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Tesla Owner In China Blames Autopilot For Crash (usatoday.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from USA Today: The owner of a Tesla Motors Model S sedan in China reportedly said his vehicle crashed into a car on the side of the road while the vehicle's Autopilot system was engaged, but the automaker said the driver was using the system improperly. Luo Zhen, 33, of Beijing told Reuters that his vehicle collided with a parked car on the left side of a highway, damaging both vehicles but injuring no one. He criticized Tesla sales people for allegedly describing the vehicle as "self-driving." "The impression they give everyone is that this is self-driving, this isn't assisted driving," he told Reuters. In the new case in China, Tesla said the Model S was "following closely behind the car in front of it when the lead car moved to the right to avoid hitting the parked car." "The driver of the Tesla, whose hands were not detected on the steering wheel, did not steer to avoid the parked car and instead scraped against its side," Tesla said Wednesday in a statement. "As clearly communicated to the driver in the vehicle, Autosteer is an assist feature that requires the driver to keep his hands on the steering wheel at all times, to always maintain control and responsibility for the vehicle, and to be prepared to take over at any time."
I never heard about people being that stupid when cruise control was introduced into the mainstream. Autopilot, as it stands, is a smarter form of cruise control (it basically helps you maintain the speed without your foot on the pedal but it's a bit fancier than a fixed speed)
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From my understanding of driving conditions in China, it would take a pretty miraculous AI to prevent accidents there. It seems as though these driving assists and self-driving cars are going to have to be region-specific.
The have a sensor tha detects if hands are on the wheel.
They say auto pilot should always be used with hands on wheel.
Why don't they just disable it if you take you hands from the wheel?
You are a perfect illustration of the problem Tesla faces. You think you know what an airplane's autopilot does, based solely on the name, but you have no real clue.
Some, not all, modern autopilots in airplanes can land an airplane provided the the airport is a Cat IIIb or Cat IIIc; i.e.: they require a fair bit of active infrastructure on the airport. In other situations, or with the rest of the installed autopilots in the world, they will only assist the pilot in keeping the planes attitude and heading.
Yet whenever an airplane - be it a small private plane or a passenger jet - crashes when on autopilot, no one is suggesting the pilot is free of blame...
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
Meanwhile, over a thousand people per day are dying in traffic accidents worldwide. SDCs likely could prevent most of those. You want that progress held up because, what, 3 people have died in a year? Get some sense of perspective.
Self-driving cars would be a great improvement, but, as Tesla keeps saying, these are not self-driving cars.
They are a step in that direction, and full SDCs will be only a software upgrade. All the necessary hardware is already in current Teslas. The risk of rushing the technology is far, far smaller than the risk of impeding it. America needs to stop being the "can't do" country.
Auto-pilot is Musk's "you're driving it wrong" moment.
In theory you should sit there, fully attentive, hands on the wheel, ready to jump in with a fraction of a second's warning to avert a crash. In reality, human beings don't work that way.
There are videos on YouTube of people asleep at the wheel with AP on. One hand resting on the wheel to keep the AP active. You can call them reckless, but as an engineer you have to take human nature and our inability to concentrate for long periods when here is little to do into account.
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You are a perfect illustration of the problem Tesla faces. You think you know what an airplane's autopilot does, based solely on the name, but you have no real clue.
To do something on autopilot to mean "without thinking" has been an idiom much longer than Tesla has used it. This is not some kind of unexpected misunderstanding.
Etymology: based on the literal meaning of automatic pilot (a system that flies a plane without human effort)
There are many less boasting terms like adaptive cruise control, lane assist etc. that could have been used and have been used by other car companies. They picked autopilot because it sounds new and revolutionary. He's a perfect illustration of the impression Tesla's marketing division wanted to give, while the execs call it beta (as in, will be self-driving soon we're just knocking out a few bugs) and their legal department provides the disclaimers. And disclaimer are everywhere for legal CYA, like if you read your average EULA the software is not usable for anything. That's not what people really expect, even if that's what it says.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The tricky problem about this technology is that it is aimed at taking the burden away from what is required to be able to take over. At least, most people perceive it that way at first. Proper training is required and you know what? In the end, it requires more concentration to watch on standby ready to take over than manually driving the car yourself.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
And why doesn't Tesla simply call it, "Cruise Control Plus" or something catchy like that instead of giving people the wrong idea?
What the actual fuck? Cruise control does not steer. Distance-sensitive cruise control is cruise control plus. This is something else entirely. Something which controls heading and speed but which does not take complete responsibility for the vehicle. And do you know what we call a device like that? We call it an autopilot. You want Tesla to use a shit name that is less descriptive than what they are using now, and you'd call it an improvement. That's stupid bullshit. Don't be stupid, or bullshit.
Every single suggestion from a slashdotter as to what to call this feature is actually more confusing than autopilot, including yours. Buy a fucking dictionary, and spend some time with it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
" In the end, it requires more concentration to watch on standby ready to take over than manually driving the car yourself."
Exactly, Telsa is being disingenuous (and reckless).
Tesla Says: ... ..."
... anything ... that involves glancing somewhere not on the road in front of them, and involves moving one or both hands from the wheel?
"
"As clearly communicated to the driver in the vehicle, Autosteer is an assist feature that requires the driver to keep his hands on the steering wheel at all times, to always maintain control and responsibility for the vehicle, and to be prepared to take over at any time."
Now, I hesitate to say this out loud, as this is a Nerd website, but this instruction is beyond silly. There is zero chance any human with a working brain is going to adhere to this instruction, and although I understand how it comes to be, it's a testament to a lack of even basic comprehension of a User Interface that is so unfortunately common amongst the nerdy citizens of the world.
Let's imagine this instruction in use. I'm driving my so-equipped vehicle:
Situation: Nothing unusual happening. Both hands on the wheel, Mind and Body attentive to the road. Alert and ready at any moment to take over from the auto driver. Car driving itself.
Repeat every second of a 20 minute commute for a thousand days. Or three days.
Now, what human, in possession of the faculties required to actually have a paying job and a drivers' license, is not going to become bored with this scenario, and at some point do something
And, after testing the waters, so to speak, and not dying in a fiery crash, won't do it again, only for a bit longer and perhaps with hands much further from said wheel and eyes much removed from the road ahead?
There cannot be a "half-way" system, such as that installed in the Tesla S, that drives, but does not drive, the car. It simply won't work in the manner the instructions say it should work.