8 ms·

This kind of video makes me wonder: what is the "autopilot" feature actually for? Do people generally like it? (I don't own a Tesla and I've never driven one.)

This kind of video makes me wonder: what is the "autopilot" feature actually for? Do people generally like it? (I don't own a Tesla and I've never driven one.) If you're supposed to keep your hands on the wheel, and given videos like this that show you really need to keep your hands on the wheel and pay attention, is automatic steering really that big of a deal? Cruise control, now, that really is useful because it automates a trivial chore (maintaining a steady speed) and will do it well enough to improve your gas mileage. The main failure condition is "car keeps driving at full speed towards an obstacle" but an automatic emergency brake feature (again, reasonably straightforward, and standard in many new cars) can mitigate that pretty well. It seems to me that autopilot falls into an uncanny valley, where it's not simple enough to be a reliable automation or a useful safety improvement, but it also isn't smart enough to reduce the need for an alert human driver. So what's the point? If you're excited about self-driving cars because they'll reduce accidents, as many people here claim, what you should really be excited about is the more mundane incremental improvements like pedestrian airbags. Those will actually save lives right now.

vorpalhex 9y ago
So human drivers are terrible at driving for any long period of time, especially on relatively consistent "boring" highways. Guess what computers excel at? Driving consistently on consistent highways. The Tesla Autopilot is supposed to be the always aware and paying attention portion on these cases where a human driver would be very likely to start texting or dozing off. Now, it's not fully autonomous and may well decide it can't handle a situation (or apparently try to drive you into a barrier to see if you're still awake...). In this case the human driver who is somewhat zoned out needs to take control instantly and correct the situation, until they can safely re-engage autopilot (or pull over and make sure they're still alive, etc).
- davewritescode 9y ago
  The problem is autopilot actively engages you even less than highway driving. I argue this exacerbates some of the problems that cause humans to checkout. I don't know what the answer is but it feels like GM's super cruise does a more adequate job of acknowledging the realistic limits of the technology and explicitly white lists roads where the technology is available for use. I personally think that without some sort of sensors or beacons in the road, autonomous driving via camera and LIDAR sesnors is ever going to be good enough to achieve level 5 autonomous operation.
  - iainmerrick 9y ago
    Beacons is a great idea -- have some standardized beacon system, and a public map of autopilot-approved roads. Following the beacons safely would be a vastly easier problem than trying to completely replace a human driver in all situations, but it would still give you about 90% of the benefits.
    - tqkxzugoaupvwqr 9y ago
      Lines fade away because there is little money for maintenance but beacons that cost multiples are the solution? The first thing I thought when I read beacons: Hackers are going to have a field day with them. Add malicious beacons to streets and cars will drive off road at high speeds.
      - iainmerrick 9y ago
        Well, look at cat’s eyes (sometimes called Botts’ dots in the US, I think?) I assume they’re more expensive to install than just painting a few lines, but they’re very robust and long-lasting, and they’re fantastic for human drivers. It’s not a stretch to imagine something similarly useful for computerized cars, that links to a standard road database. Hacking is a risk, sure. I envisage you’d lock it down by having a cryptographically signed master map; if the observed beacons diverge from the map, the autopilot system would refuse to proceed. (OK, I guess that allows a DoS attack at least.)
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    I think the world modeling is the part that autonomous cars can obviously be better at. They have all sorts of advantages over humans; access to much more detailed maps than the average person can recall, multiple types of sensors pointed in multiple directions, a system designed to integrate all that information in a way that is advantageous for driving (we have a system evolved for whatever it evolved for) and so on. It's the sophisticated behaviors necessary to safely drive through that world model that are the issue. The success of emergency breaking systems (that aren't advertised as "driving" assist) are pretty good evidence that the sensors can serve well as input to safe behaviors.
- iainmerrick 9y ago
  OK, but there are clearly cases where the autopilot gets into trouble, and the human needs to take control again quickly. The human driver absolutely cannot doze off. Now, I realise people in old-fashioned non-autopilot cars can and do doze off, and that's very dangerous. But it's not clear to me how the autopilot improves that situation. Relying on the autopilot actually encourages you to doze off. We already have simple remedies like "pull over if you feel tired" and "never ever pick up your phone while driving (or you'll lose your licence)"
- Shivetya 9y ago
