Consumer Reports Calls For Tesla To Disable Autopilot (consumerreports.org)

Reader parallel_prankster writes: Consumer Reports is calling on Tesla to disable its "Autopilot" feature that enables hands-free operation. Citing the recent fatal accident involving a car with Autopilot engaged, Consumer Reports labels the feature as "Too Much Autonomy Too Soon." In an extensive article posted at the top of its website Thursday morning, Consumer Reports said Tesla should "disable hands-free operation until its system can be made safer." "By marketing their feature as 'Autopilot,' Tesla gives consumers a false sense of security," said Laura MacCleery, vice president of consumer policy and mobilization for Consumer Reports, in the article. "In the long run, advanced active safety technologies in vehicles could make our roads safer. But today, we're deeply concerned that consumers are being sold a pile of promises about unproven technology. 'Autopilot' can't actually drive the car, yet it allows consumers to have their hands off the steering wheel for minutes at a time. Tesla should disable automatic steering in its cars until it updates the program to verify that the driver's hands are on the wheel."

Tesla says it will continue development of Autopilot, insisting that drivers supported by Autopilot "remain safer than those operating without assistance."

Comments

So just rename it then?

[butchersong]

I suppose Consumer Reports would be just as happy based on their rationale if Tesla were to rename it to "Intelligent Cruise" or something like that.

Re:So just rename it then?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Names matter. Expectations matter. Pragmatically and legally.

I mean, "what a reasonable person would expect" is a common standard, for things like "was this shooting in self defense".

Re:So just rename it then?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it also needs to be deactivated immediately if the driver takes their hands off the steering wheel. No hands-free operation. Force the driver to do what they are supposed to be doing anyway -- driving and being in control.

Re:So just rename it then?

[Anonymous Coward]

So do you expect "Automatic Pilot" on Airplanes to mean land/take off, deal with adverse weather, etc ?

Why do drivers of cars take automatic pilot to mean complete robotic control, "I can not pay attention"?

A car still requires a humans to intervention. No where have I seen automatic pilot to be advanced to complete automatic control/driving.

Only lawyers and the those in the general populace that are trying to elevate auto pilot as responsible, seem to not have the clue. And for lawyers
they have the clue, but they ignore it and exploit the notion that auto pilot means you as the human can rely 100% on the computer.

Lets rename the mode. Even though for 50 years Auto pilot meant do the easy, mundane things. Not complete autonomous control.

Re:So just rename it then?

[boristdog]

Autopilots CAN land, take off and deal with adverse weather...up to a point.
But yeah, anyone idiotic enough to think that something called "autopilot" will deal with every situation is pretty stupid. Though we are talking about humans here, and overall they do tend to be kind of stupid.

Re:So just rename it then?

[mspohr]

If you don't have your hands on the wheel, it will pop up a notice telling you to put your hands on the wheel. If you still don't, it will beep an alert at you. If you still don't, it will gradually slow the car to a stop (it assumes that you are disabled at that point).

Re:So just rename it then?

[F.Ultra]

Immediately deactivating when the user takes their hands off the steering wheel would be way more dangerous. Take of your hands on a normal car and a crash is imminent, not so much with an Tesla with Autopilot.

Re:So just rename it then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you expect an "Automatic Transmission" to operate your transmission for you? Do you expect "Automatic Sprinklers" to water your yard for you? Automatic means what it means and comes with certain connotations. If you want to use the aircraft argument, will you agree then that Tesla should require a several hundred hour certification course before you're allowed to take ownership of your vehicle like is done with commercial aircraft to explain all the nuances of the systems and ensure the pilots know how everything works?

Re:So just rename it then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some autopilots can do a lot of things. Some autopilots can't do anything more than maintain heading. Tesla's "Autopilot" is very much within the (very broad) range of what existing autopilot hardware is capable of.

Re:So just rename it then?

[wardrich86]

Needs a better buzz name - "IntelliCruze"

Re: So just rename it then?

[dgatwood]

IIRC, most current-generation fly-by-wire craft can do so, but I think they all still require a human to taxi them to the runway.

Re:So just rename it then?

[tsqr]

So do you expect "Automatic Pilot" on Airplanes to mean land/take off, deal with adverse weather, etc ?

I have no expectations at all regarding the meaning of "Automatic Pilot" on airplanes, because I don't operate airplanes. Why would you expect the average person to know what an aircraft autopilot does or does not do?

Re:So just rename it then?

[vux984]

If you don't have your hands on the wheel, it will pop up a notice telling you to put your hands on the wheel. If you still don't, it will beep an alert at you. If you still don't, it will gradually slow the car to a stop (it assumes that you are disabled at that point).

And yet all the reviewers and so forth talk about their handsfree driving experience with it.

And Musk has himself said the car will drive from San Fransico to Seattle; almost without touching the controls at all.

You can't have that out there and then expect a reasonable person to think he REALLY has to have his hands on the wheel the whole time, just because the car beeps at him.

Additionally, its unreasonable to put a human being in a situation where they are expected to sit there doing nothing except being perpetually ready to act in case of an exceptional circumstances. Human beings aren't wired for that.

If we're driving and actively engaged, we can keep our attention on the task for long periods of time without much trouble. But we're supposed to just sit there "at the ready" that's a failure waiting to happen, because people don't work like that.

It would be like being told to sit in front of the oven and watch the thanksgiving turkey roast with our hand on the off switch the entire time, ready in case the bird catches fire or something.

We'll check it from time to time, we'll set a timer to help us remember to do that. If we smell smoke or something we'll react ... but no human being can sit there doing nothing, with the expectation of doing nothing, but ready to do something for hours on end. Our attention WILL drift. You can't slap a warning sticker on something and expect it to override human nature.

The feature is fundamentally incompatible with human beings. When its ready to be responsible enough for driving that it can deal with anything that comes up, and if something comes up that it can't do it can pull over and then alert a passenger to take over as driver... then it's ready for people. Until then its just an accident waiting to happen.

Re:So just rename it then?

[Anonymous Coward]

NO Commercial Airline, i.e. NONE allow autopilot landing just as a matter of course. The Airport has to have specific facilities to assist the airplane computer. The wind and atmospheric conditions have the be in a well defined set of parameters. Just throwing out planes *can* land with autopilot is as bad as being a fucking lawyer. Shame. No sex for you.

Re:So just rename it then?

[Joe_Dragon]

Don't say it is peanut free if it isn't.

People can die from that. I know someone that can't have peanuts I don't know how bad but some like that can hit jackpot if that does happen.

Re:So just rename it then?

[sjames]

While some may misunderstand, a pilot is expected to remain at the controls when the autopilot is engaged.

Re:So just rename it then?

[BronsCon]

If you want to use the aircraft argument, will you agree then that Tesla should require a several hundred hour certification course before you're allowed to take ownership of your vehicle like is done with commercial aircraft to explain all the nuances of the systems and ensure the pilots know how everything works?

You're comparing the sale of an item to a government licensing program. Anyone can buy a plane, whether they can drive it or not; cars are (and should be) the same. Now, if you wanted to make the same comparison between getting a drivers license and getting a pilots license, that would be reasonable. And yes, I'm sure most of us here do think it should be much more difficult to get a drivers license; perhaps at least as difficult as getting one's pilots license, something which is required whether or not the craft to be flown has autopilot capabilities (and something which does not cover the myriad different autopilot systems in use, nor those which will be in use in the future and is, therefore, irrelevant to the discussion).

Re: So just rename it then?

[michelcolman]

Nope. They can land, but cannot take off. I know it seems counterintuitive, since landing is more difficult than taking off. But they want a pilot to have his or her hands on the controls so they can react quickly if an engine fails or some other unforseen event happens, requiring a split second decision between continuing the take-off and aborting. An engine failure during the approach is less critical due to the lower power setting.

Also, there is less of a need for automated take-offs as humans are capable of taking off in relatively low visibility, much lower than that required for landing.

Re:So just rename it then?

[saloomy]

Horseshit. I don't expect an AUTOmobile to be mobile for me. Any person knows that an Autopilot in an aircraft doesn't mean there is no pilot. An autopilot in a car doesn't mean the car doesn't need a driver. Tesla tell you NOT TO TAKE YOUR HANDS OFF THE CAR, and they tell you that the Autopilot feature is in beta. The driver that got killed, while sad, was being irresponsible with a piece of technology and not following directions. A chainsaw's instruction manual tells you not to operate without safety goggles and to practice safe operation. If some moron fails to listen to the instructions and loses an eye, that doesn't mean we should take chainsaws away from all individuals. That just means stupid people don't listen to instructions, but we know that already.

Re:So just rename it then?

[saloomy]

Have you ever been in an airplane with out a pilot? Why would you expect to get into a car without a driver?

Re:So just rename it then?

[saloomy]

Popular imagination the warnings, instructions and limitations the manufacture tells you to follow and listen to. To do otherwise is just careless and stupid.

Re:So just rename it then?

[michelcolman]

And it's a lot safer if someone gets incapacitated, for example when having a stroke. The car keeps its lane, gradually slows down and activates the hazard lights.

Re:So just rename it then?

[jratcliffe]

Very true. The manufacturers of security X-ray machines actually include false positive images in the software to keep the person looking at the screen alert.

Re:So just rename it then?

[labnet]

*this*
I've driven a tesla with autopilot for a week, and thought it was an undercooked dangerous feature. The number of times it gave up auto steering because it got confused and the only warning you get is a subtle bong with sometimes sub second reaction times to stop an indecent made turn it off altogether.
I agree with consumer reports. It should be disabled.

Re:So just rename it then?

[Shadow99_1]

Taking your hands off the wheel in a normal car doesn't have to mean a crash is imminent... I'm a USPS Rural Carrier who drives a left hand drive car form the right. Among other things this means I drive exclusively with my left hand and certain controls, like turn signals, require me to take my hand off the wheel to hit the control. So on a regular basis during my almost 100 mile daily drive I have no hands on the wheel and I don't hit anything.

Of course I'm not saying this is safe driving. Heck I also can't wear a seatbelt and to finish a 100 mile route delivering mail and packages in a timely fashion I also have to drive over the 'speedlimit' (which is a bit vague on most dirt roads anyways). Though this is actually legal as rural carriers are 'professional' drivers on the same level as EMTs, firefighters, and police.

Re:So just rename it then?

[layabout]

No, it also needs to be deactivated immediately if the driver takes their hands off the steering wheel. No hands-free operation. Force the driver to do what they are supposed to be doing anyway -- driving and being in control.

I have let my attention drift with my hands on the whee even with the threat of pain and possible death. solution like intermittant buzzing or twitching the wheel will only exhaust the driver with false alerts leading to even more unsafe driving. Because autopilot is as safe as human driver, the only solution is to encourage it's use and get more data to make autopilot even safer. see this R&T article. http://www.roadandtrack.com/ca...

Re:So just rename it then?

[TFlan91]

Have you ever flown a plane with auto pilot?

Re:So just rename it then?

[tsqr]

I must confess, I do not understand what these questions have to do with the post to which you replied, but I will do my best to satisfy your curiosity.

Have you ever been in an airplane with out a pilot?

Yes, most recently on a tour of Air Force One at the Reagan library; however, I have never flown in an airplane without a pilot.

Why would you expect to get into a car without a driver?

Maybe to look for something that had been dropped between the seat and the console? I would not expect to travel in a car without a driver, and I believe that will be true for many years to come.

Re:So just rename it then?

[fluffernutter]

I would consider 'take off' to be 'getting out on the highway', and 'landing' to be 'leaving the highway', so yes, that IS what people expect. The problem is, Tesla Autopilot shits the bed more in between and no one has any control over it when it does.

