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> You can now experience Enhanced Autopilot features including Traffic-Aware Cruise Control, Autosteer, Auto Lane Change, Parallel + Perpendicular Autopark, and

> You can now experience Enhanced Autopilot features including Traffic-Aware Cruise Control, Autosteer, Auto Lane Change, Parallel + Perpendicular Autopark, and Summon Scary stuff, really. No consumer wants (or needs) autopilot "features" - at least not from a marketing standpoint. If you ask me, the car either drives itself or you are driving it. It's a bit ridiculous to expect people to use these things safely. If anyone has to think about when the car is or isn't in control, I'm sorry, but you've already lost in my book. Humans just aren't that good at switching context or remembering what a product does (or what this particular version of a product does).

bjelkeman-again 9y ago
In my experience, having driven or been driven by the autopilot v1 hardware and software for thousands of kilometers, it is not ridiculous to use this safely. You configure how you use it once, you don't have to remember the state of every feature. There are moments when you have to think about what state the car is in. But in opinion it is by far offset by how much less tiring it is to drive a long way.
- nitrogen 9y ago
  Having driven a long distance in the vicinity of a Tesla that was presumably on autopilot, I found it very unsafe-seeming, darting around within its lane, sometimes drifting onto the lane line. You may not realize if you aren't paying attention, but your car might not drive as well as you expect.
  - PeterStuer 9y ago
    Having driven for years in the vicinity of human drivers, I'd say they do far worse than that. And that is before you add the DUI.
  - prostoalex 9y ago
    Agree that lane weaving is annoying and frequently has no good explanation - there are no tight curves, the road markings are in perfect condition, there are no obstacles ahead and no one is changing lanes in front of the car. I also wish that left-most and right-most lanes were special-cased, with a bit of preference towards left and right side respectively, instead of sticking to the center of the lane no matter what. Just seems safer overall, and with fairly large number of US roads not exceeding 2 lanes in one direction, seems like a pretty good rule of thumb.
    - ljf 9y ago
      In the USA are there not rules about which lanes you use? Various dash cam videos from the US seem to show drivers choosing any lane, though I could viewing then wrong. In the UK you use the outside lane if you are a slower vehicle and use the inside lane(s) as overtaking lanes, with the inside for the fastest speeds (within the limit) . If you are using one of the inside lane and are travelling slower that traffic in the outside lane you can get stopped by the police and fined, and will certainly feel the ire of of other drivers.
      - prostoalex 9y ago
        The dash cam videos would be correct, outside of high-occupancy lane (2+ people) there are no lane speed restrictions, and if someone feels like getting into the left-most lane and driving 5 miles below the speed limit, they most certainly act on that impulse. As you can imagine, anybody intending to use the left-most lane for high-speed driving is now forced to use the brakes, execute a [rarely safe] lane merge to the right, pass the slower vehicle on the right, and then aggressively execute a merge back to the left. Roughly 100 people die in car accidents on a daily basis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths... For further context, the World Trade Center attack on September 11, 2001 resulted in 3,000 deaths and has led to a brief but complete shutdown of air traffic, complete overhaul of homeland security, passage of PATRIOT Act, at least one major war and countless "military operations" that don't count as wars.
        factsaresacred 9y ago
        I only recently discovered that in the US many people driving in the left lane will not move to the middle lane to allow cars approaching from behind overtake them. That's incredibly selfish, not least because it's incredibly dangerous for the driver that has to weave into the middle lane and back again. Seems bizarre. Then again, you Yanks also don't have kettles, so nothing surprises me ;)
        9y ago
  - abrichr 9y ago
    > presumably on autopilot I don't know, that sounds like lots of human drivers I've encountered!
    - NicoJuicy 9y ago
      Side sitted at a Tesla car, it's not.
  - bjelkeman-again 9y ago
    I have no experience with Autopilot v2, but v1 is better than I am at lane keeping on a motorway except for special circumstances, like when there are no lane markers.
  - bjelkeman-again 9y ago
    I supervise the car and pay attention. I am very aware of what the car is doing. It may be a big difference between v1 and v2 though.
- coredog64 9y ago
  "Mode confusion" is a major cause of CFIT accidents in aviation. And these are trained operators with partners and checklists.
wheelerwj 9y ago
this is probably one of the most ignorant and short sighted comments i've ever read on HN and reaks of competitive shilling. It's like saying we shouldn't have released seatbelts because people moght not have used them. Or maybe we shouldn't have released vaccines because you still need booster shots. Safety features, even incremental ones, make the world safer for everyone.
- averagewall 9y ago
  I think his concern is that it's unsafe because you might trust it when you weren't supposed to because it's too complicated to figure out who's in control at any moment. However, since the number of features is quite small, I'm sure owners will quickly get used to what the car does and doesn't do. The autopark and summon is surely going to run over far fewer children than human drivers do in those situations. That leaves just adaptive cruise control and lane changing. Well, if you forget to change lanes because you trusted the car, you still won't crash since the front crash detection (and your eyes) should protect you from that. So I don't see any safety issue there.
- saagarjha 9y ago
  I would like to respectfully disagree with you here. While I believe that self driving cars are infinitely better than human drivers, in this case I'd exercise caution. The issue here is that the vehicle is not fully self-driving–it still requires a human to be paying attention. The problem is that the system appears to be automatic and as such reduces the driver's focus; I've heard stories of people simply tuning out while this "autopilot" on, not knowing that they must be alert for any exceptional circumstances. In this case, the autopilot may actually make it slightly less safe–not from its inherent design, but by human psychology.
  - wheelerwj 9y ago
    if the driver allows themselves to lose focus, they are just bad drivers. autopilot won't change that. what it will do is reduce the number of collisions by people who are shitty drivers and are currently driving unprotected. the data already demonstrates that autopilot reduces collisions and fatalities. to argue that it doesn't put you in league with climate change deniers.
blazespin 9y ago
well, it yells at you if you let go of the steering wheel and will even disable itself if you keep doing it. It's not that scary. And the features are real. At least it gives owners the confidence that things are moving forward and if they buy a Tesla today they will have full self driving some day.
- jayd16 9y ago
  What they're saying is humans can't recontextualize themselves fast enough when the system fails and it starts yelling at you.
- saagarjha 9y ago
  It's still pretty easy to tune out even if you're gripping the steering wheel…
- OliverJones 9y ago
  I have about 18K miles on my Model S with the first-generation sensor package. I live and drive in New England. The lane-holding feature (autosteer) does expect you to keep slight pressure on the wheel. It has, that I can discern, four modes ... freeway following (another vehicle in front) freeway leading nonfreeway following nonfreeway leading. Only in the first case, you have five minutes before it starts pestering you to hold the wheel. In the other cases it's one minute. Lane holding and adaptive cruise control in freeway following mode is a WONDERFUL feature. It drastically reduces the driver's workload in heavy traffic. And, it has speed control features that contribute to the melting of compression-wave traffic jams. Lane holding can be a little squirrely when the road surface is dirty. I think the car sometimes mistakes tire marks for lane markings. There are parts of my regular route where I just take over from lane holding. Snow or heavy rain? the lane holding feature goes first, then the adaptive cruise control. Snow, rain, or frost on the windshield interferes with the forward looking camera. Snow or ice on the nose interferes with the radar. Ice on the bumpers interferes with the near-field sonar proximity sensors. Autonomous driving on the Stanford campus and up Sand Hill Road is one thing. Autonomous driving in a nor'easter snowstorm on winding Atlantic Coast roads is another. We shall see. I admire and support people who tackle hard problems fearlessly. Tesla's doing that.
gabrielgoh 9y ago
where else would the training data come from?
sundvor 9y ago
Speak for yourself. I love the radar cruise control on my Mazda 3 Astina, and also value the AEB. I specifically bought this car because of these systems - at the time (mid 2015) it was the cheapest such car available on the market in Australia. It's a 2014 2.5 liter sedan, manual, ex demo. Love it.

