.
If the vast majority were using it inappropriately we'd be seeing hundreds of these stories.
How so? And who said "vast majority"? We have seen videos of drivers abusing the system. I would not be surprised if many took their hands off the wheel briefly on occasion, particularly after becoming more comfortable with it after using it for a while. We simply don't know how often that happens, nor what accident rate to expect fron that subset of drivers. You seem a little too confident that abuses are extremely rare. Humans don't always behave so rationally.
It doesn't matter. People are idiots and should be treated as such. Tesla is doing the equivalent of giving a baby a can of soda. You may say it's not illegal to give your baby soda, it won't stop people from cringing in disgust every time they see a parent doing it because it's just a dumb thing to do.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
What it means is that Autopilot has had much less number of accidents than humans driving, therefore it is safer even with the occasional idiot watching Harry Potter when they just agreed not to do that to turn on the autopilot feature.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
If we had always taken that advice, the wheel would never have been invented. Progress requires that the idiots and the lawyers get out of the way some times.
The vast majority of owners use the system properly. The solution to idiots like this is not to cripple the system and stop looking for improvements, it's to point out that they are idiots and that you don't condone their actions.