Re:So just rename it then?

[fluffernutter]

AI only knows that is IS in trouble, but we need it to know if it will get into trouble.

Re:So just rename it then?

[fluffernutter]

Clearly, there is a certain point in human psychology where lack of involvement causes you to lose attention. Manual steering is on one side of the line and Autopilot on the other.

Re: So just rename it then?

[StikyPad]

This is the very reason why physical security is a joke, and all video games and movies with vigilant guards are a joke.

Re:So just rename it then?

[fluffernutter]

You shouldn't be tired behind the wheel. If you weren't tired, you shouldn't be driving if you can't pay attention. Most people out there can.

Re:So just rename it then?

[mspohr]

You're driving a fucking car! Pay attention! Don't watch movies. Watch the road.

Re:So just rename it then?

[fluffernutter]

"CruzeMeCruzeYouNOW"

Re:So just rename it then?

[ragahast]

You make all good points...but it seems that the real problem here is that Autopilot-supported drivers have been in any accidents at all. Even if the proportion of accidents is dramatically lower, consumers, media and perhaps regulators are going to keep freaking out over every single incident.

Car accidents are extremely common. Autopilot-supported drivers, and in the future, fully automatic cars, are always going to be involved in some number of accidents each year.

Re:So just rename it then?

[Bender Unit 22]

You should never underestimate the level of stupid in people.

Re:So just rename it then?

[Pentium100]

Humans can do some activity for long periods of time, but the activity has to involve doing something.

When I drive my mechanical car, I have to constantly adjust the steering wheel to keep the car on the road (the road isn't completely straight after all) and gas to keep the speed as needed (the road goes up and down which makes the car slow down or speed up). This creates "something to do" for me, so I can stare at the road for hours.

I also know that if I stop looking at the road, I will quickly end up in a ditch or similar.

Now, let's say the car controls bot speed and direction for me. Now I have to stare at the road, but have nothing to do. This is bad. Having nothing to do makes me bored, I may even fall asleep or find something else to do. After all, the car is driving itself and if I stop looking at the road for a minute I will not end up in a ditch. 99.99% of the time that is.

There are websites that test your reaction. You usually have to wait a few seconds for some part of the screen to change color and click a button as quickly as you can. Normal reaction time is about 210ms. Now, get a test that instead of making you wait for a few seconds, makes you wait 10 or 30 minutes (or an hour) for the color change. What will be your reaction time then?

Re: So just rename it then?

[kellymcdonald78]

Tesla explains the limitations of the system when you buy the car, the car explains it to you again when you activate the feature (requiring you to accept that you understand), tells you again when you turn it on to drive somewhere, and reminds you yet again if you take your hands off the wheel. If some moron can't understand that, what would is a 100 hours of training going to accomplish. Maybe they should put shockers in the seat for additional reinforcement

Re:So just rename it then?

[Pentium100]

What reaction time would you expect from a guard after seeing something out of the ordinary (after looking for it for half a day)? Would a few seconds be reasonable ("I think something moved way out there, hmm, it may be the enemy, OK, now I see multiple enemy soldiers approaching with their weapons drawn, EVERYONE! WAKE UP! WE GOT COMPANY!")?

What reaction time do you expect from a car driver?

It's not that "people aren't wired that way."

Yes, it is. This is why such tasks (because of the required re-wiring) are so difficult, just like calculating large numbers. On the other hand, picking out faces from visual noise or seeing patterns in randomness ("hey, this cloud is shaped like a cat") is extremely easy for humans.

Re:So just rename it then?

[mspohr]

If you're not constantly looking around you for other cars, etc. then you shouldn't be driving (or autopiloting) a car.
I've driven thousands of miles using Tesla's autopilot and it's much less stressful since you don't have to be continually making minor adjustments to speed and steering. You can take in the larger picture of your car and surrounding cars. Tesla AP also does a much better job of keeping the car in the center of the lane and controlling your following distance from the car in front. It will warn you of surrounding cars and refuse to change lanes if another car is near.
Watching the road and other cars is sufficient engagement to ensure attention. If you're not doing that, you shouldn't be driving.

Re:So just rename it then?

[Pentium100]

Correction, I shouldn't be driving a car with autopilot. I can drive my car just fine, the minor adjustments help to keep my attention on the road.

Re:So just rename it then?

[fnj]

Autopilots CAN land, take off and deal with adverse weather

Bull. In actual fact, the automatic landing system in a Boeing 747-400 cannot be used in a headwind or crosswind of over 25 knots (barely a strong breeze on the Beaufort scale), a tailwind of over 10 knots (Beaufort gentle breeze), or a crosswind of over 5(!) knots with one engine out (Beaufort light breeze, leaves barely rustle, anemometer barely turns). If there is wind shear or gusting, it must not be used at all.

Re:So just rename it then?

[fnj]

If you are driving a vehicle NOT from the driver's seat, you are a menace and a danger to the public and should be arrested and dealt with harshly.

Re: So just rename it then?

[exomondo]

IIRC, most current-generation fly-by-wire craft can do so, but I think they all still require a human to taxi them to the runway.

Specifically what is an example of one?

Re:So just rename it then?

[vux984]

What a crock of shit. According to this logic, commercial flight should be the most dangerous form of transportation.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TRAVEL...

What makes you think pilots are immune? Its just that at 10,000 feet over the atlantic the sky is pretty empty.

That said, they have all kinds of stuff to help them stay engaged. Paperwork and reports. Communications. A co-pilot, and flight crew to interact with. Plus its, you know, their job... so they are trained, and if they can't do it, they get fired.

Unlike a Tesla owner which only has to buy the car, doesn't have any training, and doesn't have anyone watching him drive to prevent him from being tempted.

Plus pilots working on paper work and checklists, go for walks and stretch their legs, they play cards, solve puzzles, and other activities that all would not be compatible with the requirements for driving a Tesla.

Re:So just rename it then?

[alcmena]

I'm genuinely curious about your experience because I bought a Model S and took delivery of it two weeks ago. I've used Autopilot a ton, and have been quite happy with it. I've never had it once give up because it got confused, though on somewhat sharp turns it will beep and tell me to put my hand on the wheel (there's a pressure sensor in the wheel, so when it pops the warning you actually have to firmly grasp the wheel as opposed to lightly holding it like I typically do; autopilot or no).

However, I also don't push it to the limits. I notice when the lines are fading and check the HUD to see if the car can see the lines or not; if not, I disengage myself. Likewise, in stop & go traffic (where I think it really shines), I watch for jerks who try to cut me off and disengage if one does so. I've never felt unsafe using the feature. Instead, I actually feel safer because of all the feedback the car gives me about what it is sensing around it.

Re:So just rename it then?

[layabout]

All drivers suffer from some form of attention drift be it from radio, landscape, thoughts about work etc. It's unavoidable part of the human mind. Driving adjuncts such as autopilot mode reduce the consequences from driver inattention.

Re: So just rename it then?

[LifesABeach]

How about, "sidewinder?"

Re:So just rename it then?

[thegarbz]

Why would you expect the average person to know what an aircraft autopilot does or does not do?

You know planes have an autopilot though. The average person knows this.

Now would the average person be comfortable in a plane without a pilot? This isn't some deep level technical stuff. It's just a basic application of the same process to both scenarios. Planes have autopilot. No I don't want to fly in a plane where the pilot wasn't in the cockpit.

Easy, and no technical knowledge required.

Re:So just rename it then?

[Shadow99_1]

How exactly do you expect a rural carrier to deliver mail out the right side window from the left seat? Besides that buying a right hand vehicle in the US is a challenge, with most foreign cars needing to be over 25 years old to even bring into the country. Kits to create a second set of pedals and a wheel exist, but are both expensive and don't include nifty things like turn signals, wiper blade controls, headlights, etc. So most rural carriers are left driving their own vehicles as needed. The exception are carriers who are provided LLVs (long life vehicles) for their routes, though they aren't so great on back roads.

Re:So just rename it then?

[ThatsNotPudding]

I would suggest "Half Pregnant" as a replacement.

Re: So just rename it then?

[coolmoose25]

If you are a pilot, this is intuitive. Takeoff is the most dangerous phase of flight. You are low, and slow, and you have to run your engines at near full capacity to take off. Landing is similar, but you already have airspeed enough to fly the plane, and some altitude to play with, and you can trade one for the other to a limited degree, as well as power in reserve if needed.

Re:So just rename it then?

[fluffernutter]

But if these very brief spans of inattention aren't getting you into accidents, why would you take a chance on Autopilot? At least you have control to slow down if you find you are being distracted, but with Autopilot you're just going to get in an accident and there is nothing you can do about it.

Re: So just rename it then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, you know, just disable autopilot with an audible warning if you take both hands off the wheel like most lane following adaptive cruise control systems from other manufacturers do.

Re:So just rename it then?

[houghi]

So do you expect "Automatic Pilot" on Airplanes to mean land/take off, deal with adverse weather, etc ?

I would expect it to do all of those things, yes. That is what automatic to me means. However I am sure that will be covered when I take my exam for my flying license.
Just like I would a hoover board not to roll or 'limitless internet' to have no limits how you name things is important.

Why do drivers of cars take automatic pilot to mean complete robotic control, "I can not pay attention"?

Because that is what the name implies. Things are called "I can not believe it's not butter" and you can not call it "butter" and then say that is should be clear that it isn't.

A car still requires a humans to intervention. No where have I seen automatic pilot to be advanced to complete automatic control/driving.

A car needs human intervention. We hear all the time about the self driving car that Google and others are doing and they are already on the road, as far as I know. Because that is what they tell me. So apparently either of us is not paying attention. Regardless I assume you have heard about it.
To be honest, the first time I read the subject a few days ago here on /. that there was a deadly accident with a Tesla Autopilot my thought was
1) I did not know they already were allowed
2) I wonder what the cause was that the self-driving car failed.
It was only after reading that the meaning of that word did not mean what I thought it ment.

Only lawyers and the those in the general populace that are trying to elevate auto pilot as responsible, seem to not have the clue. And for lawyers
they have the clue, but they ignore it and exploit the notion that auto pilot means you as the human can rely 100% on the computer.

Well, I am one that did not have a clue either and I am not any of those above. I would also include marketing people to it. To me it is clear that those who are using the name automatic pilot knew extremely well how it would be perceived. This is not just a case of 'new and better' on soap. Now a person has died.

Lets rename the mode. Even though for 50 years Auto pilot meant do the easy, mundane things. Not complete autonomous control.

In all my years, auto pilot, to me means that it can operate automatic and to me that means without any interaction of humans. And if a human intervention is asked, it should know how to deal with that if that does not happen.
e.g. I have automated many things and if it needs input, it either stops or goes on with a default.

Again: I am sure that the people who named it were well aware of how it would be perceived by the general public and therefore have named it that way. They should rename it to "I can't believe it isn't an automatic driving system as people interaction is still needed."

And furthermore, you have wording in the US on how to use your car mirrors, yet something so essential does not even have a sort of dead-mans switch where you need to have at least 1 hand on the stearing wheel?

As somebody who is on /. I was fooled by the wording, so I can only imagine that others were as well. I also know that words that had one meaning 50 years ago have a different meaning now or in a different context. I can say that as a hacker.

I also want to be clear that I am just talking about the perception of the word. I have no idea if and/or how the drivers where informed about the functionality of and by itself.

Re:So just rename it then?

[ripvlan]

Yes - that's not a bad idea. I work in the medical device field. What Tesla is doing would not be tolerated by the FDA. You can't "beta" a system that could potentially kill somebody on the masses. Possibly targeted research with people who are part of a study.