  The are two very real issues/threats here. the first being people are being put in harms way by either false sense of trust invoked by the name or the mixed messages from Tesla the second is that if the first is left unchecked Tesla could single handily set back Autonomous driving for all by souring public and government opinion. it needs a new name that aligns better with what it can do. it could be a safety system which gently corrects a driver and takes over in an obvious emergency internal or external. as it stands now it is just dangerous
- michaelt 9y ago
  Guess what computers excel at? Driving consistently on consistent highways. Watching the video, would you say the computer was excelling, or that the road was radically unusual? I wouldn't.
  - clort 9y ago
    It might not have been radically unusual, but that doesn't make it consistent either.. (looked like lanes where closed to me)
  - jboles 9y ago
    The location is the end of some tidal flow lanes rejoining the main freeway lanes with an unusual configuration of lane markings and barriers. I drive past the spot all the time and can totally see a computer messing up here.
    - Piskvorrr 9y ago
      In other words, "works great if it works, might actively try to kill you at random, there's no clear way of telling when it might try the latter, it's your fault in any case." Yeah, that's very much the safe driving paradise I'm being promised "in two years" for a decade now, by the technooptimists. It's almost as if the technology is at 50%-ready instead of the 90% that marketing types seem to peddle, who would have thunk?
      - jboles 9y ago
        pretty much
    - gowld 9y ago
      The computer decided that staying in the middle of a wide lane was more important than avoiding a large obstacle where there was sufficient room on either side. That's bog-standard target-fixation fallacy. Is that excelling?
- xtrapolate 9y ago
  > "Guess what computers excel at? Driving consistently on consistent highways." Possibly on paper. In reality, as of right now, computers are clearly far from excelling at this specific task.
  - Piskvorrr 9y ago
    Assuming perfectly spherical cars on perfectly consistent highways in a vacuum.
- greedo 9y ago
  Expecting "drivers" to be able to instantly switch from "somewhat zoned out" to having the situational awareness to resolve the problem that AP fails at is unrealistic.
Amezarak 9y ago
I think Tesla is losing out here by calling what is little more than adaptive cruise control plus lanekeeping "autopilot." Adaptive cruise control + lanekeeping + collision avoidance is available on a ton of cars now, even economy cars, and it works great. I regularly make a ~200 mile drive on the Honda system and it is 100% the whole way. But when you sell it as Autopilot instead of driver assist, people have much higher expectations and blame your car rather than the driver - though there very well could be serious problems with the Tesla implementation. Lanekeeping is actually very nice. The system in Teslas and most (all?) others do require you to keep your hands on the wheel and pay attention, but having to constantly manually steer the car is much more fatiguing than you would think. It's really annoying to drive cars without lanekeeping now.
- iainmerrick 9y ago
  My concern is, if you have both cruise control and lanekeeping, what's left to keep your attention and stop you zoning out? I don't find steering onerous, but it requires just enough attention to keep you alert. (I've never used a lanekeeping system, though. Maybe I'd like it, I dunno)
  - pfooti 9y ago
    I use lanekeeping on the freeway, usually with adaptive cruise control as well (subaru). I focus more on the Big Picture of all the cars around me, can see further and have a better sense of who is doing what. That's anecdotal, of course, and could well be placebo effect, but I still pay a lot of attention to the road. Plus, lanekeeping can be really annoying if you rely on it all the time. The car sometimes tends to drift back and forth in a lane a little between corrections, instead of just going straight. So: you're still steering. It's just that you're steering less and have a defense in depth against loss of focus, and can drive without exhausting yourself.
alistairSH 9y ago
Agreed. I really hate that Tesla named the feature "autopilot" as it gives the impression of being fully automatic (yes, I realize boat and airline "autopilots" aren't fully automatic - that is likely lot on most consumers). My VW has Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) which does the normal cruise control, plus basic distance keeping (with an alarm if the closing speed changes dangerously). My parents' Subarus have ACC plus lane-keeping. The car will only do so much correction, plus alarms. These seem like much better solutions, given the current state of driving "AI".
- pfooti 9y ago
