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Indeed. I have never understood the cheering for OTA of something that can literally kill you. Were they limited to infotainment and the useless easter eggs I w

Indeed. I have never understood the cheering for OTA of something that can literally kill you. Were they limited to infotainment and the useless easter eggs I would not care, however AP OTA is downright scary, especially pushed by vendor instead of being initiated by an informed user.

0815test 8y ago
The AP can only kill you if you're distracted/asleep at the wheel and not paying attention. You're always in charge of driving the car appropriately, the "AP" can only provide tentative assistance of a very rough sort. It will try to guess at the control inputs you might want to provide (which does make things a bit more comfortable in the best case) but the actual control always rests with the human driver.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  The issue is that the way the feature is designed and marketed makes it very easy for the driver to be distracted and not paying attention.
- craftyguy 8y ago
  It shouldn't be marketed as 'Autopilot' then. Less informed people will expect it to do more than it can. It's (IMHO, criminally) misleading to market something as being capable of doing something it cannot do.
- lisper 8y ago
  > The AP can only kill you if you're distracted/asleep at the wheel and not paying attention. That's not true. There are many situations where the AP could make a sudden turn and kill you long before you had time to react even if you were paying attention. And in fact, the situation in the video seem to be not so far away from that.
  - 0815test 8y ago
    Make a sudden turn? It's just lane following, so I really doubt that. And if your hands are on the wheel (as they should be) you'll very quickly become aware that the car is not staying in the lane as it's supposed to, and be in the best position to deliver the right input. Even looking at this video, the car didn't seem to "turn" suddenly and unexpectedly; if anything, it failed to physically take a turn even though it should have. Which is quite bad, but it's not startling to the point where a driver would be in trouble.
    - lisper 8y ago
      > Make a sudden turn? It's just lane following You're begging the question [1]. The autopilot has full control authority over the steering wheel, so if it fails, nothing constrains it from making a sudden turn. If it is "just lane following" then it hasn't failed (yet). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question
      - Karunamon 8y ago
        Your hands. If you're just resting them on the wheel, that's not enough to prevent the attention monitor from working, it actually has to measure some physical resistance. If you resist the automatic inputs too much, the AP cuts out. You can test this yourself in a tesla by engaging cruise control, then hitting a turn signal. This would normally initiate an automatic lane change - but keep your hands tightly on the wheel as if you wanted to stay in the lane you're in. The wheel will attempt to turn, fail as you're preventing it from turning - and the AP disables.
        lisper 8y ago
        > Your hands. Sure, if you react fast enough. Let's not lose the plot here. The original claim was: "The AP can only kill you if you're distracted/asleep at the wheel and not paying attention." (Emphasis added.) And that's not true. It can kill you, quite simply, by producing the wrong control input in a situation where the available recovery time is less than your reaction time. If you doubt this, then I challenge you to drive a car where the autopilot is under my control. (It will have to be remote control because no fucking way am I willing to be in the car with you when we do this experiment.)
- qball 8y ago
  > You're always in charge of driving the car appropriately, the "AP" can only provide tentative assistance of a very rough sort. It can "tentatively assist" you in killing yourself and potentially others, but we already know that from the disaster in Mountain View, where this exact same thing happened. The problem with behavior changes in autopilot is that the car needs to react the same way every time. If you're going around a corner on a road which you've driven on for years without issue, and the car all of a sudden does something unexpected, the panic and over-correction reaction that everyone instinctively has tends to cause more accidents than just holding your desired course does. It doesn't matter if it's a skid, or your Tesla trying to accelerate you into a wall at 70 miles an hour. If the car does something the driver is not expecting it to do for any reason (from fatally defective software to ice on the ground) the driver performs sub-optimally as a result. And since this is Tesla we're talking about (who bakes in features like your car not starting before you upgrade its software, which is another "feature" about these cars that's going to get someone killed sooner or later), I'm willing to bet that the car doesn't warn you that this might occur. It just works fine for 6 months, then an update gets pushed, the car tries to put you into a wall, and you cause an accident because you're trying to stop the car from killing you and didn't check your blind spot before that. That is a UI and UX failure of the highest magnitude, and it is completely unacceptable, no matter how well it otherwise tends to work.
DarmokJalad1701 8y ago
It is initiated by the user ... the update only happens after you give say it's okay to do so.
- javagram 8y ago
  According to the posters on Reddit, this update’s release notes were about “Dog Mode” and “Sentry Mode”. Nothing warning that behavior of autopilot might change.