But you are correct - the way it get's labeled is how it expectations are set. Accidence avoidance - but not self driving. No matter what they put on the blog if the message is "wink wink" to the consumer there is trouble to pay.

Going back a few months everyone jumped on the Volvo engineer who blasted Tesla for mislabeling their system. In hindsight - hopefully his wisdom can be understood. As somebody who lives this stuff daily I understood the guy from Volvo - and the stupid gear-shifter design from Chrysler.

These are real concerns. Consumer safety. If your website crashes you might think "gosh people will be angry" but if your car crashes...well...that's a bit more literal isn't it.

Re:So just rename it then?

[minogully]

Humans are not good at that

Many humans are actually very good at this, hence the term "back-seat driver".

But, I hate driving for these types, so I'm happy to hear that you aren't one. :)

Re:So just rename it then?

[minogully]

If we're driving and actively engaged, we can keep our attention on the task for long periods of time without much trouble. But we're supposed to just sit there "at the ready" that's a failure waiting to happen, because people don't work like that.

I guess you've never heard of a back-seat driver, because this is exactly what they're doing as passengers. Except instead of being ready to take the wheel they're ready to give driving advice.

And considering that back-seat driving is common enough that there's a well-known term for the behaviour, I'd say that people DO work like that. Maybe not all people, but many people.

Re:So just rename it then?

[vux984]

I guess you've never heard of a back-seat driver,

Was that really necessary or productive?

because this is exactly what they're doing as passengers.

Sort of, but not really; they don't really need to be paying attention continuously; they can drift in and out as much as they please and still be plenty effective (at being annoying); they can even just be event driven and scan the situation whenever the vehicle begins an overt maneuver before opening their mouths.

"Why did you turn this way, you should have gone that way..."

Maybe not all people, but many people.

Most people aren't back seat drivers. It would need to be nearly all people for the feature to work. Not 1% or 5% or 10% or whatever.

Re: So just rename it then?

[david_thornley]

So an autopilot could take off if that were designed into it?

Re:So just rename it then?

[slashdotwannabe]

Actually, in California more training is required to get a driver's license (56 hours behind the wheel) than a pilot's license (40 hours flight training time).

Re: So just rename it then?

[slashdotwannabe]

This is not me disagreeing with you on any of the substantial points you've made, but, they could very easily build a sensor into the steering wheel that detects if the hands have been removed and start a countdown with both visual and audio cues to "Please make sure your hands are on the wheel at all times! Autopilot will disengage in 10 seconds...".

In airplanes, the manufacturers build in a stick shaker that gives the pilot an unmistakable warning that something bad is happening and to fucking pay attention RIGHT NOW. For TCAS it gives verbal deconfliction warnings ("Turn left! Dive!") (and tells the other plane to "turn right! climb!"). Maybe a shocker isn't such a bad idea ;)

Re:So just rename it then?

[slashdotwannabe]

I would consider 'take off' to be 'getting out on the highway', and 'landing' to be 'leaving the highway',

Gosh! It's funny then that they have different words for the same exact thing then! I bet you consider "jumping off a cliff" and "jumping off a curb" to be the same thing too!

Re:So just rename it then?

[BronsCon]

56 hours behind the wheel, or a valid license from another state, actually.

Re: So just rename it then?

[michelcolman]

It could, and has even been tested already. But they decided not to actually certify and install them.

Re: So just rename it then?

[kellymcdonald78]

The Tesla auto-pilot does exactly that. I don't know if the timer is 10-seconds, but the vehicle will begin to slow, and eventually stop if hands are removed from the wheel for a period of time

Re: So just rename it then?

[david_thornley]

I don't see in general why they would, since an airplane should not take off if there isn't a competent pilot. There's something to be said for an untrained person being able to land if something bad happens to the pilot and co-pilot.

Re:So just rename it then?

[Coren22]

Do you expect an Automatic Transmission to shift itself from Park to Reverse, to Drive without user intervention? I don't.

Do you expect Automatic Sprinklers to setup their own run time without a user doing anything?

If you want to use the aircraft argument, will you agree then that Tesla should require a several hundred hour certification course before you're allowed to take ownership of your vehicle like is done with commercial aircraft to explain all the nuances of the systems and ensure the pilots know how everything works?

Yes, I expect that users of a car have gone through a several hundred hour training course...it is called driver's education and training driving under a supervising licensed driver.

Re:So just rename it then?

[sglewis100]

I've been on a commercial American Airlines flight where they announced a landing by way of autopilot. It's not done in every case (far, far from it), but it certainly is done. And by way of me being able to type this, quite often, it's done successfully.

Re:So just rename it then?

[labnet]

I drive around sunrise and dusk, so it had trouble with lighting from low sun angles.
It also would get confused with lane merging / diverging markings and also if there were weathered patches of line markings.

Elon Musk may meet his Waterloo here

[HBI]

Ignoring litigation exposure is a really bad idea. I doubt Tesla is adequately capitalized to handle the flood of lawsuits that every little incident involving "Autopilot" is going to result in. Consumer Reports is right in this case...they should disable it, settle the claims and be happy it isn't worse.

Re:Elon Musk may meet his Waterloo here

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

How about the lawsuits when they remove a feature many people, the vast majority of whom have enough common sense to use it correctly, paid for?

Re:Elon Musk may meet his Waterloo here

[HBI]

I hadn't forgotten about that, but I judge those are less likely to result in huge, punitive awards by stupid juries. People with missing limbs or urns are very sympathetic.

I worked this BI business for a bit and I know.

Re:Elon Musk may meet his Waterloo here

[OrangeTide]

A class action lawsuit for a bait and switch is still going to be cheaper to settle than a lawsuit involving negligence, injuries and fatalities.

Re:Elon Musk may meet his Waterloo here

[eepok]

Check the EULA. I'd be willing to bet that they don't guarantee that all features will be available at all times or in perpetuity.

Re:Elon Musk may meet his Waterloo here

[DarkOx]

Tell that to Volkswagen

Re:Elon Musk may meet his Waterloo here

[eepok]

Agreed.

Eventually, there is going to be a MASSIVE legal battle that everyone building autonomous vehicles will have to face. Are the manufacturers at fault for collisions that their autonomous vehicles cause or fail to avoid? Because even if their autonomous drive mode prevents 2/3 of would-be collisions in those vehicles, the other 1/3 of those collisions will technically be the result of software shortcomings and thus be the fault of the manufacturer.

With >30,000 traffic deaths per year in the US alone, can autonomous vehicle makers deal with the financial effect of being the direct cause of even 100 people?

Re:Elon Musk may meet his Waterloo here

[NatasRevol]

Changing the name would be even cheaper.

Re:Elon Musk may meet his Waterloo here

[NatasRevol]

The freaking manual says to not do what most of these accidents have done.

Re:Elon Musk may meet his Waterloo here

[Anonymous Coward]

The number of affected Volkswagen owners is orders of magnitude larger than owners of Teslas with autopilot.

Re: Elon Musk may meet his Waterloo here

[NatasRevol]

LOL, the guy running the most innovative car company in the world today AND the most innovative rocket company today is an idiot.

So says the anonymous coward.

Re:Elon Musk may meet his Waterloo here

[Shortguy881]

How about we fix the legal system to prevent stupid lawsuits? Its not a "hands free" system, so why should we give any merit to the deaths of people to stupid to follow simple instructions and run themselves off of the road? I honestly feel this autopilot is doing the world a great service by culling the gene pool.

Re:Elon Musk may meet his Waterloo here

[tazan]

Yes, If my kid is riding his bike and gets run over by one of these things, I won't care in the least that 2 other kids lives were saved, or even 100. I'll be getting the pitchforks and torches.

Re:Elon Musk may meet his Waterloo here

[eepok]

Yes, but I was responding to someone who was asking about the risk of being sued for not providing a service (assuming they turn off the autopilot) for which the customers paid.

Re:Elon Musk may meet his Waterloo here

[HBI]

Fixing the legal system is a great goal, but if you make product liability suits a lot harder to do, you run the risk of having manufacturers simply not care about safety. Doing it in a way that arrives at both goals - manufacturer responsibility and merited, judicious suits - would be a great trick and worthy of a lot of thanks.

I don't think it's possible, though.

Re:Elon Musk may meet his Waterloo here

[NatasRevol]

I doubt they'll turn it off. Maybe require a legally binding document that you know how & when to use Autopilot.

Re:Elon Musk may meet his Waterloo here

[eepok]

That's my expectation as well. They need to officially and without question have the driver acknowledge in, big giant print, "I am liable for all actions of this automobile regardless of any settings I enable or disable."

Re:Elon Musk may meet his Waterloo here

[theshowmecanuck]

There is the flip side. If they remove it too soon, they will essentially be admitting they produced a dangerous product making them culpable and open to more lawsuits. American tort law makes it too dangerous to do the right thing sometimes.

Re:Elon Musk may meet his Waterloo here

[fluffernutter]

They should be able to use it, but if they are so confident in it they accept liability for all damages caused including for vehicular manslaughter if it kills someone.

Re: Elon Musk may meet his Waterloo here

[fluffernutter]

Unless you're the type of person who would throw a full bottle of pills or a razor blade into a suicide watch ward, there is a line you understand not to cross. We're all idiots in some way, you can't just release a product and claim that you didn't know what would happen.

Re:Elon Musk may meet his Waterloo here

[HornWumpus]

Won't help. 3rd parties will still sue Tesla. You can't waive someone else's right to sue.

Re:Elon Musk may meet his Waterloo here

[fnj]

They need to officially and without question have the driver acknowledge in, big giant print, "I am liable for all actions of this automobile regardless of any settings I enable or disable."

Sorry, that's not how liability works. Such a disclaimer isn't worth shit legally. What Tesla needs to do ASAP is update the software so that it is much, much less forgiving of stupid reckless assholes being stupid reckless assholes. It needs to be able to reliably sense immediately when the driver takes both hands off the wheel, and it needs to immediately within 1-2 seconds sound a super loud and repeated warning, and remove throttle control when that happens.

They are at the point of imminent PR disaster and this could mark a huge downturn in the company. For damage control, I can see them maybe disabling the feature entirely until they can get this done. I think they could still sell this in positive terms without making it look like an admission of massive failure, but the window for that is rapidly closing.

Re:Elon Musk may meet his Waterloo here

[NatasRevol]

as opposed to the regular idiots on the road?

The robot is safer.

You idiots want perfect. Yet 40,000 Americans die every year in car accidents. Imagine if we cut that down by 10% or 50% or 90%.

Re: Elon Musk may meet his Waterloo here

[NatasRevol]

So, car companies are highly speculative?

WTF are you on, dude?

Re:Elon Musk may meet his Waterloo here

[SeaFox]

Won't help. 3rd parties will still sue Tesla. You can't waive someone else's right to sue.

Don't cell phone companies and broadband providers do it all the time with their "binding arbitration" clauses?

Re:Elon Musk may meet his Waterloo here

[SeaFox]

Wait -- "third parties". I see what you mean, HornWumpus. Nevermind.

Re:Elon Musk may meet his Waterloo here

[houghi]

And how many people read that manual? Did they sign of on it? If people can die, it is not a nice thing to say that 'it was in the manual all along'.

Reminds me of one IT manager who wrote an extremely extensive procedure about how his procedures worked in the company expecting that nobody would read it so he later could say that he send it and people signed of on it and now that that is the law.

It is the defense siblings know well and is called "stop hitting yourself". Although technically correct, it is still wrong.
And that IT manager? He was extremely pissed that I read all of it and debunked most of the things he tried to push through.

Re:Elon Musk may meet his Waterloo here

[david_thornley]

Human drivers who kill pedestrians or cyclists aren't necessarily immune from consequences, either.

