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You know I take issue with Tesla on these incidents. They're trying to have it both ways. They market it as 'autopilot' to appeal to the dream of complete self-

You know I take issue with Tesla on these incidents. They're trying to have it both ways. They market it as 'autopilot' to appeal to the dream of complete self-driving but if an accident actually happens it can never be the fault of autopilot. After all it's required for the driver to be paying attention so if they didn't override autopilot it's obvious they weren't paying attention. Really I'd like to see the government to step in and force Tesla to market their product more honestly.

jsight 9y ago
To be honest, I've only really heard this misunderstanding from non-owners. The really scary ones are the ones that own it, know about the limitations, and intentionally bypass the safeguards.
- hexane360 9y ago
  I don't disagree, but I honestly have not really heard much from owners. Definitely not nearly enough to call it a representative sample.
  - greglindahl 9y ago
    Instead of your personal experience, how about data? https://insideevs.com/tesla-autopilot-survey-results-98-understand-that-autopilot-requires-driver-attention/ https://insideevs.com/tesla-autopilot-survey-results-98-unde...
    - hexane360 9y ago
      Okay, again I'm not disagreeing with you, but those questions are about as leading as you can get. Ask a portion of the population "Did you know that meiosis is the process through which cells divide?" and you'll get a lot of yes's.
  - jsight 9y ago
    I do not own one, but I am on the Tesla Reddit pretty regularly. It gets a regular stream of posts from people about how often it tries to deviate them into turn lanes or other unexpected behavior. To be clear, these are from people who really like the feature and find it useful, but they are really aware that it has to be watched just like if they were 100% manipulating the controls.
- uptown 9y ago
  Like this guy ... with an orange: https://www.dailydot.com/debug/tesla-orange-hack/ https://www.dailydot.com/debug/tesla-orange-hack/
ebbv 9y ago
Agreed. I am a big fan of Tesla and I used to make excuses for them on this but I think it’s b.s. they didn’t rename it after the incident where the guy died. Cool marketing names do not outweigh being totally honest and up front. If I made rat poison that looked like candy and named it “Yummy Candy Rat Poison” and some kid died coz they ate it, I’d deserve some blame regardless of parents keeping poison away from kids.
- hndamien 9y ago
  It isn't called full self driving, it is called auto-pilot. In aviation, auto-pilot is a system used to control the trajectory of an aircraft without constant 'hands-on' control by a human operator being required. Autopilots do not replace human operators but assist them in controlling aircraft, allowing them to focus on broader aspects of operations.
  - madengr 9y ago
    The Tesla autopilot doesn’t work in the air, either: https://carbuzz.com/news/teens-take-tesla-model-s-for-joyride-fly-it-80-feet-and-cause-horrific-crash https://carbuzz.com/news/teens-take-tesla-model-s-for-joyrid...
  - yk 9y ago
    Well context is important, the people who operate planes know exactly what autopilot in a specific plane means, the people who operate cars are generally aware that there are cars.
    - hndamien 9y ago
      Tesla state that autopilot will "match speed to traffic conditions, keep within a lane, automatically change lanes without requiring driver input, transition from one freeway to another, exit the freeway when your destination is near, self-park when near a parking spot and be summoned to and from your garage." I believe the problem lies in "Enhanced" and "Full self driving hardware". While this is an important point and is probably true, there should probably be bigger warnings that there is currently no full self driving software, and therefore, no full self driving.
jsjohnst 9y ago
I couldn’t agree more. It baffles me how Tesla can get away with such blatant false advertising (it’s anything but “autopilot” in any layman sense), especially in light of there being multiple incidents of bad accidents which showed them at fault.
- rileymat2 9y ago
  I would be curious about the stats though, If accidents are less frequent, is it at fault for accidents, or did it save us from a bunch of accidents?
  - jsjohnst 9y ago
    > or did it save us from a bunch of accidents? I do not believe Tesla’s are equipped with the necessary hardware to scientifically show beyond a reasonable doubt they assisted in preventing accidents.
    - michaelmior 9y ago
      Part of the problem is that whether an accident would have occurred is partially dependent on the human driver. While some accidents are unavoidable and some are completely preventable, there's a gray area in between those that depends on driver skill to a degree.
  - akira2501 9y ago
    266 Billion Miles are driven on US roadways each _month_. It's going to be a while before we have a predictive dataset.
  - FireBeyond 9y ago