  Yeah, I have a recent Subaru with those features. It beeps when I'm backing out of the garage and there's someone driving or biking up the road before they even come into my sight lines. It can help keep me in a lane, either by beeping or nudging the steering wheel if I drift - I only turn on active lane assist on long highway stretches, it is more of a security blanket than anything else - just in case I space out for a sec, here's another layer of defense. Adaptive cruise is also great. Between the two, in long road trips I can put the car in a travel lane and just go. I still have to attend to my surroundings, but it is a lot easier to focus on that when I'm not worried about accidentally creeping up to 90 mph because suddenly there's nobody in front of me. I also had the auto brake feature activate once when a car in front of me stopped unexpectedly. I was in the middle of braking, but the brake pedal depressed further and there was a loud alarm beep. None of these are autopilot, and honestly I wouldn't want autopilot until it is legit reliable. Instead, these are defense in depth features. The computer helps prevent certain mistakes as I make them, but never is in primary control of the vehicle.
  - Someone1234 9y ago
    Subaru's system is simply fantastic and you can tell they thought a lot about the "human condition" (human weaknesses) while designing it. Lame keep assist is very subtle, I describe it like wind blowing on the side of the car. You can trivially over-power it and it will beep if you exit the lane (without blinker on) with or without lane keep assist active. The whole package of safety features is wonderful and impressive for something starting at around $22K.
paulie_a 9y ago
Personally I hate cruise control. I prefer to be actively engaged when driving. Either I am driving 100% or I am not at all, there is absolutely no middle ground in my opinion
- iainmerrick 9y ago
  I can understand that. I like cruise control because it lets me focus 100% on steering and watching the road around me. Trying to maintain a steady speed and conserve gas is a fun challenge, but a bit pointless, because a) it's a distraction from more important tasks, and b) the computer can usually do it better than I can.
  - alex_duf 9y ago
    It's also more comfortable for your passengers. I did a 6 hours trip with a friend continuously putting his foot up and down on the throttle, and it was the most gruelling car trip I've had I think. When I asked he said it was "to keep control on the car". I'm a patient friend.
    - overcast 9y ago
      You're a better friend than I am. That truly is torture, and is the reason I volunteer to drive on ALL trips. I don't care how long. People who can't maintain proper speed without either flooring it, or taking their foot off the pedal, shouldn't be driving.
      - patcheudor 9y ago
        >People who can't maintain proper speed without either flooring it, or taking their foot off the pedal, shouldn't be driving. Not entirely true. I've been to German driving school and my father really pushed the concept of smooth throttle control on me as a beginning driver. Be smooth always. However, as I was able to afford higher and higher performance vehicles my take on the smooth maintaining of speed without noticeable accelerator input has changed. While I'll drive my SUV very smoothly, when I drive my manual six speed German roadster, my style is entirely different. Because of the weight, size, and HP, it's really not possible to drive it smoothly outside of tossing it into 6th which isn't terribly "fun". In the gears where it's "fun", it's a very much "on" or "off" throttle experience simply because of the HP produced by the engine.
Naritai 9y ago
To directly answer your question: people buy autopilot so they can check their phone while commuting down the freeway to work. I was talking to a group of people about the difficulties of commuting in the Santa Clara Valley, and one guy shrugged and said, "just get a Tesla, move to the left lane, and manage email until you get to work".
- iainmerrick 9y ago
  Yikes! I really hope that's a joke...
  - pjc50 9y ago
    Proponents keep touting this as the real benefit of self-driving cars, so it's hardly surprising that some people have taken them at their word and not realised that the car is not, in fact, truly autonomous and may drop out at any moment.
    - dwighttk 9y ago
      or not drop out and drive you into a barrier
  - PaulHoule 9y ago
    I see people attempting that on the roads around here without the Tesla. That is why I always honk at cell phone drivers. Sometimes I wish I had a fully-charged Marx bank in the trunk.
    - iainmerrick 9y ago
      It should be illegal. It is in many countries.
      - PaulHoule 9y ago
        It is in New York.
zyberzero 9y ago
I've rented a model S for a weekend and drove about 1 000 kilometers in it. Naturally, I tried the auto pilot feature on a highway but I wasn't to impressed. There is a major "bump" (negative G-forces), and the car tried to swirl into the other lane (this was within the first 40 minutes of my drive), and that made me distrust the auto steering feature. As I think you're onto, I DO feel that auto pilot is the future, but we're not there yet - let's improve the existing life saving features (and not disconnect them, looking at you, Uber).
kalleboo 9y ago
I don't own a car so I drive very rarely (once a month or less). I recently went on a week-long roadtrip in a rental Subaru which had their EyeSight system which does adaptive cruise (follows the speed of the car in front) + lane keeping. I'd say at the end of the day I was noticeably less exhausted than I usually am after a day of driving. The Subaru system will not let you let go of the wheel for more than 15 seconds (after that it will instantly disengage), so it's more to save your effort of continual minor corrections. It also disengages as soon as it's confused in the slightest (faded lines, lines at an angle etc)