Re: Elon Musk may meet his Waterloo here

[dave420]

If you read about the McDonald's coffee case you'd not be so flippant about it. It's not doing your argument any favours, either, as it directly disagrees with your claim. They were clearly at fault, and were suitably punished.

How many accidents has it avoided?

[gfxguy]

Airbags and seat belts kill, too - but they save way more lives than they take, so they are standard mandatory equipment. I certainly think we need more time to evaluate, but I'd be willing to bet that autopilot has avoided accidents that dumb asses would have otherwise caused.

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[HBI]

Threat mitigation is not going to turn a single lawsuit around, because in all of those - surprise - something bad will have happened.

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[Solandri]

That's data Tesla should have, since they get driving statistics from their cars. They should be able to easily calculate the accident rate for their cars under similar driving conditions with and without Autopilot on.

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[Oligonicella]

Apples and oranges. Airbags and seat belts are designed to be of use during an already underway accident. Autopilot caused the accident.

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[geoscodin]

The first fatality investigation referenced a previous near-miss where a truck blindly changed lanes and the Tesla avoided it, though I can't provide the citation off the top of my head. I remember studying a law case in college where a woman activated the cruise control in her RV, wrecked, sued, and won. (Law school, not sit-com.) Many people just don't read instructions. Auto-pilot assists the driver; it doesn't replace him. Maybe they need a way to keep the driver involved: steering wheel pressure sensors, or eye sensors. My phone and my TV can tell if I've stopped paying attention and turn themselves off. Why can't a car use similar technology to remind me to pay attention to the the two-ton vehicle I'm driving? Granted, it shouldn't have to do so, but hey -- welcome to the 21st century.

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[eepok]

Unfortunately, what didn't happen doesn't matter in law.

Let's say you're driving drunk one day. You hit a car and kill all 4 occupants. You will be thrown in jail and sued in civil court. And you will lose. No court has ever said, "Well, he was such a good driver before. He even actively prevented some collisions with a wise use of horn and blinkers!" Nope. You're still at fault for the collision you cause.

And this is going to be the MASSIVE legal battle that anyone building autonomous vehicles will have to face. Even if their autonomous drive mode prevents 2/3 of would-be collisions in those vehicles, their other 1/3 of those collisions will be the fault and liability of the manufacturer.

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[Anonymous Coward]

Takata airbags on balance probably saved more lives than they've taken. But should we ignore the fact that there is a design flaw that causes some of the inflators to disintegrate and kill/maim passengers in a accident and not recall those cars?

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[h4ck7h3p14n37]

Maybe they need a way to keep the driver involved: steering wheel pressure sensors, or eye sensors.

That's what Mercedes did, their vehicles disengage the driving assist features if you take your hands off of the wheel for longer than ten seconds.

Here's someone defeating the disengage function with a soda can.

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[wagnerrp]

No. Autopilot was active during an accident. The truck caused the accident by turning left in front of oncoming traffic. The car had the right of way, and the truck was supposed to wait for the car to clear before continuing. Autopilot failed to prevent the accident, in the same way automatic emergency braking systems offered by other brands may similarly fail to detect an unexpected obstacle and stop.

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[dgatwood]

I remember studying a law case in college where a woman activated the cruise control in her RV, wrecked, sued, and won. (Law school, not sit-com.)

That's in large part because early cruise control was called "auto-pilot".

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[wagnerrp]

As designed, Tesla's Autopilot is not what many people think an autopilot is; it's a driver-assist feature and not an autonomous driving system.

But Tesla's Autopilot is what an autopilot actually is. It's a driver aid, that exists to reduce a driver's workload while behind the wheel, not eliminate it entirely. Just because a pilot turns the autopilot on does not mean they are magically no longer the pilot and can zone out.

As such it makes people less safe on the road for themselves and others when they engage it;

People make themselves less safe on the road by not understand how their vehicle operates.

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[AvitarX]

How good are the statistics on accident and fatality rate for conditions, times, etc?

I assume they're getting much better with the insurance dongles, but I'm curious.

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[wagnerrp]

Maybe they need a way to keep the driver involved: steering wheel pressure sensors, or eye sensors.

The system already does this, and will throw visible and audible warnings, before eventually slowing to a stop if the driver does not take action to confirm they are still maintaining control.

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[NatasRevol]

You sure about that?

You might want to go look up a company called Takata. Which has tens of millions of airbags recalled.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05...

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[NatasRevol]

In fact, Tesla's manual TELLS drivers not to use it in certain situations, exactly like the ones where some of these accidents happened.

But, yes, it's very poorly named.

That doesn't put the whole burden on Tesla though. Not understanding, but using anyway, a hands free driving system, in traffic, is going to kill people, regardless of what it's called.

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[eepok]

And if the pilots of a passenger airliner set the jet on auto and the jet immediately turned into a nose dive resulting in the death of everyone on board, they would investigate the autopilot software and instruments. If the autopilot was found to be at fault, the make would be sued out of existence. It doesn't matter how many times it works well or how many times it saves people, the law does not view harm "on balance". The law seeks out and penalizes fault.

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[quantaman]

I certainly think we need more time to evaluate, but I'd be willing to bet that autopilot has avoided accidents that dumb asses would have otherwise caused.

I on the other hand am quite dubious. Even if we had sufficient data we don't really know the comparable accident rates for the same driving sans autopilot. Plus there's the question of what happens to driver behaviour after 5 years of driving with an autopilot, nor how the software and its inputs sensors react as the cars get older and start to break down.

The time to evaluate was before releasing it to the general public. This tech is far too new to be considered safe at this point.

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[gfxguy]

Points taken, but I don't think autopilot was operating outside of it's current design. If people need examples of how NOT to use it, then this case is it.

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[Zak3056]

Airbags and seat belts cannot cause accident putting others at risk, autopolit can, that's a big difference.

Not sure about seatbelts, but I'd put money on airbags.

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[gfxguy]

Of course not - but was there really a design flaw in autopilot? Or was it more like the idiot who activates cruise control and then takes a nap?

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[layabout]

That's data Tesla should have, since they get driving statistics from their cars. They should be able to easily calculate the accident rate for their cars under similar driving conditions with and without Autopilot on.

see: http://www.roadandtrack.com/ca...

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[ausekilis]

"I just spent $100k on a car with Autopilot. I'm going to drive down a winding road, at night, without headlights, and let Autopilot do the work".

This is another datapoint proving that intelligence and income have no direct correlation.

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[quantaman]

Points taken, but I don't think autopilot was operating outside of it's current design. If people need examples of how NOT to use it, then this case is it.

Well that's my concern with longterm usage. If you have a product that's dangerous to use in a certain way it's not enough to simply say "don't use it like X" if X is the natural way to use it.

In the case of the autopilot X is "don't zone out while letting the autopilot drive".

But that's the entire point of an autopilot!

The AI pays attention so you can think of other things, Telsa's suggested usage of "continue to pay complete attention to the road" is useless since because if I'm watching the road I might as well be doing the driving as well.

If they want to actually ship this tech and make it useful they can. The autopilot only acts if it sees a potential accident, and if it has to make an adjustment the car annoys you by sounding a buzzer, vibrating the seat, or doing something to make sure you don't make it a habit.

But then it wouldn't be an "autopilot". Telsa is trying to have it both ways by claiming they have an autopilot while insisting you don't use it as such.

Re: How many accidents has it avoided?

[StikyPad]

Well, it takes two to tango, but the autopilot failed to stop just as much as the truck (may have) failed to yield.

Re: How many accidents has it avoided?

[StikyPad]

It would be interesting if you could build credit like that though. But I suppose it would also create perverse incentives.

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[bluefoxlucid]

That depends on how you look at it.

An erroneous driver causes a collision of a given magnitude. Similarly, an erroneous computer system assisting the driver causes a collision of a given magnitude.

If, in the long run, the human driver causes more collisions and, in similar situations, a greater magnitude of damage for a given collision, what do you say about the computer assist? It depends on your political position.

If you want to attack the assist, you hyperfocus on the fact that it was active and failed to prevent a collision at all. That tiny, singular effect brings the full weight of responsibility onto the computer assist.

If you want to support the computer assist, you cite that drivers without the assist cause collisions with greater frequency and deadliness than drivers on the assist. In that view, you demonstrate that the assist caused a net reduction of collisions.

The second position is more honest, largely because you can't make that argument if the numbers show the opposite (unless you make up fake numbers).

In medicine, a great deal of attention is given to cancer screenings. Over half of all men over the age of 50 have prostate cancer, and most men die with prostate cancer. Prostate screenings can detect these cancers, and cannot identify which cancers will cause harm and which will go unnoticed entirely by the patient. The current understanding in the medical field is that the harm caused by unnecessary prostate cancer remediation is immense--impotence, sepsis, hormonal imbalances, chronic constipation, and even death--while the number of lives saved and the amount of good done at all is little more than a statistical error.

This means prostate screenings and remediation actively spread large amounts of harm across the patient base, and are essentially a form of quackery; yet the medical community holds that doctors should never be penalized for their judgment on performing a screening, and should not be forced to withhold screening at a patient's request, because it is unethical to block the judgment of a medical professional in a situation where he believes the potential benefit is high, and it is unethical to deny the patient a chance to make his own decisions about his own health. Those decisions may be perilous, but they are the patient's to make for the same reason we don't force vaccines on everyone (although that's quickly becoming a public health issue rather than a patient health issue, which changes the ethical dynamic).

The issue raised here is similarly complex and is of similar form. In any given situation, a human operator may cause a fatality that autopilot could prevent, and autopilot could cause a fatality that a human operator would have avoided; in the span of all situations, one of these causes more harm than the other. If you want to hold autopilot accountable simply because it was active this once in this situation, is it not then also as valid to sue and imprison for manslaughter a human operator who was negligent by not utilizing autopilot to prevent a collision?

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[bluefoxlucid]

That's itself dangerous, because then the car behaves unpredictably if that occurs. It's negative punishment, and it's been shown drivers will duct tape soda cans to the steering wheel to avoid this (because punishment has complex interactions with risk assessment, instead of blunt interactions with rewards reinforcement).

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[fluffernutter]

And they haven't publicized that! Makes you go hmmmm...

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[fluffernutter]

Legalities of right of way don't matter in this discussion. The only way Autopilot didn't cause this accident is if the human driving manually would have gotten into the same accident.

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[bluefoxlucid]

Dissimilar. An autonomous driver is a different kind of thing. CDL has all kinds of more-restrictive regulations on it because commercial drivers have a different level of training and general danger than passenger-vehicle drivers.

Demonstrating that a feature does not increase or actively decreases vehicular incidents builds a powerful case for reduced manufacturer liability. Demonstrating the improvement of that feature's safety benefits as a continuous process eliminates any legal standing for a negligence case. When the technology is normalized, defects outside normal variance then draw more scrutiny; with modern, widely-available technology greatly outperforming your own, you can only be found negligent.

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[fluffernutter]

The key word here is *recalled*. A product is causing injuries and deaths, so people are prevented from using it.

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[bluefoxlucid]

For a large enough driving pool in a localized area, you can determine statistical significance. Concentrated autonomous driving would tell you how well the cars drive with many other autonomous cars around; while having ~200,000 cars spread among the states would tell you how well they perform when surrounded almost entirely by standard, human-driven cars. This requires a large number of miles driven over a long span of time to generate sufficient data.

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[fluffernutter]

Does having the manual in the car when it is purchased lead to a legal proof that the manual has been read? Shouldn't they have had to sign the page?