    There's also those other issues: Tesla has not been counting collisions caused by the driver having to brake hard because the autopilot was about to happily slam into another vehicle/object/person? Tesla's summation of those is that they were not a failing of Autopilot, because it was not active at the moment of impact. That's ... disingenuous ... at best. And then: "It would have avoided this accident [by braking, steering]", and studiously saying nothing about the future, "... but it would still have been in a collision 0.42 seconds later". For all the collisions it would have avoided, there's another subset where it would only have "delayed" the collision. But that won't be mentioned. Because it doesn't fit the narrative.
samstave 9y ago
Let me put another option out there for you: Tesla wants autopilot Emergency services want autonomy in being able to shut the freeway down. How about PUT THE FUCKING AUTOPILOT SYSTEM IN THE EMERGENCY vehicles -- such that THEY can report to ANY auto driving car "SLOW DOWN we are doing emergency services [HERE]" And then you get both -- The emergency services vehicles should be freaking beacons to any self/auto driving car. To assume that this was short-sighted on either side is correct. Tesla should have been thinking about this, emergency services should have been thinking about this. Why doesnt Tesla take their Semi model and make a Fire-Engine model????
- inamberclad 9y ago
  I'm pretty confident that no system (beyond the visual and audio cues currently on emergency vehicles) is ready for implementation. Car mesh/broadcast networking is a tempting idea, but I'm not sure any of us are ready for it.
- anonymouz 9y ago
  How about making them highly visible by, say, painting them red and putting flashing lights on top of them? Difficult to blame the emergency vehicles when the semi-autonomous car fails to detect something that stands out so much.
- bdcravens 9y ago
  > Why doesnt Tesla take their Semi model and make a Fire-Engine model???? The automation in Tesla's vehicles is, and should be, designed around modern conditions, not a utopia. Otherwise disable all those features until that utopia arrives. Or would we say collisions with pedestrians are okay until such pedestrians all have autonomous human beacons (made by Tesla, of course)?
sowbug 9y ago
Tesla autopilot is more capable than an airplane autopilot. An airplane on autopilot will crash into stationary objects in its path, by design. Thus, airplane autopilots require full pilot attention as well. This thread happens with every Tesla crash, by the way: 1. Tesla crashes 2. Driver says autopilot was engaged 3. Long debate on HN about exact meaning of word "autopilot" 4. 9 times out of 10, Tesla log says autopilot wasn't on before the crash, or that obstacle was visibly in the path for more than enough time for the driver to take action (usually half in the lane and half out) The other one time out of 10 the driver says the Tesla suddenly accelerated and drove through most of a strip mall.
- 0xffff2 9y ago
  Can someone explain why this is being downvoted? At least with regard to airplane autopilots, it is completely acurate.
  - sowbug 9y ago
    I can explain. For about the first five minutes of the comment's life, the first sentence used a snippy tone. I got the message and removed the snippy part.
rrhyne 9y ago
In boats we have had autopilot for decades. It takes the boat on a straight path to a point via GPS only. You must pay attention and correct course for obsticals in your path. Simple, logical and efficient.
colordrops 9y ago
Wait a sec, did they get to root cause of this accident? It's a bit early to be reaching a verdict. And what are stats of accidents on Auto-pilot vs without? If less, I'd say it's a success.
- greglindahl 9y ago
  From the photo, it looks like the car slowed down a lot before the collision. But you'd expect that anyway from AEB.
divbzero 9y ago
Tesla should have branded the current system “Copilot”, and reserved “Autopilot” for trumpeting true level 5 self-driving.
- cma 9y ago
  But you can hand off complete control to a co-pilot in a plane while you go use the restroom, etc. With autopilot you are supposed to be there to monitor it.
- dkonofalski 9y ago
  Guaranteed that there was a licensing issue or trademark issue that prevented that.
greglindahl 9y ago
People who actually drive Tesla cars see a lot more information than people who see Tesla marketing. Market surveys of Tesla owners say that they aren't confused about it requiring driver attention. Have you ever driven a Tesla?
kakwa_ 9y ago
Also, requiring the driver to pay attention on what the automation do is a bit unrealistic. It's really difficult to stay focus and (mostly) do nothing at the same time. Monitoring automation is boring. Also switching from a passive mode to an active mode in few seconds in case of an emergency might be really hard. I'm not sure the Tesla "autopilot" is designed in a way that really keeps the driver in the loop and active enough.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

jsight 9y ago

To be honest, I've only really heard this misunderstanding from non-owners. The really scary ones are the ones that own it, know about the limitations, and intentionally bypass the safeguards.

