4 ms·

If you've never used the Tesla autopilot its a weird feeling. It's not a fully self driving car and its obviously not strictly human controlled. Unfortunately

If you've never used the Tesla autopilot its a weird feeling. It's not a fully self driving car and its obviously not strictly human controlled. Unfortunately it ends up being more mentally taxing to use this hybrid approach than to just drive yourself. Consider highway driving, with normal human powered mode you are in full control so if you see brake lights a half kilometer up ahead you can disengage the cruise control and react on your own, everyone who has driven is comfortable with this. With this assisted driving the car doesn't slow down right away, and its not clear if the car just can't see the tail lights lighting up yet or if its decided it doesn't need to react yet and as such you start to second guess the car, - should I drive or should I leave it to the car? - what if it turns when I grab the wheel? Will I make things worse by driving? - does the car even see the object up ahead? How can I tell, its impossible to expect the car to tell you of an object that it cant' even see. It becomes just more taxing to use the hybrid approach to driving and as such I don't use it at all. I have no doubt that the Tesla auto pilot is safer than driving, but I also have no doubt that it can royally screw up. I've come to the conclusion that some assisted driving, like auto braking for obstacles that you will imminently hit is good but the kind of assisted driving where it can almost automatically drive for you is not really anywhere near ready, if you follow Tesla's rules on how to use it, it actually makes driving harder:(

eclipxe 10y ago
I have a completely different opinion. What do you have your following distance set to? I have mine set to 6 or 7 and it starts slowing down well ahead of when I would slow down. I think you're over thinking things - just let it do its thing, but be ready to resume control if needed. I drive 90% of the time in Auto Pilot, and it makes driving exponentially more relaxing and safer.
- argonaut 10y ago
  Yes, but that's the problem. Just "letting it do its thing" and relaxing/trusting/expecting it to "do the right thing" is what leads to accidents like this. And if you trust Autopilot to do the right thing, and get into a fatal accident, Tesla will say you should have been paying attention!
  - sethjgore 10y ago
    Isn't that similar to saying horseless carriages cannot be as good as horses? Our experience in driving is never compared to the experience of riding in a carriage or even harnessing a horse. Driving is considered a discrete experience in its own class. Perhaps our fears and expectations of mechanical error is ignorant of our own overconfidence in our own driving control. Are we always in control of our attention? Do we always make the most accurate observations as we drive? Why do we establish the experience of being driven by autopilot as something comparable to the actual action of human, hand-feet-sight-controlled driving (steering wheel-acceleration/deacceleration-dashboard/windshield/mirrors)? We cannot trust the horse to do the same things as the car nor can we trust the car to do be same as horse. We are on the cusp of moving responsibility from the human engineered transport (car) to the machine engineered (autopilot) transport, which transfer was previously animal to human engineered transport (horse to car). We will believe what establishes our worldview and ignore what demolishes the same foundations.
    - argonaut 10y ago
      No, it's not the same. Not sure why you think that analogy even makes sense.
  - eclipxe 10y ago
    You missed my: >but be ready to resume control if needed Let it do it's thing, relax, but be vigilant and ready to take over. It's not that hard. Watch the road, watch the dash and what it sees, if something goes awry (happens rarely) then just resume control.
sethjgore 10y ago
I wonder if it is our overconfidence in our driving that makes us think we don't make even more monarchy-sized screw ups, if not deity-sized screw ups? Our concerns seem to appear as that driving a car does not feel like driving a horse. Aren't we are also horses in the sense that we drive our energy in direction rather than locomotion, when we drive? We yell when the autopilot does a singular mistake where the human is allowed to make 10x or 100x without true objection or persecution. The cage went in search of a bird. -Kafka

eclipxe 10y ago

I have a completely different opinion. What do you have your following distance set to? I have mine set to 6 or 7 and it starts slowing down well ahead of when I would slow down. I think you're over thinking things - just let it do its thing, but be ready to resume control if needed. I drive 90% of the time in Auto Pilot, and it makes driving exponentially more relaxing and safer.

argonaut 10y ago
Yes, but that's the problem. Just "letting it do its thing" and relaxing/trusting/expecting it to "do the right thing" is what leads to accidents like this. And if you trust Autopilot to do the right thing, and get into a fatal accident, Tesla will say you should have been paying attention!
- sethjgore 10y ago
  Isn't that similar to saying horseless carriages cannot be as good as horses? Our experience in driving is never compared to the experience of riding in a carriage or even harnessing a horse. Driving is considered a discrete experience in its own class. Perhaps our fears and expectations of mechanical error is ignorant of our own overconfidence in our own driving control. Are we always in control of our attention? Do we always make the most accurate observations as we drive? Why do we establish the experience of being driven by autopilot as something comparable to the actual action of human, hand-feet-sight-controlled driving (steering wheel-acceleration/deacceleration-dashboard/windshield/mirrors)? We cannot trust the horse to do the same things as the car nor can we trust the car to do be same as horse. We are on the cusp of moving responsibility from the human engineered transport (car) to the machine engineered (autopilot) transport, which transfer was previously animal to human engineered transport (horse to car). We will believe what establishes our worldview and ignore what demolishes the same foundations.
  - argonaut 10y ago
    No, it's not the same. Not sure why you think that analogy even makes sense.
- eclipxe 10y ago
  You missed my: >but be ready to resume control if needed Let it do it's thing, relax, but be vigilant and ready to take over. It's not that hard. Watch the road, watch the dash and what it sees, if something goes awry (happens rarely) then just resume control.

sethjgore 10y ago

I wonder if it is our overconfidence in our driving that makes us think we don't make even more monarchy-sized screw ups, if not deity-sized screw ups? Our concerns seem to appear as that driving a car does not feel like driving a horse. Aren't we are also horses in the sense that we drive our energy in direction rather than locomotion, when we drive? We yell when the autopilot does a singular mistake where the human is allowed to make 10x or 100x without true objection or persecution. The cage went in search of a bird. -Kafka