- ghaff 9y ago
  I'm looking forward to trying adaptive cruise control on the new Subaru my dad got recently. I pretty much stopped using regular cruise control years ago because the roads where I mostly drive are busy enough I find that it encourages driving in a way that prioritizes maintaining a constant speed even when that's different from the flow of the traffic.
6DM 9y ago
I think right now it's only good for stop and go traffic conditions and that's about it. That's still really useful for a lot of people.
- iainmerrick 9y ago
  So, like the traffic every day along US-101? This self-driving car craze would be in a very different place if Silicon Valley had halfway decent mass transit...
ajeet_dhaliwal 9y ago
I've been wondering exactly the same thing over the last week once all this came to light. Seems it would be the worst of both worlds. Would personally feel safer to me knowing either I'm supposed to drive or not. This half way system means actually means the better the auto pilot is the more reliant I would naturally become and then not be ready to react or be in the frame of mind where I can. How airline pilots stop themselves becoming overly reliant on their autopilots is also a concern. It's that classic situation where two people each think the other will take care of it, then no one does. "I thought you were going to do it."
ascagnel_ 9y ago
> Cruise control, now, that really is useful because it automates a trivial chore (maintaining a steady speed) and will do it well enough to improve your gas mileage. The main failure condition is "car keeps driving at full speed towards an obstacle" but an automatic emergency brake feature (again, reasonably straightforward, and standard in many new cars) can mitigate that pretty well. Adaptive cruise control also helps; if the system detects a car in front slowing, it'll slow at a roughly equivalent pace to avoid a collision.
freerobby 9y ago
I use Autopilot every day. I think it's amazing and borderline life-changing if you are like me and dread the monotony of a daily commute. I don't think most people realize just how mentally fatiguing the act of driving (constantly making all sorts of micro adjustments) is until they use Autopilot for a while and see the difference for themselves. I certainly didn't. I can now drive for many hours and feel just as alert as when I first got into the car. I was never able to do that before Autopilot. Yes, you still need to pay attention. It is hard for me to believe that any Autopilot user doesn't know this because you learn it by experience almost immediately. People text and drive all the time in manual cars, but for some reason when they do it in a Tesla, we declare that Autopilot lulled them into it. While I agree that you need to be ready to grab the wheel or hit the brake on short notice, I disagree about what that means. There is a big difference between having to be ready to do those things and actually having to do them every few seconds. This difference wasn't intuitive to me, but in practice I've found it to be extremely mentally liberating and true beyond question. I've also found that Autopilot makes it easier to take in all of your surroundings and drive defensively against things you otherwise wouldn't see. One thing that has struck me, as I now see more drivers than just the one in front of me, is how many people are distracted while driving. If I glance continually at an arbitrary driver on my way to work, there is a greater likelihood than not that within 10 seconds they'll look at a phone. That is terrifying to me, but it is also good information to have as I drive -- I am now able to drive defensively against drivers around me, not just the one in front of me. I've also found I'm more able to think or listen to music or podcasts than I was before Autopilot. I could never get much out of technical audiobooks, for instance, while driving manually. But Autopilot has changed that. I hesitate to say this because I worry that I will give the impression that I am focusing less on the road, but I don't think that's what's happening. My mental abilities feel much higher when I am not constantly turning a wheel or adjusting a pedal. I'm listening to music, podcasts, or audiobooks either way -- I just get a lot more out of them with Autopilot. I think it goes back to the lack of mental fatigue. Whatever you make of my experience, I urge you to try it on a long drive if you ever get an opportunity. I have put over 60k miles on Autopilot, I have taken over on demand hundreds if not thousands of times, and I've never had a close call that was Autopilot's fault.
- jacquesm 9y ago
te_chris 9y ago
I rented one yesterday (s), it was my first time in a Tesla. There are a lot of things I didn't like - the interior is ugly and the giant ipad console is stupid and hard to use while driving without any tactile switches. But it IS the future. And WHAT a car. Just f'n brilliant as a package. BUT...I feel like autopilot should only be for traffic jams on highways. It's downright dangerous the way it forces the driver to disengage. The adaptive cruise control is much better as at least you still have to pay attention but the car manages the throttle and following distances efficiently.
gnachman 9y ago
It’s good in traffic jams. You can relax a lot more than driving yourself or autopilot at high speed. The worst case scenario is a fender bender.