hexane360 9y ago
I don't disagree, but I honestly have not really heard much from owners. Definitely not nearly enough to call it a representative sample.
- greglindahl 9y ago
  Instead of your personal experience, how about data? https://insideevs.com/tesla-autopilot-survey-results-98-understand-that-autopilot-requires-driver-attention/ https://insideevs.com/tesla-autopilot-survey-results-98-unde...
  - hexane360 9y ago
    Okay, again I'm not disagreeing with you, but those questions are about as leading as you can get. Ask a portion of the population "Did you know that meiosis is the process through which cells divide?" and you'll get a lot of yes's.
- jsight 9y ago
  I do not own one, but I am on the Tesla Reddit pretty regularly. It gets a regular stream of posts from people about how often it tries to deviate them into turn lanes or other unexpected behavior. To be clear, these are from people who really like the feature and find it useful, but they are really aware that it has to be watched just like if they were 100% manipulating the controls.
uptown 9y ago
Like this guy ... with an orange: https://www.dailydot.com/debug/tesla-orange-hack/ https://www.dailydot.com/debug/tesla-orange-hack/

ebbv 9y ago

Agreed. I am a big fan of Tesla and I used to make excuses for them on this but I think it’s b.s. they didn’t rename it after the incident where the guy died. Cool marketing names do not outweigh being totally honest and up front. If I made rat poison that looked like candy and named it “Yummy Candy Rat Poison” and some kid died coz they ate it, I’d deserve some blame regardless of parents keeping poison away from kids.

hndamien 9y ago
It isn't called full self driving, it is called auto-pilot. In aviation, auto-pilot is a system used to control the trajectory of an aircraft without constant 'hands-on' control by a human operator being required. Autopilots do not replace human operators but assist them in controlling aircraft, allowing them to focus on broader aspects of operations.
- madengr 9y ago
  The Tesla autopilot doesn’t work in the air, either: https://carbuzz.com/news/teens-take-tesla-model-s-for-joyride-fly-it-80-feet-and-cause-horrific-crash https://carbuzz.com/news/teens-take-tesla-model-s-for-joyrid...
- yk 9y ago
  Well context is important, the people who operate planes know exactly what autopilot in a specific plane means, the people who operate cars are generally aware that there are cars.
  - hndamien 9y ago
    Tesla state that autopilot will "match speed to traffic conditions, keep within a lane, automatically change lanes without requiring driver input, transition from one freeway to another, exit the freeway when your destination is near, self-park when near a parking spot and be summoned to and from your garage." I believe the problem lies in "Enhanced" and "Full self driving hardware". While this is an important point and is probably true, there should probably be bigger warnings that there is currently no full self driving software, and therefore, no full self driving.

jsjohnst 9y ago

I couldn’t agree more. It baffles me how Tesla can get away with such blatant false advertising (it’s anything but “autopilot” in any layman sense), especially in light of there being multiple incidents of bad accidents which showed them at fault.

rileymat2 9y ago
I would be curious about the stats though, If accidents are less frequent, is it at fault for accidents, or did it save us from a bunch of accidents?
- jsjohnst 9y ago
  > or did it save us from a bunch of accidents? I do not believe Tesla’s are equipped with the necessary hardware to scientifically show beyond a reasonable doubt they assisted in preventing accidents.
  - michaelmior 9y ago
    Part of the problem is that whether an accident would have occurred is partially dependent on the human driver. While some accidents are unavoidable and some are completely preventable, there's a gray area in between those that depends on driver skill to a degree.
- akira2501 9y ago
  266 Billion Miles are driven on US roadways each _month_. It's going to be a while before we have a predictive dataset.
- FireBeyond 9y ago
  There's also those other issues: Tesla has not been counting collisions caused by the driver having to brake hard because the autopilot was about to happily slam into another vehicle/object/person? Tesla's summation of those is that they were not a failing of Autopilot, because it was not active at the moment of impact. That's ... disingenuous ... at best. And then: "It would have avoided this accident [by braking, steering]", and studiously saying nothing about the future, "... but it would still have been in a collision 0.42 seconds later". For all the collisions it would have avoided, there's another subset where it would only have "delayed" the collision. But that won't be mentioned. Because it doesn't fit the narrative.