0815test 8y ago

The AP can only kill you if you're distracted/asleep at the wheel and not paying attention. You're always in charge of driving the car appropriately, the "AP" can only provide tentative assistance of a very rough sort. It will try to guess at the control inputs you might want to provide (which does make things a bit more comfortable in the best case) but the actual control always rests with the human driver.

saagarjha 8y ago
The issue is that the way the feature is designed and marketed makes it very easy for the driver to be distracted and not paying attention.
craftyguy 8y ago
It shouldn't be marketed as 'Autopilot' then. Less informed people will expect it to do more than it can. It's (IMHO, criminally) misleading to market something as being capable of doing something it cannot do.
lisper 8y ago
> The AP can only kill you if you're distracted/asleep at the wheel and not paying attention. That's not true. There are many situations where the AP could make a sudden turn and kill you long before you had time to react even if you were paying attention. And in fact, the situation in the video seem to be not so far away from that.
- 0815test 8y ago
  Make a sudden turn? It's just lane following, so I really doubt that. And if your hands are on the wheel (as they should be) you'll very quickly become aware that the car is not staying in the lane as it's supposed to, and be in the best position to deliver the right input. Even looking at this video, the car didn't seem to "turn" suddenly and unexpectedly; if anything, it failed to physically take a turn even though it should have. Which is quite bad, but it's not startling to the point where a driver would be in trouble.
  - lisper 8y ago
    > Make a sudden turn? It's just lane following You're begging the question [1]. The autopilot has full control authority over the steering wheel, so if it fails, nothing constrains it from making a sudden turn. If it is "just lane following" then it hasn't failed (yet). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question
    - Karunamon 8y ago
      Your hands. If you're just resting them on the wheel, that's not enough to prevent the attention monitor from working, it actually has to measure some physical resistance. If you resist the automatic inputs too much, the AP cuts out. You can test this yourself in a tesla by engaging cruise control, then hitting a turn signal. This would normally initiate an automatic lane change - but keep your hands tightly on the wheel as if you wanted to stay in the lane you're in. The wheel will attempt to turn, fail as you're preventing it from turning - and the AP disables.
      - lisper 8y ago
        > Your hands. Sure, if you react fast enough. Let's not lose the plot here. The original claim was: "The AP can only kill you if you're distracted/asleep at the wheel and not paying attention." (Emphasis added.) And that's not true. It can kill you, quite simply, by producing the wrong control input in a situation where the available recovery time is less than your reaction time. If you doubt this, then I challenge you to drive a car where the autopilot is under my control. (It will have to be remote control because no fucking way am I willing to be in the car with you when we do this experiment.)
qball 8y ago
> You're always in charge of driving the car appropriately, the "AP" can only provide tentative assistance of a very rough sort. It can "tentatively assist" you in killing yourself and potentially others, but we already know that from the disaster in Mountain View, where this exact same thing happened. The problem with behavior changes in autopilot is that the car needs to react the same way every time. If you're going around a corner on a road which you've driven on for years without issue, and the car all of a sudden does something unexpected, the panic and over-correction reaction that everyone instinctively has tends to cause more accidents than just holding your desired course does. It doesn't matter if it's a skid, or your Tesla trying to accelerate you into a wall at 70 miles an hour. If the car does something the driver is not expecting it to do for any reason (from fatally defective software to ice on the ground) the driver performs sub-optimally as a result. And since this is Tesla we're talking about (who bakes in features like your car not starting before you upgrade its software, which is another "feature" about these cars that's going to get someone killed sooner or later), I'm willing to bet that the car doesn't warn you that this might occur. It just works fine for 6 months, then an update gets pushed, the car tries to put you into a wall, and you cause an accident because you're trying to stop the car from killing you and didn't check your blind spot before that. That is a UI and UX failure of the highest magnitude, and it is completely unacceptable, no matter how well it otherwise tends to work.

DarmokJalad1701 8y ago

It is initiated by the user ... the update only happens after you give say it's okay to do so.

javagram 8y ago
According to the posters on Reddit, this update’s release notes were about “Dog Mode” and “Sentry Mode”. Nothing warning that behavior of autopilot might change.