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You have to learn how to use it properly and pay attention. I use it a lot and it can drive from San Francisco to LA pretty much without stopping. But every onc

You have to learn how to use it properly and pay attention. I use it a lot and it can drive from San Francisco to LA pretty much without stopping. But every once in a while it does mess up and you just need to make sure you're watching and ready to take over quickly. I agree that it's good enough that people might stop paying attention, but they just need to realize that they have to hold the software's hand in these initial stages. As a matter of fact, being in the drivers seat able to take control makes me much more comfortable in a self driving Tesla than in the back seat of a much more advanced Waymo self driving car

danmaz74 9y ago
It you have to pay attention as much as if you were driving, then, what's the point of autopilot?
- RangerScience 9y ago
  Actually... I notice my right hip and leg hurts in a pretty unique way after long drives, particularly if there's a lot of speed variance. That might not be worth the full cost of autopilot (particularly compared with lane keepers), but it's a thing.
  - danmaz74 9y ago
    So, physical fatigue. I didn't consider that; it's not really what I'm waiting autopilot for, but it's indeed something useful :)
- omarforgotpwd 9y ago
  Trust me, it's still a huge relief. A day and night difference. Try it on a long drive, like LA to San Francisco and you'll see what I mean. It kind of feels like you're in the passenger seat rather than the drivers seat, but you can still grab the controls if you need to.
  - alkonaut 9y ago
    If it allows the driver to e.g. reply to a text message on his phone, then it's dangerous. Either it requires the driver to occasionally take over and handle a situation on short notice, then the driver should have hands on the wheel and eyes forward (and the car should ensure this by alerting and slowing down immediately if the driver isn't paying attention). Or the driver isn't required to pay attention and take over occasionally, and then it's fine to reply to that email on the phone while driving. I see no future in which there is a possible middle ground between these two levels of autonomy.
    - quotemstr 9y ago
      Regular manual automotive controls, in practice, "allow[] the driver to...reply to a text message". Illegal or not, it's done by millions of people every day, and for the most part, they don't crash. You'd have to actually add control instability to the car to force the kind of attention you want out of drivers, and nobody would buy a car with this deliberately annoying handling.
      - alkonaut 9y ago
        There is a double standard here: cars with autonomous features are held to the new standard, meat drivers are held to the old standard. Just like we will probably never accept (neither socially nor legally) autonomous drivers that aren't at least an order of magnitude safer than human drivers, we will likely continue to accept drivers not paying attention to their manual controls - but we do not accept drivers not paying enough attention to take over after their AI driver. > nobody would buy a car with this deliberately annoying handling. Exactly. And since this is the only way of making a reasonably safe level 3 car, this is also why many car manufacturers have actively chosen to not develop level 3 autonomous cars (because they are either not safe OR annoying - and either way it's a tough sale)
    - MPSimmons 9y ago