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[fluffernutter]

You can't convince me that Autopilot is simply better than every other human out there; we have now seen it make some dumb mistakes. While there is a chance that someone who is better then Autopilot could get into an accident with Autopilot, then Autopilot is creating an accident for that person. Therefore, Autopilot needs to be better then all humans before it can be said to be totally safe. If not totally safe, then it shouldn't be on the road.

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[quantaman]

For a large enough driving pool in a localized area, you can determine statistical significance. Concentrated autonomous driving would tell you how well the cars drive with many other autonomous cars around; while having ~200,000 cars spread among the states would tell you how well they perform when surrounded almost entirely by standard, human-driven cars. This requires a large number of miles driven over a long span of time to generate sufficient data.

Except Tesla auto-pilot drivers are not typical drivers. They're wealthier, more technical, more male, more experimental, etc, etc.

They're also driving in different situations, and using the AI in only specific situations, and using the AI may affect their non-AI driving habits as well.

Those kinds of studies are possible, they do them a lot in public health, but it's highly non-trivial and if you want to dispute the results there's always nits to pick, just look at any study on gun ownership.

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[Pentium100]

It should check if the driver is actually paying attention.

For example: at random intervals the car starts to drift very slightly to one side, the driver then has to steer it to keep it away from the lane marking and do so for a couple of minutes. If the car goes over the lane marking, it means the driver is not paying attention, so the autopilot should safely pull the car over and stop.

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[Pentium100]

I'd call not noticing a big obstacle such as a tractor trailer is a design flaw.
So is deciding that a car will fit on a hole in said obstacle without checking if the height of the hole is enough for the car to pass unharmed.

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[fnj]

The truck caused the accident by turning left in front of oncoming traffic.

I don't think it's been established that the truck's maneuver was hazardous. If an investigation finds that to be the case, fine. Until then, get real. You can't force every left turn to be made such that no reckless asshole is in a position where he could possibly plow headlong into the turning vehicle without exhibiting ordinary driving caution.

In real traffic you don't have the luxury of waiting to make your turn until the oncoming lanes are all free of any possible kamikaze all the way to the vanishing point of the horizon. I remember from my days of taking driving lessons many years ago, the calm voice of the instructor, "You could have turned" after I passed up more than one chance of turning left, waiting with too much caution.

While you're waiting stopped for your left turn, you are open to a terrible danger of being smashed from the rear. That's how my car got totaled once, stopped dead waiting to turn left, blinkers flashing, brake lights hard on. A guy driving home from the hospital plowed into me at 50 mph without touching his brakes. Another time, I barely missed the same thing happening; the driver behind me swerved at the last second and smashed up his suspension on the curb.

I am super paranoid about this scenario now and avoid it if at all possible. If I do have to stop on the road, I take great pains to pulse the brakes for better visibility.

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[khallow]

Therefore, Autopilot needs to be better then all humans before it can be said to be totally safe. If not totally safe, then it shouldn't be on the road.

Wow, that's a lousy argument. I disagree on the first assertion on the grounds that it is meaningless semantics twisting. And I certainly disagree on the leap of logic that claims we should take an important tool off the road on the grounds that it can't meet some absurd standard of operation which people don't have to come even remotely close to meeting.

That second point bears repeating. There are drivers who are much safer than the average driver (and drive enough that overall accident rates per mile are extremely low) who in turn are much safer than the drivers who cause most of the auto accidents in the US (eg, drunk drivers and other such incompetents).

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[NatasRevol]

So? They're still *causing* injuries.

And way more than Autopilot being put to use well beyond it's capabilities.

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[Pentium100]

Actually, I usually assume all other cars on the road are driven by drunk/inattentive/sleeping drivers, have broken brakes and will continue traveling in the direction they are going at the speed they are going no matter what.

If I see a car come up from a side road I assume it will go into the intersection even if I have the right of way, so I slow down a bit and prepare to quickly brake if it actually happens.

I do this because even if at some times the other driver would be at fault for the accident, getting my car straightened out, patched up and repainted is not a fun experience.

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[fluffernutter]

So you would rather Autopilot average them all off. At best, we will be saving the drunks at the cost of some good drivers. This, even if we ever reach full adoption for drunks which we never will.

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[david_thornley]

If you make a left turn when you don't have the right of way, and your maneuver will force traffic with the right of way to brake sharply, you're screwing up and should be taken off the road until you can drive competently. I really doubt the autopilot sped up into the accident. Autopilots can screw up, but that's not a normal screw-up mode for them.

In other words, we aren't talking about kamikazes (and you should drive as if some of the drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians do want to kill themselves, if you want to stay out of accidents). The autopilot almost certainly did as well as a human would have, considering that humans get distracted momentarily a lot.

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[Elric55]

So you would rather Autopilot average them all off. At best, we will be saving the drunks at the cost of some good drivers. This, even if we ever reach full adoption for drunks which we never will.

who's to say a drunk isn't a good driver when not drunk? or determine the value of one individuals life over another?

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[fluffernutter]

All I'm saying is, if Autopilot isn't as good as the best driver then some drivers will be put into accidents that they otherwise wouldn't have been. I don't agree that it should cause extra accidents for the best drivers, while 'protecting' the worst.

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[khallow]

"Average them all off" is far superior to what you pull here.

At best, we will be saving the drunks at the cost of some good drivers.

Good drivers get killed by drunk drivers too. And it's worth noting here that a remarkable number of deaths in the US are associated with driving under the influence of alcohol.

In 2014, 9,967 people were killed in alcohol-impaired driving crashes, accounting for nearly one-third (31%) of all traffic-related deaths in the United States.

We also have here the fallacy of the excluded middle. There's no reason that sufficiently safe drivers can't continue to drive and the US has a large pool of high mileage drivers who have collectively reduced the accident rate to 11 deaths and 1850 crashes per billion miles.

Now, I noticed in the months ago thread where I first mentioned these US safety numbers, my following observation:

The problem here is two-fold. First, we have a very low accident rate in the US. There is not that much room for improvement. If you look at the proposed benefits of self-driving vehicles, you find that they speak of highway driving a lot. That is already among the safest sort of driving.

Further, both cargo and taxi driving are high priority targets. It would replace the safest human drivers, the ones who do it as a profession.

There could be a period of time when automated driving makes things worse due to replacing the safest human driving and human rather than the worst.

Sorry, I don't see replacement of the worst drivers as being a serious issue. Even wholesale replacement of all human drivers would still gain from getting the worst drivers off the street and thus would have somewhat weaker safety thresholds to meet than the best human drivers and still come out a net gain for safety.

The real problem is that some implementation proposals of self-driving vehicles looks to replace the safest drivers first not the worst drivers. For example, if you replace all truck drivers with less safe self-driving vehicles while doing nothing about the drivers who generate most accidents, you will see an increase in vehicular accidents and deaths.

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[fluffernutter]

Sorry, I don't see replacement of the worst drivers as being a serious issue.

You just didn't read anything I wrote.
1) You won't get a replacement of the worst drivers because most of them won't be able to afford automation.
2) You will be creating accidents for the best drivers that they otherwise would not have had.

I can't see what part of your post indicates why it is OK that we cause accidents for the best drivers, OR what we do to get all drunks into cars that are luxury brand vehicles.

Re:How many accidents has it avoided?

[khallow]

1) You won't get a replacement of the worst drivers because most of them won't be able to afford automation.

Well, they're driving self-driving vehicles anyway because that was your scenario.

I can't see what part of your post indicates why it is OK that we cause accidents for the best drivers

And I don't see that in any part of your posts either. I wonder why.

Its not Hands Free though...

[Pubstar]

Everything I've read about the auto pilot feature states that you need to have your hands on the wheel at all times. There is even a fucking nag prompt for you to hold the steering wheel.

Re:Its not Hands Free though...

[speedplane]

Everything I've read about the auto pilot feature states that you need to have your hands on the wheel at all times.

Everything but the name itself. Autopilot implies automatic piloting, i.e., little to no human intervention.

Re:Its not Hands Free though...

[daenris]

Nope. I thought so as well, because that's what the statement in their press materials for it indicated to me. But the truth is it looks like the nag is based on a torque sensor or something on the steering wheel, so it only really nags you when it's going around curves above some threshold. There are videos of people filming their commute where they spend most of the time without their hands on the wheel.

Re:Its not Hands Free though...

[mspohr]

Autopilot in an airplane maintains direction and speed. Tesla autopilot does the same.
Autopilot in airplane doesn't swerve to avoid crashes. But Tesla does swerve/brake in some situations.
Autopilot in airplane requires the real pilot to pay attention and be ready to take over at any time. Tesla pops up a notice every time you turn it on which says "KEEP YOUR HANDS ON THE WHEEL AND BE READY TO TAKE OVER AT ANY TIME".
The name is perfect.
Unfortunately, we still have some of the same stupid people who can't read and don't follow directions.

Re:Its not Hands Free though...

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything I've read about the auto pilot feature states that you need to have your hands on the wheel at all times.

This. Even with auto pilot on a commercial jet liner, someone has to be in the cockpit at all times, monitoring and ready to take control. Why? In case shit happens. Which is always does, at the most unexpected times. If you want to get from A to B without having to interact with the vehicle in any capacity, ride a bus or call an Uber. Please don't tell me you're so stupid as to honestly claim you didn't know the car really wouldn't drive itself with 0% action on your part. If you are this stupid.. please ride a bus or call an Uber.

Re:Its not Hands Free though...

[F.Ultra]

It could have been named "two sticks up your ass" and the three accidents that have happened so far would probably still have happened. The problem is not in the name.

Re:Its not Hands Free though...

[Anonymous Coward]

When an airplane autopilot fails, it is typically more than 4 miles away from a collision risk, and that 4 miles is perpendicular to most of its velocity. When a Tesla autopilot fails, it is typically less than 4 meters away from a collision risk, and that 4 meters is exactly where the vehicle is going at the time.

You cannot always apply the same standards when the scale changes.

Re:Its not Hands Free though...

[SvnLyrBrto]

Seriously? With a username like "speedplane" you don't know anything about pre-Tesla autopilots, their capabilities, and their limitations? Autopilot, in a Tesla or a Boeing or anything else, means a set of functionality to reduce your workload by holding attitude and speed, and maybe to make course corrections. It does not mean 100% full-time hands-off operation while it engages you in witty banter with the voice of Anthony Daniels.

Re: Its not Hands Free though...

[StikyPad]

Autopilot definitely swerves to avoid collisions. Mostly those with terrain, and mostly by following prepublished flight paths, but swerve it does. Some military aircraft have terrain following radar as well. And it could well be argued that any pitch adjustment to maintain altitude is terrain avoidance, by definition.

Re:Its not Hands Free though...

[Joe_Dragon]

Clippy says it looks like auto drive has failed want to take over!

Re: Its not Hands Free though...

[mspohr]

By that definition, Tesla AP swerves to avoid collisions by following the lines on the road.
In an aircraft if you set the altitude too low, it won't swerve to avoid a mountain but will happily run into it (I believe it's called CFIT "Controlled flight into terrain").

Re:Its not Hands Free though...

[xrhunex]

Autopilot in an airplane does far more than maintain speed and heading. An autopilot in an airplane can takeoff, land, and everything in between. Autopilots are better at every single part of the flying process than humans, as long as all equipment is operating properly. It's not even a contest. Machines are superior to humans. There are autopilots now (the X-47B being the main interest) that can land tailless aircraft on aircraft carriers without human input. Despite the fact that airplanes fly through the air, and so it seems like it's more open than, say, a road, airplanes are far more restricted than cars. The 'choices' an autopilot or human pilot make are a lot more constrained than a typical car driver, with the exceptions of course being the cases where catastrophic equipment failures are present (at which point the meatbag pilot must take control and handle the situation - regardless of whether its in the air or on a road).

