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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

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.
  - greglindahl 9y ago
    Source? I've seen people speculate about the first, but just speculation. And that Google/Waymo does the same thing. I don't think it's true for either: public companies get sued for lies like that, and the NTSB is not stupid.
fleitz 9y ago
There's lots of autopilot systems that smash into shit, sailboats are one of them, you can put your sailboat on autopilot and it's going to smash into stuff. Samething with an airliner, autopilot will not avoid another aircraft.
- jsjohnst 9y ago
  > Samething with an airliner, autopilot will not avoid another aircraft. Wrong! There are autopilots which integrate TCAS into the autopilot (A380 among them). Source: http://www.airbus.com/newsroom/press-releases/en/2009/08/easa-certifies-new-autopilot-flight-director-tcas-mode-for-a380.html http://www.airbus.com/newsroom/press-releases/en/2009/08/eas...
  - paulddraper 9y ago
    They exist. But collision avoidance is far from a necessary retirement. E.g. my father in law's private single engine. Autopilot is basically cruise control, but you know...for a pilot
    - manicdee 9y ago
      There’s Autothrottle, which is more like cruise control. Autopilot controls attitude aka steering. Tesla Autopilot is a combination of both steering and throttle control.
      - paulddraper 9y ago
        True. The point remains though...collision avoidance is not a requirement for autopilot in the context of planes (or boats)
        jsjohnst 9y ago
        GP didn’t say “not a requirement”, the poster said “will not avoid”, which is factually incorrect.
sidcool 9y ago
From Elon's interview, he mentioned that 'autopilot' was a name akin to the flight autopilots. Pilots are never expected to get their eyes off the controls. This crash is unfortunate and should be investigated. But autopilot naming is something I don't think is the problem.
- tacomonstrous 9y ago
  That's only a reasonable explanation if that were the common understanding of what the term means. It is not.
- ucaetano 9y ago
  > Pilots are never expected to get their eyes off the controls. Pilots do so all the time, because airplanes aren't flying in a congested 2D space. Airspace is mostly empty, with very large distances between planes and features, allowing for plenty of early warning. And an airplane's "autopilot" has nothing to do with Tesla's Autopilot. Their purpose and working mechanisms are completely different. The airplane analogy is pure bullshit.
  - manicdee 9y ago
    The aircraft autopilot is pretty much the same thing. It steers on the designated lane, maintaining attitude, and relies on the pilot to be aware of conditions. It operates the controls but relies on the human operator for supervision. Pilots talk about “flying in the magenta” and exactly the same thing applies to Tesla Autopilot. Believing that autopilot means something different is the bullshit attitude that has to change. Warren Van Der Burch gave a classic presentation, Children of Magenta: https://youtu.be/pN41LvuSz10 https://youtu.be/pN41LvuSz10
    - in_cahoots 9y ago
      I think the main difference is that, on an airplane, a momentary (less than 5 seconds) lapse in judgment isn’t going to down the plane. Pilots know when they have to be heavily engaged — during takeoff and landing — and when to let autopilot take over. Here, if you zone out for a few seconds at any point in your trip you could easily kill yourself and others.
hemancuso 9y ago
Couldn’t agree more. People who argue for Elon’s meaning of auto-pilot are wrong. Unless 100% of Tesla drivers are 100% aware of the limitations calling it auto-pilot is dangerous.
manicdee 9y ago
And yet when we get stuck in thought and don’t think about where we’re going and drive to our office on the weekend by accident we say “oh, I got stuck in autopilot” These accidents are not people mistaking the purpose of autopilot, they are people slipping into false confidence that the car will handle the driving for them because it has in the past.
Bromskloss 9y ago
> it’s anything but “autopilot” in any layman sense To be fair, an autopilot, in the traditional sense, just maintains a heading and an altitude.
- jsjohnst 9y ago
  Most commercial airline autopilots in use today could land the plane on auto if desired by the flight crew, so no, they don’t “just maintains a heading and an altitude”.
  - Bromskloss 9y ago
    I think we all know that such technology exists. That is why I specifically said "in the traditional sense", to point out that I'm talking about what the word was invented for.
    - jsjohnst 9y ago
      But you missed speed. “In the traditional sense”, that’s also handled.
- falcolas 9y ago
  Autopilot can refer to everything between a "wing leveler", and a full-on automated landing system. So no, even in aviation there is no standard definition of what autopilot does.