vorpalhex 9y ago

So human drivers are terrible at driving for any long period of time, especially on relatively consistent "boring" highways. Guess what computers excel at? Driving consistently on consistent highways. The Tesla Autopilot is supposed to be the always aware and paying attention portion on these cases where a human driver would be very likely to start texting or dozing off. Now, it's not fully autonomous and may well decide it can't handle a situation (or apparently try to drive you into a barrier to see if you're still awake...). In this case the human driver who is somewhat zoned out needs to take control instantly and correct the situation, until they can safely re-engage autopilot (or pull over and make sure they're still alive, etc).

davewritescode 9y ago
The problem is autopilot actively engages you even less than highway driving. I argue this exacerbates some of the problems that cause humans to checkout. I don't know what the answer is but it feels like GM's super cruise does a more adequate job of acknowledging the realistic limits of the technology and explicitly white lists roads where the technology is available for use. I personally think that without some sort of sensors or beacons in the road, autonomous driving via camera and LIDAR sesnors is ever going to be good enough to achieve level 5 autonomous operation.
- iainmerrick 9y ago
  Beacons is a great idea -- have some standardized beacon system, and a public map of autopilot-approved roads. Following the beacons safely would be a vastly easier problem than trying to completely replace a human driver in all situations, but it would still give you about 90% of the benefits.
  - tqkxzugoaupvwqr 9y ago
    Lines fade away because there is little money for maintenance but beacons that cost multiples are the solution? The first thing I thought when I read beacons: Hackers are going to have a field day with them. Add malicious beacons to streets and cars will drive off road at high speeds.
    - iainmerrick 9y ago
      Well, look at cat’s eyes (sometimes called Botts’ dots in the US, I think?) I assume they’re more expensive to install than just painting a few lines, but they’re very robust and long-lasting, and they’re fantastic for human drivers. It’s not a stretch to imagine something similarly useful for computerized cars, that links to a standard road database. Hacking is a risk, sure. I envisage you’d lock it down by having a cryptographically signed master map; if the observed beacons diverge from the map, the autopilot system would refuse to proceed. (OK, I guess that allows a DoS attack at least.)
- maxerickson 9y ago
  I think the world modeling is the part that autonomous cars can obviously be better at. They have all sorts of advantages over humans; access to much more detailed maps than the average person can recall, multiple types of sensors pointed in multiple directions, a system designed to integrate all that information in a way that is advantageous for driving (we have a system evolved for whatever it evolved for) and so on. It's the sophisticated behaviors necessary to safely drive through that world model that are the issue. The success of emergency breaking systems (that aren't advertised as "driving" assist) are pretty good evidence that the sensors can serve well as input to safe behaviors.
iainmerrick 9y ago
OK, but there are clearly cases where the autopilot gets into trouble, and the human needs to take control again quickly. The human driver absolutely cannot doze off. Now, I realise people in old-fashioned non-autopilot cars can and do doze off, and that's very dangerous. But it's not clear to me how the autopilot improves that situation. Relying on the autopilot actually encourages you to doze off. We already have simple remedies like "pull over if you feel tired" and "never ever pick up your phone while driving (or you'll lose your licence)"
Shivetya 9y ago
The are two very real issues/threats here. the first being people are being put in harms way by either false sense of trust invoked by the name or the mixed messages from Tesla the second is that if the first is left unchecked Tesla could single handily set back Autonomous driving for all by souring public and government opinion. it needs a new name that aligns better with what it can do. it could be a safety system which gently corrects a driver and takes over in an obvious emergency internal or external. as it stands now it is just dangerous
michaelt 9y ago
Guess what computers excel at? Driving consistently on consistent highways. Watching the video, would you say the computer was excelling, or that the road was radically unusual? I wouldn't.
- clort 9y ago
  It might not have been radically unusual, but that doesn't make it consistent either.. (looked like lanes where closed to me)
- jboles 9y ago
  The location is the end of some tidal flow lanes rejoining the main freeway lanes with an unusual configuration of lane markings and barriers. I drive past the spot all the time and can totally see a computer messing up here.
  - Piskvorrr 9y ago
    In other words, "works great if it works, might actively try to kill you at random, there's no clear way of telling when it might try the latter, it's your fault in any case." Yeah, that's very much the safe driving paradise I'm being promised "in two years" for a decade now, by the technooptimists. It's almost as if the technology is at 50%-ready instead of the 90% that marketing types seem to peddle, who would have thunk?
    - jboles 9y ago
      pretty much
  - gowld 9y ago
    The computer decided that staying in the middle of a wide lane was more important than avoiding a large obstacle where there was sufficient room on either side. That's bog-standard target-fixation fallacy. Is that excelling?
xtrapolate 9y ago
> "Guess what computers excel at? Driving consistently on consistent highways." Possibly on paper. In reality, as of right now, computers are clearly far from excelling at this specific task.
- Piskvorrr 9y ago
  Assuming perfectly spherical cars on perfectly consistent highways in a vacuum.
greedo 9y ago
Expecting "drivers" to be able to instantly switch from "somewhat zoned out" to having the situational awareness to resolve the problem that AP fails at is unrealistic.