Also, modern autopilots are integrated with TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance Systems) in order to do exactly that - avoid traffic collisions. An autopilot integrated with TCAS would be able to avoid traffic just like a human pilot, because collision avoidance has *very* strict rules set by the FAA and other aviation administrations around the world which determine things like: who goes nose up, who goes nose down, what altitudes they need to go to, and what heading/speed they need to be at. And the TCAS/autopilot systems on aircraft can communicate this amongst each other in real-time at rates exceeding 50 Hz (as opposed to a human, whose reaction time from eye-to-brain-to-hand is 10 Hz at a very theoretical-best).

So comparisons to an aircraft autopilot aren't really appropriate. They do just as much as the human does, but both are so heavily constrained on what they can do in an average situation that it becomes easier to make the decision making autonomous. However, due to the ironically more open nature of driving a car on a road than flying an airplane through the air, the things a human can (legally) do and what a car's 'autopilot' can do are not yet the same. If roadways were as heavily restricted as airspace and required the same level of training, planning, and communication for a driver to operate a vehicle on the roadways, then the autopilot's job would be far easier to automate. But we don't require drivers to have much training, we don't require them to register their driving plan before driving, we don't require them to communicate their driving plans to others while driving, we don't require them to communicate changes to driving plans while driving, etc.

Roadways are also far more densely packed, and there is currently no analogue of a TCAS. To be clear about what TCAS means - it's not just any system that does Something to avoid a collision. It's a very specifically defined piece of equipment that is required to transmit data such as x, y, z velocities + accelerations, course, true airspeed, heading, latitude, longitude, altitude, etc. While there are systems in cars that can be classified as 'tries to avoid collisions' there are no systems which communicate with other cars in order to calculate whether collisions are about to occur, and offer corrective actions to avoid collisions - and this owes a lot to the fact that the car/roadway system is far more complex in some ways than the airplane/airspace system, and also that we allow extremely old cars to drive on roads, whereas the FAA can mandate TCAS to be installed on all aircraft that wish to fly in certain airspaces (low flying aircraft like crop dusters, for example, usually aren't required to have a TCAS, but they also fly in airspaces that don't typically intersect with commercial passenger aircraft).

Not trying to beat you up on these things, it's just that I have experience with working with, and on, these systems in aircraft. I agree that the name is appropriate if people understand how to use it (and Tesla is clear on the "Keep your hands on the damn wheel, you hairless monkey" thing), but perhaps if people are too stupid to understand it based on its name, then perhaps the name needs to be changed. It's our job as engineers to make sure that everyone is safe, even the stupid people.

Re:Its not Hands Free though...

[Kjella]

Except when you hear Musk talk, it hardly sounds like the Autopilot will change name between now and becoming self-driving. He talks as if this is their automatic driver but since it's still in beta wait just a little bit longer to take your hands off the wheel. When in fact it's much closer to the adaptive cruise control/lane keeping etc. that other cars have had than to Google's car project. Sure the legal disclaimers are all there but very often they disclaim anything and everything just to be on the safe side.

Re:Its not Hands Free though...

[mspohr]

Clearly you have a very detailed knowledge of modern autopilot systems and their advanced capabilities.
However, this discussion is about what the average layperson thinks about and knows when they hear the term "autopilot" and that is a simple system which controls the direction, speed and altitude of an airplane. I believe that is the concept that Tesla was trying to invoke in naming their system. Clearly the Tesla autopilot has capabilities such as traffic aware cruise control and proximity sensors which give it some advanced features but they have always said that it is not autonomous and that the driver must keep hands on the wheel and be prepared to take over at any time.

Re:Its not Hands Free though...

[mspohr]

It is adaptive cruise control and lane keeping and that is what they have advertised. They have never advertised it as autonomous.
Every time you turn it on it says: KEEP YOUR HANDS ON THE WHEEL AND BE READY TO TAKE OVER AT ANY TIME
This is not a legal disclaimer buried in the fine print. It's clearly displayed right in the middle of the screen every single time you turn it on.

Re:Its not Hands Free though...

[Pentium100]

It's the same problem as the TSA - everyone agrees their priority is supposed to be bombs and guns, but because 99.99% of their day job is confiscating shampoo bottles and matchbooks they eventually become blind to everything else.

Which is why there should be tests every few days (someone working for the TSA or another agency tries to smuggle in a simulation gun or a bomb, if they succeed, they get a large reward (so, more incentive to be creative about hiding it), while the guard who let them pass gets in trouble). Then the guards would not be as surprised when they find a real gun on someone.

Re:Its not Hands Free though...

[fnj]

You can't make these fucking idiots understand that. I have tried time after time. I'm afraid the definition of the word is evolving in front of us. I don't like it, but stupid people are redefining what an autopilot is.

Re:Its not Hands Free though...

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, we still have some of the same stupid people who can't read and don't follow directions.

Pilots require a ridiculous amount of training compared to car drivers even though comparatively speaking an aircraft is much much safer to pilot than a car. The name would be perfect if the relative training and skill levels of those at the controls were comparable, but they aren't.

Re:Its not Hands Free though...

[david_thornley]

Yup, and when you start Pokemon Go, you get a loading screen telling you to watch where you're going, showing a player walking into a very large and angry-looking pokemon (a Gyrados, for those interested). Some people are never going to heed a warning.

Re:Its not Hands Free though...

[speedplane]

It does not mean 100% full-time hands-off operation while it engages you in witty banter with the voice of Anthony Daniels.

You can take your hands off of an airplane's controls while operating autopilot for seconds, or often even minutes. You cannot do that with Tesla's autopilot at all.

umm nope

[luther349]

tesla never called it safe or secure it clearly says keep hands on wheel.

Re:umm nope

[speedplane]

tesla never called it safe or secure it clearly says keep hands on wheel.

This is from their website:

Tesla Autopilot relieves drivers of the most tedious and potentially dangerous aspects of road travel. We're building Autopilot to give you more confidence behind the wheel, increase your safety on the road, and make highway driving more enjoyable.

They don't say you can take your hands of the wheel, but they certainly give that impression.

Re:umm nope

[F.Ultra]

"to give you more confidence behind the wheel" does not give me the impression to take my hands of the wheel.

Re:umm nope

[Xenx]

That statement doesn't say anything at all, implied or otherwise, about being able to drive without hands on the wheel. The fact that they say to drive with your hands on the wheel is rather explicit.

Re:umm nope

[fluffernutter]

That's interesting. So a system that takes the most potentially dangerous aspects out of driving needs to be coddled out to a clear highway with good lane markings before it will even activate, and requires you to always be prepared should shut off at the hint of something confusing. Yeah, that's some marketing twisting of words right there.

Re:umm nope

[luther349]

if you ever use one irl the system clearly says keep hands on wheel its a warning the second you turn it on.

Auto pilot is not...

[AcquaCow]

....Autonomous pilot.

It's designed to reduce the number of inputs a driver/pilot have to make... it is not designed to be used in zero visibility and still requires the driver/pilot to be aware of what is going on and be ready to take control.

Re:Auto pilot is not...

[OverlordQ]

People on slashdot love to rip on companies who advertise Unlimited but still have caps. "Unlimited should mean Unlimited!" But give Tesla a pass when they bill something that's not Autopilot as Autopilot.

The Musk Distortion Field is strong.

Re:Auto pilot is not...

[twotacocombo]

People on slashdot love to rip on companies who advertise Unlimited but still have caps. "Unlimited should mean Unlimited!" But give Tesla a pass when they bill something that's not Autopilot as Autopilot.

Oh, but it is autopilot. Name a vehicular autopilot system that is designed to allow the operator to engage and then ignore it completely for the duration of the trip, without risk of disaster. Commercial aviation relies heavily on autopilot, but they still employ 2 pilots per flight. Why? Because if there's only one pilot, and he's incapacitated, autopilot simply does not have the same capabilities to get the aircraft home safely. Don't you think they would have axed the expensive pilot positions years ago if the technology existed to allow it? So yes, it is autopilot, but no it's not meant to replace a human.

Re:Auto pilot is not...

[SvnLyrBrto]

Autopilots are a specific set of technologies that have existed for many decades, have a known and long-established use case, and whose limitations are likewise well known, documented, and understood (by non-morons). There's no case for the use of the term "autopilot" to be false advertising or making promises that the technology is incapable of meeting. This is not the case when a promise of "unlimited" whatever is made.

An example of Tesla falsely advertising or reneging on its claims would be if they terminated the unlimited use of the supercharger network for Model S owners. But that's not happened, is it?

Re:Auto pilot is not...

[clickety6]

During a conference call today, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced a coming software update for the Model S electric sedan that the company hopes to roll out in the next three months. Its key feature is a new "autopilot" mode that allows for hands-free driving between certain destinations. "We can basically go between San Francisco and Seattle without the driver doing anything," said Musk.

Re:Auto pilot is not...

[dcollins]

Here's the very first sentence from the Wikipedia article on autopilot:

"An autopilot is a system used to control the trajectory of a vehicle without constant 'hands-on' control by a human operator being required."

Literally the first thing to be said about traditional Autopilot is that you don't need your hands on the control. Yet here is Tesla saying it's Autopilot, except you need your hands on the control. A quick Google image search for autopilot (once you get past the "Airplane" movie stills) is a bunch of airplane pilots reading papers and such with hands off the yoke.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopilot

Re:Auto pilot is not...

[david_thornley]

Lots of people believe that an autopilot on an aircraft can fly the plane so it doesn't need a pilot. Lots of people don't pay much attention to warnings. Lots of these people drive on the roads I drive on. We're not talking about people making bad assumptions and screwing up and getting their Darwin awards here, we're talking about people taking other people with them.

If Tesla encourages bad driving around me, it's my concern.

Re:Auto pilot is not...

[OverlordQ]

So Unlimited is just UNilaterally LIMITED.

Re:Auto pilot is not...

[drinkypoo]

Lots of people believe that an autopilot on an aircraft can fly the plane so it doesn't need a pilot.

And yet, pilots are expected to remain in their seat and alert when autopilot is in use so that they can step in if there is a problem, and if there wasn't a human in that seat and fulfilling that role, more people would be too afraid to use air travel.

If Tesla encourages bad driving around me, it's my concern.

Well, they don't. They actively discourage it. Before you can use autopilot you have to receive a lecture about your responsibilities vis-a-vis safe driving and autopilot, which includes remaining alert and attentive, with your hands on the wheel. The fault begins and ends with the chucklefucks who are abusing autopilot.

Re:Auto pilot is not...

[david_thornley]

What I am saying is that lots of people think an autopilot means the pilot doesn't have to pay attention, and that if there's enough of them who notice the word "autopilot", have this false belief, and don't bother noticing or retaining anything else, they endanger me. If I'm in an accident, I can suffer (and have suffered) even when the other person is completely to blame.

Re:Safety third!

[gfxguy]

CS has always been activists, but over the past couple of years they've changed their magazine to a much less useful format, added bigger pictures and "web like" graphics and word clouds... much less content, much more flash, and much more emphasis on being activists instead of product reviews. Not saying it's not still useful, but they've annoyed me more than once with their activism.... one of the reasons I like their ratings is so that I don't need the government to intervene, it helps me make intelligent decisions.

fucking great

[indy_Muad'Dib]

im going to lose the best feature of my model S because some asshole decided to watch a movie instead of the road while in his car.

Re:fucking great

[drinkypoo]

A man died because Tesla marketed the system as more than what the specs said it could do.