bjelkeman-again 9y ago

In my experience, having driven or been driven by the autopilot v1 hardware and software for thousands of kilometers, it is not ridiculous to use this safely. You configure how you use it once, you don't have to remember the state of every feature. There are moments when you have to think about what state the car is in. But in opinion it is by far offset by how much less tiring it is to drive a long way.

nitrogen 9y ago
Having driven a long distance in the vicinity of a Tesla that was presumably on autopilot, I found it very unsafe-seeming, darting around within its lane, sometimes drifting onto the lane line. You may not realize if you aren't paying attention, but your car might not drive as well as you expect.
- PeterStuer 9y ago
  Having driven for years in the vicinity of human drivers, I'd say they do far worse than that. And that is before you add the DUI.
- prostoalex 9y ago
  Agree that lane weaving is annoying and frequently has no good explanation - there are no tight curves, the road markings are in perfect condition, there are no obstacles ahead and no one is changing lanes in front of the car. I also wish that left-most and right-most lanes were special-cased, with a bit of preference towards left and right side respectively, instead of sticking to the center of the lane no matter what. Just seems safer overall, and with fairly large number of US roads not exceeding 2 lanes in one direction, seems like a pretty good rule of thumb.
  - ljf 9y ago
    In the USA are there not rules about which lanes you use? Various dash cam videos from the US seem to show drivers choosing any lane, though I could viewing then wrong. In the UK you use the outside lane if you are a slower vehicle and use the inside lane(s) as overtaking lanes, with the inside for the fastest speeds (within the limit) . If you are using one of the inside lane and are travelling slower that traffic in the outside lane you can get stopped by the police and fined, and will certainly feel the ire of of other drivers.
    - prostoalex 9y ago
      The dash cam videos would be correct, outside of high-occupancy lane (2+ people) there are no lane speed restrictions, and if someone feels like getting into the left-most lane and driving 5 miles below the speed limit, they most certainly act on that impulse. As you can imagine, anybody intending to use the left-most lane for high-speed driving is now forced to use the brakes, execute a [rarely safe] lane merge to the right, pass the slower vehicle on the right, and then aggressively execute a merge back to the left. Roughly 100 people die in car accidents on a daily basis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths... For further context, the World Trade Center attack on September 11, 2001 resulted in 3,000 deaths and has led to a brief but complete shutdown of air traffic, complete overhaul of homeland security, passage of PATRIOT Act, at least one major war and countless "military operations" that don't count as wars.
      - factsaresacred 9y ago
        I only recently discovered that in the US many people driving in the left lane will not move to the middle lane to allow cars approaching from behind overtake them. That's incredibly selfish, not least because it's incredibly dangerous for the driver that has to weave into the middle lane and back again. Seems bizarre. Then again, you Yanks also don't have kettles, so nothing surprises me ;)
        9y ago
- abrichr 9y ago
  > presumably on autopilot I don't know, that sounds like lots of human drivers I've encountered!
  - NicoJuicy 9y ago
    Side sitted at a Tesla car, it's not.
- bjelkeman-again 9y ago
  I have no experience with Autopilot v2, but v1 is better than I am at lane keeping on a motorway except for special circumstances, like when there are no lane markers.
- bjelkeman-again 9y ago
  I supervise the car and pay attention. I am very aware of what the car is doing. It may be a big difference between v1 and v2 though.
coredog64 9y ago
"Mode confusion" is a major cause of CFIT accidents in aviation. And these are trained operators with partners and checklists.