      This isn't a black and white scenario. I use AP for probably 50 miles of my 60 mile round trip commute. Here's how it breaks down for me: In the morning, I leave at 5:30am. There is constant moving traffic at 60-80mph on the first leg of my trip (6 miles). I drive manually, or with AP, and I pay full attention, 100% of this time. If I'm using AP, it's because it's at least as reliable as I am staying in lanes. I then change interstates. I do this in manual mode almost every time. AP isn't great at dealing with changing multiple lanes quickly and tightly like traffic often requires. Once I'm on the new interstate, I get into my intended lane (second from the left), put the car in AP, and we have what you'd consider stop and go traffic for a few miles. At this point, I open the can of soda I brought. I keep a hand on the wheel, and I pay attention, but I'm more relaxed than I was earlier, when I was doing 60-80mph. At this point, the only thing that I need to do is to respond to someone jumping into my lane and cutting me off (which the AP deals with, but I have more faith in my ability to slam the brakes), or road debris, which at this speed, is not a problem that needs less than a second of response time. There's a slow steady 40mph drive that I'm in full AP for, drinking my soda and paying attention, and then the traffic thins out, and I notice that I'm starting to lag behind cars, because my AP has a set max of 70MPH from back where the speed limit was 65mph (even though I was only going 20-40). At this point, both hands on the wheel, full attention, and I increase the AP max to 75 or 80, depending on how much traffic I'm in. I switch it back over to manual to make the lane changes necessary to hit my exit, and I'm manual until I park my car at work. On the way home, I'm in stop and go traffic for an hour. When I'm 'going', I'm going 5-10mph. I am in full AP mode 95% of this time, and I could take a nap at this point, and it wouldn't actually be unsafe. I'm safer with AP than manual at this point, because my attention fades if not and I could drift lanes, or bump the car in front of me. Which I've seen happen to other people countless times, and which just increases the amount of time everyone else is in traffic, too. Even the most egregious lane jumper can't get into my lane too fast for AP at this stage of my commute. I just set the follow distance to 2, and listen to audio books while I browse twitter or facebook. I look at what's going on out the windshield, but it's virtually unchanging. Like the thousands of people surrounding me, I'm slowly creeping forward, waiting on the 20-30 miles to pass. For an hour and a half.
twblalock 9y ago
I don't trust you to be able to snap out of a distracted state and take control of a car in a situation you may or may not have been paying attention to. I don't trust you to do that, I don't trust the driver behind me to do that, and I don't trust the drivers to the left and to the right of me to do that. I should not need to trust you -- if I trusted you, why would we need autopilot at all? Humans are either qualified to drive cars or they aren't. If they are qualified, we don't need autopilot. If they aren't qualified, autopilot should never require human intervention. What we have now is a half-measure that assumes that neither humans nor autopilots can be trusted, but that some combination of those two untrustworthy parties can somehow be trusted. It doesn't make any sense.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  1.3 million people a year die in car crashes. Humans are woefully unqualified to pilot heavy machinery on a daily basis. Tesla’s Autopilot reduces crashes by 40% according to the NHTSA, so I can’t agree with your binary argument. Whether you trust others is immaterial; statistics will be the final arbitor. If Autopilot still causes fatal accidents, but fewer fatal accidents than humans alone, how could you argue against such a safety system? What of the lives saved that wouldn’t have been if we demand an entirely fault proof system prior to implementation? Who are you (not you specially, but the aggregate) to take those lives away because of irrationality?
  - Aeolun 9y ago
    I am human, and any product built for me will have to take into account my idiosyncrasies. This includes my unwillingness to drive on the same road with a car that might at any moment swerve into me because of weird software. It may be irrational, but I can forgive a human, I cannot forgive an AI.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - cma 9y ago
    Wasn't that with the old, better, auto pilot?