Amezarak 9y ago

I think Tesla is losing out here by calling what is little more than adaptive cruise control plus lanekeeping "autopilot." Adaptive cruise control + lanekeeping + collision avoidance is available on a ton of cars now, even economy cars, and it works great. I regularly make a ~200 mile drive on the Honda system and it is 100% the whole way. But when you sell it as Autopilot instead of driver assist, people have much higher expectations and blame your car rather than the driver - though there very well could be serious problems with the Tesla implementation. Lanekeeping is actually very nice. The system in Teslas and most (all?) others do require you to keep your hands on the wheel and pay attention, but having to constantly manually steer the car is much more fatiguing than you would think. It's really annoying to drive cars without lanekeeping now.

iainmerrick 9y ago
My concern is, if you have both cruise control and lanekeeping, what's left to keep your attention and stop you zoning out? I don't find steering onerous, but it requires just enough attention to keep you alert. (I've never used a lanekeeping system, though. Maybe I'd like it, I dunno)
- pfooti 9y ago
  I use lanekeeping on the freeway, usually with adaptive cruise control as well (subaru). I focus more on the Big Picture of all the cars around me, can see further and have a better sense of who is doing what. That's anecdotal, of course, and could well be placebo effect, but I still pay a lot of attention to the road. Plus, lanekeeping can be really annoying if you rely on it all the time. The car sometimes tends to drift back and forth in a lane a little between corrections, instead of just going straight. So: you're still steering. It's just that you're steering less and have a defense in depth against loss of focus, and can drive without exhausting yourself.

alistairSH 9y ago

Agreed. I really hate that Tesla named the feature "autopilot" as it gives the impression of being fully automatic (yes, I realize boat and airline "autopilots" aren't fully automatic - that is likely lot on most consumers). My VW has Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) which does the normal cruise control, plus basic distance keeping (with an alarm if the closing speed changes dangerously). My parents' Subarus have ACC plus lane-keeping. The car will only do so much correction, plus alarms. These seem like much better solutions, given the current state of driving "AI".

pfooti 9y ago
Yeah, I have a recent Subaru with those features. It beeps when I'm backing out of the garage and there's someone driving or biking up the road before they even come into my sight lines. It can help keep me in a lane, either by beeping or nudging the steering wheel if I drift - I only turn on active lane assist on long highway stretches, it is more of a security blanket than anything else - just in case I space out for a sec, here's another layer of defense. Adaptive cruise is also great. Between the two, in long road trips I can put the car in a travel lane and just go. I still have to attend to my surroundings, but it is a lot easier to focus on that when I'm not worried about accidentally creeping up to 90 mph because suddenly there's nobody in front of me. I also had the auto brake feature activate once when a car in front of me stopped unexpectedly. I was in the middle of braking, but the brake pedal depressed further and there was a loud alarm beep. None of these are autopilot, and honestly I wouldn't want autopilot until it is legit reliable. Instead, these are defense in depth features. The computer helps prevent certain mistakes as I make them, but never is in primary control of the vehicle.
- Someone1234 9y ago
  Subaru's system is simply fantastic and you can tell they thought a lot about the "human condition" (human weaknesses) while designing it. Lame keep assist is very subtle, I describe it like wind blowing on the side of the car. You can trivially over-power it and it will beep if you exit the lane (without blinker on) with or without lane keep assist active. The whole package of safety features is wonderful and impressive for something starting at around $22K.