That is a lie. Tesla marketed it as handling the activity of driving for an alert driver who may well have to step in and start driving again

He's dead because of the Elon Musk hype train because the way Musk talked about the feature, he felt comfortable doing this.

His feelings may or may not be legally actionable. That he didn't follow directions, however, is extremely relevant. Tesla won't even turn on the feature without giving the driver a lecture, so he has no excuse for not understanding his responsibilities as a driver.

Re:fucking great

[michelcolman]

He's dead because he was watching a movie instead of the road. He didn't even brake at the last minute.

Re:fucking great

[roman_mir]

People of the USA lost their freedoms and money as the government decided to 'help' them with taxation/inflation and redistribution because some assholes could not manage their own finances.

Re:fucking great

[fluffernutter]

I have to follow an artificially set speed limit everywhere I go because a lot of people can't be responsible about what speed they drive.

Re:fucking great

[Areyoukiddingme]

Any idiot who has ever interacted with a product user knows that if a product lets someone do something without any (real) obstacle, they'll do it.

Yes, and we give Darwin Awards for that and move on. There are limits in consumer protections beyond which a court will say, "His own colossal stupidity resulted in his death. Case dismissed." The lone Tesla Autopilot death is most definitely in that category.

Re:2016

[aliquis]

The year of Linux in the automobile!

Windows Mobile is back! ... as Windows Mobile 3310!

It's a net safety issue

[jratcliffe]

I'm entirely willing to believe that Teslas on autopilot get into accidents that their human drivers would have avoided. I'm also very confident that Teslas on autopilot avoid some accidents that their human drivers would have caused/been involved in.

Question is, which number is higher? If Teslas on autopilot are involved in fewer accidents per mile traveled (adjusted, as much as possible, for type of driving) than human drivers, then autopilot should remain. If the Tesla accident rate is higher, then it should be disabled.

Re:It's a net safety issue

[DarkOx]

Teslas on autopilot are involved in fewer accidents per mile traveled (adjusted, as much as possible, for type of driving) than human drivers

Not a slam on Tesla here, I totally think they are in the right on this so far every autopilot incident I am aware of the operator was misusing the technology by not paying attention and being prepared to take over as Tesla makes it VERY CLEAR every time you turn the thing on that you are supposed to be.

That said the statistic is a bit self serving because most users would be driving manually in the most challenging conditions because autopilot can't or won't. I don't know to many human drivers who get into accidents while cursing down long strait interstate highways in daytime fare weather conditions with minimal to moderate traffic. AP gets used a lot in that situation I would expect. Add some bad weather, cross streets, traffic, other aggressive drivers, poor or absent markings, construction, cops direction traffic, etc and the rate of human error I have no doubt goes up sharply. This would all be things that AP does not deal with much in terms of the "miles its driven" but human drivers do deal with.

So when Tesla says that AP gets into less accidents per mile than human drivers, and they have, I find it suspect that while it might be technically correct (the best kind of correct :-)) in the strictest sense, it might not really mean much.

Re:It's a net safety issue

[PPH]

It will probably be decided based on whether the human or autopilot accidents cost insurance companies more or less. They couldn't give a damn about anything like dead meatbags until they have to pay for it.

Re:It's a net safety issue

[jratcliffe]

Agreed, since insurance company costs are very closely correlated to accidents and fatalities.

The IIHS doesn't do all that crash-test rating and advocacy work just to be nice.

Too cautious

[worldthinker]

If I recall correctly, Consumer Reports was the same organization that demerited cars for having electric power windows because they said something to the effect that you'd be trapped in the event your car sank in a body of water.

It is sad that someone died while using Tesla's "autopilot" feature. But 1) evidence suggests the driver contributed to his own demise by ignoring or circumventing the warnings and safety features of the product 2) the product is only improved by the knowledge gained from this incident making future trips safer for everyone. 3) it is already evident that the rate of fatalities using this mode is already a 35% improvement over non-autopilot users. (1 fatality in 130 million miles driven vs. 1 in 96 million)

Re:Too cautious

[jratcliffe]

it is already evident that the rate of fatalities using this mode is already a 35% improvement over non-autopilot users. (1 fatality in 130 million miles driven vs. 1 in 96 million)

Is this an apples-to-apples comparison? I would imagine that autopilot is much more heavily used on highways than on surface streets. So, if the fatality rate on highways per mile is lower than for surface streets, it wouldn't be an entirely fair comparison.

I genuinely don't know the answer to this, couldn't find any data close at hand...

Re:Too cautious

[Etcetera]

If I recall correctly, Consumer Reports was the same organization that demerited cars for having electric power windows because they said something to the effect that you'd be trapped in the event your car sank in a body of water.

Actually that does happen on occasion. It's usually not blamed on the electric windows unless someone else managed to survive and can say what happened, but it factors into it. Do you carry a glass-break device (hammer or whatever) with easy reach in the passenger compartment? If not, you're at risk with automatic locks on a way that someone with a manual override -- that is... a crank -- isn't.

Re:Too cautious

[tsqr]

1 fatality in 130 million miles driven vs. 1 in 96 million

That is 1 fatality in 130 million miles of Tesla autopilot driving, compared to 1 in 96 million miles for "normal" cars driving in all sorts of weather, road conditions, and traffic conditions. Hardly a fair comparison. And even then, you're ignoring the problems inherent in a relatively small sample size.

Re:Too cautious

[HornWumpus]

The risk for driving on divided highways is about 1/4 that of all driving.

Divided highway risk is about 1 in 360 million.

Re:Too cautious

[DerekLyons]

it is already evident that the rate of fatalities using this mode is already a 35% improvement over non-autopilot users. (1 fatality in 130 million miles driven vs. 1 in 96 million)

Is this an apples-to-apples comparison?

No, it's not. The numbers for non-Autopilot users (I.E. the general public in non Tesla vehicles) are an average based on billions and billions of miles driven. The number for Autopilot users are based on a single sample of 130 odd million miles.

Or to put it more bluntly - a single non Autopilot death tomorrow will change the number somewhere down in the range of the third or fourth decimal place at worst. A single Autopilot death tomorrow will double the fatality rate and render Autopilot a little more than half as safe as not using it.

Re:Too cautious

[MattskEE]

3) it is already evident that the rate of fatalities using this mode is already a 35% improvement over non-autopilot users. (1 fatality in 130 million miles driven vs. 1 in 96 million)

With just a single fatality the fatality rate per mile driven is not known terribly precisely yet. Further, this rate is not corrected for sources of error including that Autopilot is only used on highways, what driving conditions Autopilot is typically used in, whether Autopilot users were alert and paying attention, that the Tesla Model S itself is a very safe car, or that the drivers who own Tesla vehicles may not be representative of the average US driver.

I think more data and analysis is required to make a confident comparison in safety of driving with Autopilot on vs. off.

Re:Too cautious

[SmilingBoy]

Except the accident wasn't on a real divided highway if you have turning traffic crossing your lane. Frankly, the horrible design of this junction has a lot to do with this accident - I don't think such a type of a junction ("divided" highway with two lanes in each direction, no speed limit, no traffic light, but a junction where turning traffic crosses your lane) exists where I drive (mostly Benelux, Germany, Scandinavia, UK).

Re:Get Real

[mspohr]

Following the same logic, Consumer Reports should call on all automakers to disable cruise control in automobiles. Cruise control (first generation) will merrily plow into anything in front of the car.

What happened to personal resonsibility?

[l2718]

As far as I know the documentation and the system in operation both clearly indicate to the user that they must be alert and in control of the vehicle at all times. If the users fails to do that the fault is entirely their own.

Re:What happened to personal resonsibility?

[TroII]

I agree it's mostly the driver's fault, but that doesn't relieve Tesla of liability. If I have a pool in my backyard surrounded by a 10' locked fence, and a kid climbs the fence and drowns in my pool, I can still be sued even though it was the kid's fault. If I have a pit bull in my home, and a burglar breaks in and gets bitten by the dog, I can still be sued even though it was the burglar's fault. Case law is full of suits like this that have been won by the plaintiff.

Re:What happened to personal resonsibility?

[dhaen]

That's because the law is an ass. Let's bring back common sense and personal responsibility.

Re:What happened to personal resonsibility?

[TroII]

No argument from me on that sentiment!

Re:What happened to personal resonsibility?

[Areyoukiddingme]

I agree it's mostly the driver's fault, but that doesn't relieve Tesla of liability. If I have a pool in my backyard surrounded by a 10' locked fence, and a kid climbs the fence and drowns in my pool, I can still be sued even though it was the kid's fault. If I have a pit bull in my home, and a burglar breaks in and gets bitten by the dog, I can still be sued even though it was the burglar's fault. Case law is full of suits like this that have been won by the plaintiff.

Case law is full of such cases being filed. It is NOT full of such cases being won by the plaintiff. Having a pool with no fence is having an attractive nuisance. Having a pool with a fence is bog standard across the world. Yes grieving parents will still file suit. They lose.

Can't disable it

[synapse7]

Then they would be sued for every fatality where it was not available. Also, isn't this like suing GM if your cruise control ran you into a semi, or did that happen when cruise be came available?

Darwin was right.

[Charcharodon]

This just in idiots doing idiotic things with technology. I say no to disabling it. Stop protecting stupid people from themselves.

Re:Darwin was right.

[AthanasiusKircher]

This just in idiots doing idiotic things with technology. I say no to disabling it. Stop protecting stupid people from themselves.

I might agree with this if these "idiots" only endangered themselves. But they can endanger passengers and other cars on the road as well.

This is like someone arguing in favor of letting people drive drunk or while texting or whatever... "Let the idiots kill themselves!" Except they can kill other people in the process when a multiton vehicle slams into another because of that "idiot." There's the problem here.

Re:Darwin was right.

[larryjoe]

From a CNN report:

A Tesla spokesperson released a moment by moment description of what happened in the 40 seconds before the crash.

After 15 seconds of what was described by Tesla as "visual warnings and audible tones," the autopilot began to disengage because the driver's hands were still not on the wheel.

About 25 seconds before the crash, "Autosteer began a graceful abort procedure in which the music is muted, the vehicle begins to slow and the driver is instructed both visually and audibly to place their hands on the wheel," according to the company.

Tesla said the driver responded 11 seconds before the crash by retaking the wheel, turning it toward the left and pressing on the accelerator.

"Over 10 seconds and approximately 300m later and while under manual steering control, the driver drifted out of the lane, collided with a barrier, overcorrected, crossed both lanes of the highway, struck a median barrier, and rolled the vehicle," according to Tesla's account.

So, the man never made the decision to disable autopilot. Instead, the car turned off the autopilot on its own. So, Musk could say with a straight face that autopilot was off. But how can a safety mechanism be allowed to turn itself off under any circumstances? Talk about the exact opposite of fail-safe.

Re:Darwin was right.

[Charcharodon]

In the long run it will be healthier for society, even if they take a few innocents with them. (People who get crashed into aren't paying attention either.)

Try riding a motorcycle for a few years if you want to see the true minimums required to operate a vehicle on the road. Most people can barely make the cut.

Re:Get Real

[supremebob]

I wonder how many people are actually using autopilot on their newer Model S and Model X cars right now. If it's only a few thousand cars and they're already had several accidents, it's not going to look good for Tesla.

Elons Official Response

[Mr. Sketch]

Tesla is calling on car manufacturers to disable its "Self-pilot" feature that enables self-driving operation. Citing the recent 32,675 fatal accidents involving a car with Self-pilot engaged, Tesla labels the feature as "Too Much Self Reliance Too Soon." Tesla said car manufacturers should "disable self-driving operation until the system can be made safer." "By marketing their vehicles as 'Self-pilot,' car manufacturers gives consumers a false sense of self-determination."