danmaz74 9y ago

It you have to pay attention as much as if you were driving, then, what's the point of autopilot?

RangerScience 9y ago
Actually... I notice my right hip and leg hurts in a pretty unique way after long drives, particularly if there's a lot of speed variance. That might not be worth the full cost of autopilot (particularly compared with lane keepers), but it's a thing.
- danmaz74 9y ago
  So, physical fatigue. I didn't consider that; it's not really what I'm waiting autopilot for, but it's indeed something useful :)
omarforgotpwd 9y ago
Trust me, it's still a huge relief. A day and night difference. Try it on a long drive, like LA to San Francisco and you'll see what I mean. It kind of feels like you're in the passenger seat rather than the drivers seat, but you can still grab the controls if you need to.
- alkonaut 9y ago
  If it allows the driver to e.g. reply to a text message on his phone, then it's dangerous. Either it requires the driver to occasionally take over and handle a situation on short notice, then the driver should have hands on the wheel and eyes forward (and the car should ensure this by alerting and slowing down immediately if the driver isn't paying attention). Or the driver isn't required to pay attention and take over occasionally, and then it's fine to reply to that email on the phone while driving. I see no future in which there is a possible middle ground between these two levels of autonomy.
  - quotemstr 9y ago
    Regular manual automotive controls, in practice, "allow[] the driver to...reply to a text message". Illegal or not, it's done by millions of people every day, and for the most part, they don't crash. You'd have to actually add control instability to the car to force the kind of attention you want out of drivers, and nobody would buy a car with this deliberately annoying handling.
    - alkonaut 9y ago
      There is a double standard here: cars with autonomous features are held to the new standard, meat drivers are held to the old standard. Just like we will probably never accept (neither socially nor legally) autonomous drivers that aren't at least an order of magnitude safer than human drivers, we will likely continue to accept drivers not paying attention to their manual controls - but we do not accept drivers not paying enough attention to take over after their AI driver. > nobody would buy a car with this deliberately annoying handling. Exactly. And since this is the only way of making a reasonably safe level 3 car, this is also why many car manufacturers have actively chosen to not develop level 3 autonomous cars (because they are either not safe OR annoying - and either way it's a tough sale)
  - MPSimmons 9y ago
    This isn't a black and white scenario. I use AP for probably 50 miles of my 60 mile round trip commute. Here's how it breaks down for me: In the morning, I leave at 5:30am. There is constant moving traffic at 60-80mph on the first leg of my trip (6 miles). I drive manually, or with AP, and I pay full attention, 100% of this time. If I'm using AP, it's because it's at least as reliable as I am staying in lanes. I then change interstates. I do this in manual mode almost every time. AP isn't great at dealing with changing multiple lanes quickly and tightly like traffic often requires. Once I'm on the new interstate, I get into my intended lane (second from the left), put the car in AP, and we have what you'd consider stop and go traffic for a few miles. At this point, I open the can of soda I brought. I keep a hand on the wheel, and I pay attention, but I'm more relaxed than I was earlier, when I was doing 60-80mph. At this point, the only thing that I need to do is to respond to someone jumping into my lane and cutting me off (which the AP deals with, but I have more faith in my ability to slam the brakes), or road debris, which at this speed, is not a problem that needs less than a second of response time. There's a slow steady 40mph drive that I'm in full AP for, drinking my soda and paying attention, and then the traffic thins out, and I notice that I'm starting to lag behind cars, because my AP has a set max of 70MPH from back where the speed limit was 65mph (even though I was only going 20-40). At this point, both hands on the wheel, full attention, and I increase the AP max to 75 or 80, depending on how much traffic I'm in. I switch it back over to manual to make the lane changes necessary to hit my exit, and I'm manual until I park my car at work. On the way home, I'm in stop and go traffic for an hour. When I'm 'going', I'm going 5-10mph. I am in full AP mode 95% of this time, and I could take a nap at this point, and it wouldn't actually be unsafe. I'm safer with AP than manual at this point, because my attention fades if not and I could drift lanes, or bump the car in front of me. Which I've seen happen to other people countless times, and which just increases the amount of time everyone else is in traffic, too. Even the most egregious lane jumper can't get into my lane too fast for AP at this stage of my commute. I just set the follow distance to 2, and listen to audio books while I browse twitter or facebook. I look at what's going on out the windshield, but it's virtually unchanging. Like the thousands of people surrounding me, I'm slowly creeping forward, waiting on the 20-30 miles to pass. For an hour and a half.

twblalock 9y ago

I don't trust you to be able to snap out of a distracted state and take control of a car in a situation you may or may not have been paying attention to. I don't trust you to do that, I don't trust the driver behind me to do that, and I don't trust the drivers to the left and to the right of me to do that. I should not need to trust you -- if I trusted you, why would we need autopilot at all? Humans are either qualified to drive cars or they aren't. If they are qualified, we don't need autopilot. If they aren't qualified, autopilot should never require human intervention. What we have now is a half-measure that assumes that neither humans nor autopilots can be trusted, but that some combination of those two untrustworthy parties can somehow be trusted. It doesn't make any sense.

toomuchtodo 9y ago
1.3 million people a year die in car crashes. Humans are woefully unqualified to pilot heavy machinery on a daily basis. Tesla’s Autopilot reduces crashes by 40% according to the NHTSA, so I can’t agree with your binary argument. Whether you trust others is immaterial; statistics will be the final arbitor. If Autopilot still causes fatal accidents, but fewer fatal accidents than humans alone, how could you argue against such a safety system? What of the lives saved that wouldn’t have been if we demand an entirely fault proof system prior to implementation? Who are you (not you specially, but the aggregate) to take those lives away because of irrationality?
- Aeolun 9y ago
  I am human, and any product built for me will have to take into account my idiosyncrasies. This includes my unwillingness to drive on the same road with a car that might at any moment swerve into me because of weird software. It may be irrational, but I can forgive a human, I cannot forgive an AI.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- cma 9y ago
  Wasn't that with the old, better, auto pilot?