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.
- greglindahl 9y ago
  Source? I've seen people speculate about the first, but just speculation. And that Google/Waymo does the same thing. I don't think it's true for either: public companies get sued for lies like that, and the NTSB is not stupid.

fleitz 9y ago

There's lots of autopilot systems that smash into shit, sailboats are one of them, you can put your sailboat on autopilot and it's going to smash into stuff. Samething with an airliner, autopilot will not avoid another aircraft.

jsjohnst 9y ago
> Samething with an airliner, autopilot will not avoid another aircraft. Wrong! There are autopilots which integrate TCAS into the autopilot (A380 among them). Source: http://www.airbus.com/newsroom/press-releases/en/2009/08/easa-certifies-new-autopilot-flight-director-tcas-mode-for-a380.html http://www.airbus.com/newsroom/press-releases/en/2009/08/eas...
- paulddraper 9y ago
  They exist. But collision avoidance is far from a necessary retirement. E.g. my father in law's private single engine. Autopilot is basically cruise control, but you know...for a pilot
  - manicdee 9y ago
    There’s Autothrottle, which is more like cruise control. Autopilot controls attitude aka steering. Tesla Autopilot is a combination of both steering and throttle control.
    - paulddraper 9y ago
      True. The point remains though...collision avoidance is not a requirement for autopilot in the context of planes (or boats)
      - jsjohnst 9y ago
        GP didn’t say “not a requirement”, the poster said “will not avoid”, which is factually incorrect.

sidcool 9y ago

From Elon's interview, he mentioned that 'autopilot' was a name akin to the flight autopilots. Pilots are never expected to get their eyes off the controls. This crash is unfortunate and should be investigated. But autopilot naming is something I don't think is the problem.

tacomonstrous 9y ago
That's only a reasonable explanation if that were the common understanding of what the term means. It is not.
ucaetano 9y ago
> Pilots are never expected to get their eyes off the controls. Pilots do so all the time, because airplanes aren't flying in a congested 2D space. Airspace is mostly empty, with very large distances between planes and features, allowing for plenty of early warning. And an airplane's "autopilot" has nothing to do with Tesla's Autopilot. Their purpose and working mechanisms are completely different. The airplane analogy is pure bullshit.
- manicdee 9y ago
  The aircraft autopilot is pretty much the same thing. It steers on the designated lane, maintaining attitude, and relies on the pilot to be aware of conditions. It operates the controls but relies on the human operator for supervision. Pilots talk about “flying in the magenta” and exactly the same thing applies to Tesla Autopilot. Believing that autopilot means something different is the bullshit attitude that has to change. Warren Van Der Burch gave a classic presentation, Children of Magenta: https://youtu.be/pN41LvuSz10 https://youtu.be/pN41LvuSz10
  - in_cahoots 9y ago
    I think the main difference is that, on an airplane, a momentary (less than 5 seconds) lapse in judgment isn’t going to down the plane. Pilots know when they have to be heavily engaged — during takeoff and landing — and when to let autopilot take over. Here, if you zone out for a few seconds at any point in your trip you could easily kill yourself and others.

hemancuso 9y ago

Couldn’t agree more. People who argue for Elon’s meaning of auto-pilot are wrong. Unless 100% of Tesla drivers are 100% aware of the limitations calling it auto-pilot is dangerous.

manicdee 9y ago

And yet when we get stuck in thought and don’t think about where we’re going and drive to our office on the weekend by accident we say “oh, I got stuck in autopilot” These accidents are not people mistaking the purpose of autopilot, they are people slipping into false confidence that the car will handle the driving for them because it has in the past.

Bromskloss 9y ago

> it’s anything but “autopilot” in any layman sense To be fair, an autopilot, in the traditional sense, just maintains a heading and an altitude.

jsjohnst 9y ago
Most commercial airline autopilots in use today could land the plane on auto if desired by the flight crew, so no, they don’t “just maintains a heading and an altitude”.
- Bromskloss 9y ago
  I think we all know that such technology exists. That is why I specifically said "in the traditional sense", to point out that I'm talking about what the word was invented for.
  - jsjohnst 9y ago
    But you missed speed. “In the traditional sense”, that’s also handled.
falcolas 9y ago
Autopilot can refer to everything between a "wing leveler", and a full-on automated landing system. So no, even in aviation there is no standard definition of what autopilot does.