paulie_a 9y ago

Personally I hate cruise control. I prefer to be actively engaged when driving. Either I am driving 100% or I am not at all, there is absolutely no middle ground in my opinion

iainmerrick 9y ago
I can understand that. I like cruise control because it lets me focus 100% on steering and watching the road around me. Trying to maintain a steady speed and conserve gas is a fun challenge, but a bit pointless, because a) it's a distraction from more important tasks, and b) the computer can usually do it better than I can.
- alex_duf 9y ago
  It's also more comfortable for your passengers. I did a 6 hours trip with a friend continuously putting his foot up and down on the throttle, and it was the most gruelling car trip I've had I think. When I asked he said it was "to keep control on the car". I'm a patient friend.
  - overcast 9y ago
    You're a better friend than I am. That truly is torture, and is the reason I volunteer to drive on ALL trips. I don't care how long. People who can't maintain proper speed without either flooring it, or taking their foot off the pedal, shouldn't be driving.
    - patcheudor 9y ago
      >People who can't maintain proper speed without either flooring it, or taking their foot off the pedal, shouldn't be driving. Not entirely true. I've been to German driving school and my father really pushed the concept of smooth throttle control on me as a beginning driver. Be smooth always. However, as I was able to afford higher and higher performance vehicles my take on the smooth maintaining of speed without noticeable accelerator input has changed. While I'll drive my SUV very smoothly, when I drive my manual six speed German roadster, my style is entirely different. Because of the weight, size, and HP, it's really not possible to drive it smoothly outside of tossing it into 6th which isn't terribly "fun". In the gears where it's "fun", it's a very much "on" or "off" throttle experience simply because of the HP produced by the engine.

Naritai 9y ago

To directly answer your question: people buy autopilot so they can check their phone while commuting down the freeway to work. I was talking to a group of people about the difficulties of commuting in the Santa Clara Valley, and one guy shrugged and said, "just get a Tesla, move to the left lane, and manage email until you get to work".

iainmerrick 9y ago
Yikes! I really hope that's a joke...
- pjc50 9y ago
  Proponents keep touting this as the real benefit of self-driving cars, so it's hardly surprising that some people have taken them at their word and not realised that the car is not, in fact, truly autonomous and may drop out at any moment.
  - dwighttk 9y ago
    or not drop out and drive you into a barrier
- PaulHoule 9y ago
  I see people attempting that on the roads around here without the Tesla. That is why I always honk at cell phone drivers. Sometimes I wish I had a fully-charged Marx bank in the trunk.
  - iainmerrick 9y ago
    It should be illegal. It is in many countries.
    - PaulHoule 9y ago
      It is in New York.

zyberzero 9y ago

I've rented a model S for a weekend and drove about 1 000 kilometers in it. Naturally, I tried the auto pilot feature on a highway but I wasn't to impressed. There is a major "bump" (negative G-forces), and the car tried to swirl into the other lane (this was within the first 40 minutes of my drive), and that made me distrust the auto steering feature. As I think you're onto, I DO feel that auto pilot is the future, but we're not there yet - let's improve the existing life saving features (and not disconnect them, looking at you, Uber).

kalleboo 9y ago

I don't own a car so I drive very rarely (once a month or less). I recently went on a week-long roadtrip in a rental Subaru which had their EyeSight system which does adaptive cruise (follows the speed of the car in front) + lane keeping. I'd say at the end of the day I was noticeably less exhausted than I usually am after a day of driving. The Subaru system will not let you let go of the wheel for more than 15 seconds (after that it will instantly disengage), so it's more to save your effort of continual minor corrections. It also disengages as soon as it's confused in the slightest (faded lines, lines at an angle etc)

ghaff 9y ago
I'm looking forward to trying adaptive cruise control on the new Subaru my dad got recently. I pretty much stopped using regular cruise control years ago because the roads where I mostly drive are busy enough I find that it encourages driving in a way that prioritizes maintaining a constant speed even when that's different from the flow of the traffic.