Will this interfere ....

[PPH]

... with the inevitable Pokemon Go autopilot seek mode?

Bring back horses

[dhaen]

Or even palanquins. No-one went though the windscreen (windshield) when they were in use.

one death and consumer reports freaks

[renegade600]

one death in a tesla and consumer reports freaks...how many deaths are there daily from car accidents and consumer reports are not saying a thing. Makes me wonder who is paying them off!

Cruise control by any other name ...

[jonesy16]

I really don't see a problem with the way that Tesla has implemented this or the name they choose to call it by. Clearly you are going to have some people who push it to the extreme and those people will suffer (or possibly die) because of it. I don't really see how this is all that different from cruise control in general. Cruise control was originally designed to alleviate the physical stress of maintaining a constant speed over long distances (for similar reasons that it exists on planes). Adding the ability for the car to maintain itself in a lane is a further iteration of that, as is the car's limited ability to respond to obstacles in its way. Guess what, if you set cruise control on your car and don't pay attention to changes in traffic ahead of you, you may slam into a car going slower than you, yet none of our cars warn us when we engage cruise control that we should keep checking for cars in front of us (I'm sure it's in the manual in the glove box though). Should Tesla change the name of the feature? I suppose they could, I doubt it would modify anyone's behavior. It doesn't take you that long to realize what the car appears to be able to do before you'll let it steer, accelerate, and brake, regardless of what's it called or what warning messages are read to you.

Change the Name, keep the feature

[Striikerr]

It's ridiculous to completely disable something which helps improve safety because people make stupid decisions and choose to misuse it. People maize things all the time, often resulting in injuries or death (look at drinking and driving for an example of this).

Tesla needs to change the name of this feature as it is being taken too literally by people (even though they are told how it is intended to function and what is expected of them). Leave the feature in tact but perhaps also push a brief video which plays on that big screen of theirs which explains the feature and the risks involved in not being attentive. Lately, Telsa may wish to do something to check the driver's attentiveness at varying intervals. (kind of like how long string highways introduce curves now and then so that drivers maintain vigilance and don't get sleepy etc.

Taking away a safety feature like this would be like removing seat belts from cars because in some rare instances, a person can get injured or die as a result of wearing the seatbelt during some type of accident or because a person wore the belt incorrectly. I know people who opted to not wear seatbelt because of this very reasoning. Airbags have caused deaths due to improper use (rear facing child car seats in the front passenger side, people being too close to the steering wheel during an airbag deployment, etc. but they are still in cars and people still have the option to go against instructions and warnings by placing that child car seat in the front passenger seat.. People similarly, can still opt to take their hands off the wheel so they can read, watch movies or anything else while the car is in the "autopilot" mode but if they do, they risk the same results.. death injury or damage to property.

Let's not remove safety features because of poor choices from a couple of people..

The Fix and the Future

[transami]

The fix and future of this is simple and it has already been suggested by another car maker (was it BMW?), the car manufactures themselves are going to provide insurance and buyers will have to sign a waiver acknowledging the risks of automated driving, thus letting the car company off the hook (unless actual negligence can be proved) In fact I wouldn't be surprised if this later part is already the case.

Tesla can't stop offering Autopilot, as unfortunate as it is, accidents that occur while in use are vital to improving it. Thus making it increasingly safer over time.

Re:Safety third!

[HornWumpus]

CR have always been agenda driven morons.

I stopped paying any attention when they reviewed the Corvette as 'unacceptable' because it wasn't a good econo box. Granting that 'vette didn't make more than 200 hp, hence it was so fucking weak it might as well have been an econobox. If CR had said that, I'd still respect them. Instead they bitched about MPG and cargo space.

Re:Safety third!

[fluffernutter]

There are very few accidents happening on clear highway where Autopilot actually operates. If there is an accident it is usually due to someone passing in the oncoming lane at the wrong time which, obviously no one is using Autopilot for.

Re:Get Real

[HornWumpus]

It already doesn't look good for Tesla. We took apart their claims of better safety on the last two tesla autopilot threads.

Bottom line. Driving on divided highways is about 1/4 as dangerous as all driving. The stat for 'all driving is 1 in 92 million in the USA. Inferred from that the stat for divided highways is (about) 1 death in 368 million miles. Tesla has a long way to go to be as safe, much less safer.

Re:autolanding also needs airport support

[slew]

For the flight management system to land the aircraft, both the airplane and the particular runway have to support it.

And when this stuff is down for maintenance (e.g., NOTAM: !SFO 06/005 SFO NAV ILS RWY 28L GP OTS WEF 1306011400-1308222359)** , the pilot needs to really be able to fly the plane, or bad things happen (Flight OZ214)...

It might be interesting to note that for the flight in question, even though the landing was not fully automated, the pilots still actually left the plane in an partial "auto-pilot" mode, but apparently one that did not actually engage the auto-throttle. By the time the pilot/co-pilot noticed their airspeed was too low, it was too late to execute a go-around...

**(NOtice To Airmen: SanFranciscO airport, NAVigation Instrument Landing System for RunWaY 28-Left Glide Path OuT of Service With Effect From UTC 2013, June 1, 2:00 to 2013 Aug 22, 11:59pm)

banning autopilot - why stop there....

[dlingman]

I've noticed that human drivers quite often cause accidents. Can we get the steering wheel and gas pedal removed while we're at it?

Elon Musk lies! Again!

[Master5000]

They called it autopilot. People think that they can read their magazines and play on their phones while the car takes them to their destination. Now they say that autopilot isn't actually autopilot. Elon Musk and his cronies should be in jail for the shit their saying. Why call it autopilot if it's not autopilot. In planes autopilot can safely land your plane. Not kill you. Every accident that happens while on autopilot should mean a fine to Tesla. Bankrupt those fuckers with their lies. See how you're going to Mars you cunt when you can't even drive on a street. Fuck you Musk! You and your family!

Doesn't matter

[holophrastic]

It doesn't matter if it's safer to have than to not have. It's a question of accountability. The fact that many drivers are terrible, and hence are unsafe, and this makes them better is uninteresting. When a car crashes into me, the only question is why. The answer of "bad driver" is acceptable. The answer of "bad weather" is occasionally acceptable. The answer of "suddenly broken car" is usually acceptable. The answer of "the car did it by itself" is totally and completely unacceptable.

Can't protect everything from stupidity

[AaronW]

Tesla has finally released the results of what happened in Pennsylvania.. It seems that the autopilot warned the driver because his hands were not on the steering wheel. The car warned him repeatedly and it was the driver who grabbed the wheel and caused the crash.

In another accident, the driver was driving the car on an undivided mountain road which is not recommended. The driver's hands were not on the steering wheel. The car alerted the driver repeatedly to put his hands on the wheel. The driver claims it's because the alerts were given in English whereas he spoke Mandarin. Autopilot is supposed to be used on divided roads with clear visibility and the driver is supposed to keep their hands on the wheel.

Maybe they should require drivers to take an autopilot test to show that they understand it before enabling it. Like autopilot on a plane it still requires that the driver pay attention and have their hands on the wheel and be ready to take over.

My car is an early model S before the hardware for Autopilot was available.

Re:autolanding also needs airport support

[michelcolman]

Another example is Turkish Airlines 1951 at Amsterdam in 2009. Automatic approach, a problem with the radio altimeter caused the autothrottles to go to idle thrust at 2000 ft. The plane slowed down but the pilots reacted much too late. The plane stalled and crashed.

What's most important: the verdict was that this was pilot error. Even though the approach was being flown on autopilot (hey, doesn't that word mean that the plane will do everything automatically and the pilots can watch Harry Potter?), the pilots took the blame. And deservedly so.

Autopilot does not mean "sit back, relax and watch a movie".

why?

[SuperDre]

3 incidents have been reported on through the media, 1 was a fatal accident which was even because the driver was watching a movie instead of even looking at the road. 1 incident has been confirmed the autopilot wasn't even on, and the other is still not confirmed if it was on/off, although that one was a situation Tesla warns it is not correct...
It's not like there haven't been a lot of accidents with older cruisecontrols or laneassist before, so why not just disable ALL those extra functions...
People are warned Auto Pilot needs you to keep your hands on the wheel and eye's on the road (just like with regular cruise control/lane assist), so if people just blatently ignore those warnings, it's the drivers fault, not the system..

Media making mountains....

[jrjarrett]

I think this article summarizes how I feel best:
http://www.roadandtrack.com/ca...

Failed expectations and common sense

[burtosis]

The main problem with autonomous systems in cars is the mistakes they do make are often blatently obvious to humans, even if overall they are much better at avoiding them in general. Take a look at Watson on jeopardy for example, it kicked ass until it messed up the context or some other aspect and gave an answer a typical 6 year old would realize was horribly wrong.

This will be a huge hurdle to overcome, if it can be at all, because no one will want to die in an obviously avoidable situation even if the autonomous system is much safer overall.

Elon won't disable the Autopilot...

[rocket rancher]

...because the goal is to be the first to produce an AI capable of replacing a human driver. Autonomous ground vehicles are a potentially lucrative space. The demand is already there; first to get a product into the space is going to clean up. Elon Musk knows this, and Eric Schmidt at Alphabet (Google's parent company) knows it as well.

The handoff problem is the number one challenge facing autonomous vehicle developers. Schmidt and Musk are trying to solve it, and it is only the approach to solving it that differentiates them.

Schmidt is lobbying hard to get the laws in the US changed to allow him to take the driver out of the loop, because the engineer running Schmidt's autonomous vehicle R&D, Chis Urmson, believes the handoff problem is unsolvable.

Musk, otoh, doesn't see any problem as unsolvable. He is willing to continue pushing for a solution, and that means continuing to use data from the real world use of the Tesla AI. Musk knows that this is a risky strategy.

Consumer Reports seems to agree with Schmidt's engineer. The last several paragraphs are a discussion of exactly why the handoff problem is, well, a problem. CR is advocating a very conservative approach to developing and marketing autonomous vehicles, because the handoff problem is too much for an AI to handle, and keeping humans safe is a big part of what CR is about.

Musk knows he's going to face litigation every time a Tesla is involved in a crash. He's prepared for that, because the payoff is enormous.

Natural selection

[ChewieJenkins]

Maybe we should stop protecting every idiot from themselves and let natural selection back in the mix. I'd your dumb enough to blindly follow a Google map without monitoring your surroundings and get hit by a car, maybe you deserve it and the world is a better place afterwords. If "Autopilot", Pokemon Go, etc. allows you to do something stupid and end up dead, then the bottom line is that it's your fault. This isn't a Pinto with a faulty gas tank that will blow you up. This is a lack of common sense. Now get out there and get yourself killed!ðY

The Luddite Warroirs strike AGAIN !

[lucien86]

Why this insanity in demanding a 100% safety record? no automated system can ever truly achieve that. The Tesla system is already achieving a safety record comparable to humans (or better), that is the basic requirement needed for these systems..
By their own stupid logic they should really be demanding that human drivers be banned - after all human drivers are already statistically more dangerous than the tesla.
As should be obvious to everyone these machine systems will only continue to get better as time goes on - but that can only really happen with the machines on the road. For systems like autonomous driving once a basic minimum is passed learning by error soon becomes by far the best and in some cases the only real learning method we have.. Its a big part of how most humans learn to drive after all - do we ban all young people from driving just because most of them are not yet very good at it? no..

These people need to stop reacting reflexively like idiot protestors and start using some basic native intelligence..

Re:autolanding also needs airport support

[slashdotwannabe]

Someday the FAA will buy modems that do more than 300 baud to transmit NOTAMS and we'll be able to read them in English, full words and everything!