Self-Driving Tesla Owners Share Videos of Reckless Driving (nytimes.com)

An anonymous reader writes: The driver killed in a Tesla car accident "celebrated the Autopilot feature that made it possible for him to cruise the highways, making YouTube videos of himself driving hands-free," reports the New York Times, adding that one of his videos of a near-miss went viral just 11 weeks before his death -- after it was shared on Twitter by Elon Musk. But USA Today reports that Tesla drivers have also filmed themselves playing Jenga and Checkers or sleeping while using the autopilot feature. "Even though Tesla tells drivers to 'keep your hands on the wheel at all times and stay alert,' the temptation to test a no-hands drive is just too much."

In April, a Volvo driver had criticized Tesla for releasing a dangerous "wannabe" Autopilot system. But when Tesla introduced the self-driving feature in October, Elon Musk argued that "Long term, it'll be way better than a person. It never gets tired, never has something to drink, never argues with someone in the car." He had also said that within three years Tesla cars should be able to drive a sleeping driver in to work -- but that that functionality is not currently supported.

Comments

Re:Within three years...

[Anonymous Coward]

It drove him into a truck and decapitated him. Based on that working perfectly fine, I can assume you work in software.

Re:you can only do so much

[LegionX]

Next up: Tesla builts in a feature that disables the auto-pilot features for obvious idiots.

Re:Wrong approach

[lucm]

But what about all those incidents of Japanese schoolgirls being groped (or even worse) by strangers while nobody else in the wagon or bus says a thing? Hundreds of those cases are documented on pornhub.