6DM 9y ago

I think right now it's only good for stop and go traffic conditions and that's about it. That's still really useful for a lot of people.

iainmerrick 9y ago
So, like the traffic every day along US-101? This self-driving car craze would be in a very different place if Silicon Valley had halfway decent mass transit...

ajeet_dhaliwal 9y ago

I've been wondering exactly the same thing over the last week once all this came to light. Seems it would be the worst of both worlds. Would personally feel safer to me knowing either I'm supposed to drive or not. This half way system means actually means the better the auto pilot is the more reliant I would naturally become and then not be ready to react or be in the frame of mind where I can. How airline pilots stop themselves becoming overly reliant on their autopilots is also a concern. It's that classic situation where two people each think the other will take care of it, then no one does. "I thought you were going to do it."

ascagnel_ 9y ago

> Cruise control, now, that really is useful because it automates a trivial chore (maintaining a steady speed) and will do it well enough to improve your gas mileage. The main failure condition is "car keeps driving at full speed towards an obstacle" but an automatic emergency brake feature (again, reasonably straightforward, and standard in many new cars) can mitigate that pretty well. Adaptive cruise control also helps; if the system detects a car in front slowing, it'll slow at a roughly equivalent pace to avoid a collision.

freerobby 9y ago

I use Autopilot every day. I think it's amazing and borderline life-changing if you are like me and dread the monotony of a daily commute. I don't think most people realize just how mentally fatiguing the act of driving (constantly making all sorts of micro adjustments) is until they use Autopilot for a while and see the difference for themselves. I certainly didn't. I can now drive for many hours and feel just as alert as when I first got into the car. I was never able to do that before Autopilot. Yes, you still need to pay attention. It is hard for me to believe that any Autopilot user doesn't know this because you learn it by experience almost immediately. People text and drive all the time in manual cars, but for some reason when they do it in a Tesla, we declare that Autopilot lulled them into it. While I agree that you need to be ready to grab the wheel or hit the brake on short notice, I disagree about what that means. There is a big difference between having to be ready to do those things and actually having to do them every few seconds. This difference wasn't intuitive to me, but in practice I've found it to be extremely mentally liberating and true beyond question. I've also found that Autopilot makes it easier to take in all of your surroundings and drive defensively against things you otherwise wouldn't see. One thing that has struck me, as I now see more drivers than just the one in front of me, is how many people are distracted while driving. If I glance continually at an arbitrary driver on my way to work, there is a greater likelihood than not that within 10 seconds they'll look at a phone. That is terrifying to me, but it is also good information to have as I drive -- I am now able to drive defensively against drivers around me, not just the one in front of me. I've also found I'm more able to think or listen to music or podcasts than I was before Autopilot. I could never get much out of technical audiobooks, for instance, while driving manually. But Autopilot has changed that. I hesitate to say this because I worry that I will give the impression that I am focusing less on the road, but I don't think that's what's happening. My mental abilities feel much higher when I am not constantly turning a wheel or adjusting a pedal. I'm listening to music, podcasts, or audiobooks either way -- I just get a lot more out of them with Autopilot. I think it goes back to the lack of mental fatigue. Whatever you make of my experience, I urge you to try it on a long drive if you ever get an opportunity. I have put over 60k miles on Autopilot, I have taken over on demand hundreds if not thousands of times, and I've never had a close call that was Autopilot's fault.

jacquesm 9y ago

te_chris 9y ago

I rented one yesterday (s), it was my first time in a Tesla. There are a lot of things I didn't like - the interior is ugly and the giant ipad console is stupid and hard to use while driving without any tactile switches. But it IS the future. And WHAT a car. Just f'n brilliant as a package. BUT...I feel like autopilot should only be for traffic jams on highways. It's downright dangerous the way it forces the driver to disengage. The adaptive cruise control is much better as at least you still have to pay attention but the car manages the throttle and following distances efficiently.

gnachman 9y ago

It’s good in traffic jams. You can relax a lot more than driving yourself or autopilot at high speed. The worst case scenario is a fender bender.