Tesla Updates Autopilot To Make It Follow the Speed Limit On Roads (electrek.co)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: Before a recent update that is being gradually pushed to Tesla owners, the automaker allowed its Autopilot to be set at a higher speed than the speed limit on all roads where the driver assist system could be enabled, but now Tesla is pushing a new update to make Autopilot follow the rules of the road more closely. Owners of Tesla vehicles equipped with Autopilot have, up until now, been able to set the speed of the Autopilot's 'Traffic-Aware Cruise Control' feature to up to 5 mph over the speed limit on roads and non-divided highways. Now they are restricted to following the speed limit exactly, without the 5 mph leeway. On highways, the speed limit doesn't have a direct effect on the Autopilot's speed. The speed is still limited by the Autopilot's overall 90 mph speed limit. Every time Tesla introduces new restrictions to its Autopilot system, it gets a mixed response from owners. While the new restrictions are often coming from the aspiration of making the system safer, some owners always see them as taking away capabilities that they already had and had paid for. With the introduction of the software update v8.0 in September, Tesla introduced a more aggressive "Autopilot nag," which prompts more 'Hold Steering Wheel' alerts.

Comments

Makes sense

[93 Escort Wagon]

I imagine this is just Tesla deciding it didn't want the legal liability, should a speeding Model S hit a bicyclist while going over the speed limit.

Do Tesla owners have a way to prevent updates from being applied?

The next update...

[Anonymous Coward]

The next update will make the car drive in the left hand lane with the turn signal on.

Re:Road Hazard

[networkBoy]

only applies to autopilot.
Assuming that soon this will be the norm, then all cars will be going the same speed, until then if there is enough traffic that is at a dissimilar speed, just drive instead of autopilot and you're golden.

Traffic Tickets

[caferace]

Maybe a dumb question (I have no idea) but is there any data on how many and type of traffic tickets have been issued to Tesla owners running on autopilot? Curious.

Re:Set speeds will follow autonomous vehicles.

[PopeRatzo]

Most sensible people expect that self-driving cars will go significantly above the speed limit, because the reasons for limiting them to the speed limit (inability to look everywhere at once and see people pulling out of driveways, see kids about to run across the street unexpectedly, etc.) don't apply when you have a dozen cameras being monitored continuously by an AI, nor do most common human failings like inattentiveness, inability to properly assess speed of traction loss on curves, poor judgment of road conditions in general, etc.

Here is a video from a few days ago of a self-driving car running a red light. So, sadly, no. The belief that a machine which has been programmed by humans is now incapable of making mistakes is one that I'm surprised to hear from a Slashdot user.

https://youtu.be/_CdJ4oae8f4

Re:Road Hazard

[thegarbz]

So what you're saying is that a lot of people aren't following the rules and breaking the law, but the one vehicle actually being operated under the conditions of the permit is the hazard?

Also I'm sorry but that's just plain wrong. If you're unable to travel the speed limit and insist on needing to overtake you can do it safely and patiently. The only time it's unsafe is if you're an impatient douchebag. In the mean time over on the other side of the pond we have no problem sharing our roads doing 200+ km/h with trucks and other vehicles with a 90km/h speedlimit. And the USA has roughly double the road fatality rate of Germany in every metric be it per capita, per vehicle or per distance.

Is this always the safest?

[Eloking]

My grandfather always told me that the safest drive speed is the one that follow the traffic.

I got this example in my city (and I'm sure most of you can relate) of some big, perfect straight highway with 5 lanes where the maximum speed is crazily set at 70 km/h (45 mph). And, as you can guess, everyone, even the slow lane, goes over 100.

In my opinion, this is where corporate responsibility have entered too far in personal responsibility, kinda like I don't want my GPS to start an alarm and stop working if I go over the limit. So if there's an accident related to high speed where the user have set the speed over the limit, it's the driver's fault.

Re:Road Hazard

[Brett Buck]

It not going to "soon be the norm"! Good lLord. get out of the basement and speak to real people - none of whom want this crap/

Re:Road Hazard

[taustin]

Especially the cities that rely on traffic tickets to pay for the city budget. Auto-driving cars that never violate traffic laws will be doom for many small towns.

Re:Road Hazard

[gurps_npc]

You do realize that Germany has no speed limits except 'safe and reasonable'. In fact, driving slower than the existing traffic is what causes many of the crashes on the Autobahn. They have places where it is illegal to stop

Germany pretty solidly proves the opposing argument - that obeying a posted speed limit set not by road conditions, but instead set for political reasons is EXACTLY the cause of car accidents.

You can look at a theoretical world or the real world. In the real world. shmucks driving slower than the prevailing traffic cause accidents - whether they are all driving the speed limit or all driving 10 miles less than the speed limit for a practical joke/ due to a traffic jam/ or any other reasons.

Driving on public roads is a swarm activity. The driving laws are a partial but incomplete set of rules used to help that swarm activity. overlaid on top of natural psychological swarm rules. While following the rules of man is a good idea, following the rules of nature is practically essential.