samstave 9y ago

Let me put another option out there for you: Tesla wants autopilot Emergency services want autonomy in being able to shut the freeway down. How about PUT THE FUCKING AUTOPILOT SYSTEM IN THE EMERGENCY vehicles -- such that THEY can report to ANY auto driving car "SLOW DOWN we are doing emergency services [HERE]" And then you get both -- The emergency services vehicles should be freaking beacons to any self/auto driving car. To assume that this was short-sighted on either side is correct. Tesla should have been thinking about this, emergency services should have been thinking about this. Why doesnt Tesla take their Semi model and make a Fire-Engine model????

inamberclad 9y ago
I'm pretty confident that no system (beyond the visual and audio cues currently on emergency vehicles) is ready for implementation. Car mesh/broadcast networking is a tempting idea, but I'm not sure any of us are ready for it.
anonymouz 9y ago
How about making them highly visible by, say, painting them red and putting flashing lights on top of them? Difficult to blame the emergency vehicles when the semi-autonomous car fails to detect something that stands out so much.
bdcravens 9y ago
> Why doesnt Tesla take their Semi model and make a Fire-Engine model???? The automation in Tesla's vehicles is, and should be, designed around modern conditions, not a utopia. Otherwise disable all those features until that utopia arrives. Or would we say collisions with pedestrians are okay until such pedestrians all have autonomous human beacons (made by Tesla, of course)?

sowbug 9y ago

Tesla autopilot is more capable than an airplane autopilot. An airplane on autopilot will crash into stationary objects in its path, by design. Thus, airplane autopilots require full pilot attention as well. This thread happens with every Tesla crash, by the way: 1. Tesla crashes 2. Driver says autopilot was engaged 3. Long debate on HN about exact meaning of word "autopilot" 4. 9 times out of 10, Tesla log says autopilot wasn't on before the crash, or that obstacle was visibly in the path for more than enough time for the driver to take action (usually half in the lane and half out) The other one time out of 10 the driver says the Tesla suddenly accelerated and drove through most of a strip mall.

0xffff2 9y ago
Can someone explain why this is being downvoted? At least with regard to airplane autopilots, it is completely acurate.
- sowbug 9y ago
  I can explain. For about the first five minutes of the comment's life, the first sentence used a snippy tone. I got the message and removed the snippy part.

rrhyne 9y ago

In boats we have had autopilot for decades. It takes the boat on a straight path to a point via GPS only. You must pay attention and correct course for obsticals in your path. Simple, logical and efficient.

colordrops 9y ago

Wait a sec, did they get to root cause of this accident? It's a bit early to be reaching a verdict. And what are stats of accidents on Auto-pilot vs without? If less, I'd say it's a success.

greglindahl 9y ago
From the photo, it looks like the car slowed down a lot before the collision. But you'd expect that anyway from AEB.

divbzero 9y ago

Tesla should have branded the current system “Copilot”, and reserved “Autopilot” for trumpeting true level 5 self-driving.

cma 9y ago
But you can hand off complete control to a co-pilot in a plane while you go use the restroom, etc. With autopilot you are supposed to be there to monitor it.
dkonofalski 9y ago
Guaranteed that there was a licensing issue or trademark issue that prevented that.

greglindahl 9y ago

People who actually drive Tesla cars see a lot more information than people who see Tesla marketing. Market surveys of Tesla owners say that they aren't confused about it requiring driver attention. Have you ever driven a Tesla?

kakwa_ 9y ago

Also, requiring the driver to pay attention on what the automation do is a bit unrealistic. It's really difficult to stay focus and (mostly) do nothing at the same time. Monitoring automation is boring. Also switching from a passive mode to an active mode in few seconds in case of an emergency might be really hard. I'm not sure the Tesla "autopilot" is designed in a way that really keeps the driver in the loop and active enough.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]