wheelerwj 9y ago

this is probably one of the most ignorant and short sighted comments i've ever read on HN and reaks of competitive shilling. It's like saying we shouldn't have released seatbelts because people moght not have used them. Or maybe we shouldn't have released vaccines because you still need booster shots. Safety features, even incremental ones, make the world safer for everyone.

averagewall 9y ago
I think his concern is that it's unsafe because you might trust it when you weren't supposed to because it's too complicated to figure out who's in control at any moment. However, since the number of features is quite small, I'm sure owners will quickly get used to what the car does and doesn't do. The autopark and summon is surely going to run over far fewer children than human drivers do in those situations. That leaves just adaptive cruise control and lane changing. Well, if you forget to change lanes because you trusted the car, you still won't crash since the front crash detection (and your eyes) should protect you from that. So I don't see any safety issue there.
saagarjha 9y ago
I would like to respectfully disagree with you here. While I believe that self driving cars are infinitely better than human drivers, in this case I'd exercise caution. The issue here is that the vehicle is not fully self-driving–it still requires a human to be paying attention. The problem is that the system appears to be automatic and as such reduces the driver's focus; I've heard stories of people simply tuning out while this "autopilot" on, not knowing that they must be alert for any exceptional circumstances. In this case, the autopilot may actually make it slightly less safe–not from its inherent design, but by human psychology.
- wheelerwj 9y ago
  if the driver allows themselves to lose focus, they are just bad drivers. autopilot won't change that. what it will do is reduce the number of collisions by people who are shitty drivers and are currently driving unprotected. the data already demonstrates that autopilot reduces collisions and fatalities. to argue that it doesn't put you in league with climate change deniers.

blazespin 9y ago

well, it yells at you if you let go of the steering wheel and will even disable itself if you keep doing it. It's not that scary. And the features are real. At least it gives owners the confidence that things are moving forward and if they buy a Tesla today they will have full self driving some day.

jayd16 9y ago
What they're saying is humans can't recontextualize themselves fast enough when the system fails and it starts yelling at you.
saagarjha 9y ago
It's still pretty easy to tune out even if you're gripping the steering wheel…
OliverJones 9y ago
I have about 18K miles on my Model S with the first-generation sensor package. I live and drive in New England. The lane-holding feature (autosteer) does expect you to keep slight pressure on the wheel. It has, that I can discern, four modes ... freeway following (another vehicle in front) freeway leading nonfreeway following nonfreeway leading. Only in the first case, you have five minutes before it starts pestering you to hold the wheel. In the other cases it's one minute. Lane holding and adaptive cruise control in freeway following mode is a WONDERFUL feature. It drastically reduces the driver's workload in heavy traffic. And, it has speed control features that contribute to the melting of compression-wave traffic jams. Lane holding can be a little squirrely when the road surface is dirty. I think the car sometimes mistakes tire marks for lane markings. There are parts of my regular route where I just take over from lane holding. Snow or heavy rain? the lane holding feature goes first, then the adaptive cruise control. Snow, rain, or frost on the windshield interferes with the forward looking camera. Snow or ice on the nose interferes with the radar. Ice on the bumpers interferes with the near-field sonar proximity sensors. Autonomous driving on the Stanford campus and up Sand Hill Road is one thing. Autonomous driving in a nor'easter snowstorm on winding Atlantic Coast roads is another. We shall see. I admire and support people who tackle hard problems fearlessly. Tesla's doing that.

gabrielgoh 9y ago

where else would the training data come from?

sundvor 9y ago

Speak for yourself. I love the radar cruise control on my Mazda 3 Astina, and also value the AEB. I specifically bought this car because of these systems - at the time (mid 2015) it was the cheapest such car available on the market in Australia. It's a 2014 2.5 liter sedan, manual, ex demo. Love it.