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"Cruise Control" doesn't mean I can ignore the ~3200lbs of sports car I drive, just like "Tesla Autopilot" doesn't mean drivers can ignore the ~5000lbs of batte

"Cruise Control" doesn't mean I can ignore the ~3200lbs of sports car I drive, just like "Tesla Autopilot" doesn't mean drivers can ignore the ~5000lbs of battery under them. As an American who spends considerable time driving cars in various performance events (even some fun wheel to wheel endurance stuff) I think I can safely estimate at least ~25% of drivers on the road today, probably shouldn't be. Tesla is making progress, and regardless of whether they survive these various courts of public opinion, they're helping to lay the ground work for safer roads by forcing the industry to integrate more and more automated safety systems. There will be problems. Computers will fail, mistakes will be made, and people will die, but I'm confident the break even point on those human costs is already pretty far behind us.* *That said, we already have onerous and terrible auto regulations in this country. If we (as a society) want to force companies to be more cautious in this area, well, its entirely within our regulatory structures power to do so.

justapassenger 7y ago
> they're helping to lay the ground work for safer roads by forcing the industry to integrate more and more automated safety systems. They focus more on driver-aid systems that encourage not paying attention. Their automated safety systems aren't anything special compared to what most manufactures offer.
- agitator 7y ago
  I disagree. Which other vehicles on the road actively steer your vehicle away from an imminent collision when it's safe to do so? Tesla's blind spot monitoring doesn't just detect what's in your blind spot, like other vehicles, it also detects whether a vehicle is slowing down or accelerating into the "blind spot" adjacent to your vehicle. Their autopilot or automated emergency braking doesn't just brake when a vehicle in front of your slams on it's brakes, it slows down when someone in front of that vehicle hit the brakes. There's a lot of intelligent engineering there, and a lot of improvements that are pushing the industry to be safer and more responsible. There's a lot of negative press out there, but much of it is not based on fair statistics.
  - cjcenizal 7y ago
    My Model 3 did exactly that this morning. I was in the act of changing lanes, expecting the car behind me in the target lane to either maintain speed or slow to avoid hitting me. Instead it sped up, my car alerted me, and as I glanced in the side view to see the car approaching, the steering wheel gently tugged me (us??) back into our lane, avoiding collision. I’ve never felt so grateful to an object before.
    - antmanler 7y ago
      Similar situation happened to me few days ago, my Model3 brake for myself to avoid a collision
    - astazangasta 7y ago
      Whereas, i presume, in your previous non-Tesla cars you were regularly getting into pileups?
      - Dylan16807 7y ago
        How reductive. Let's try looking at it as getting closer to accidents before managing to fix the issue. So now with this system, one-in-a-million odds of that type of accident might become one-in-ten-million odds.
        astazangasta 7y ago
        My point, ill-made, is this is anecdotal data and therefore useless in evaluating anything.
        cjcenizal 7y ago
        To be better understood, you could try directly stating your point instead of making a snarky remark that requires interpretation. :) as far as anecdotes, that’s all I have to offer on this topic. Feel free to ignore them if they don’t help you in evaluating something.
- thaumaturgy 7y ago
  > Their automated safety systems aren't anything special compared to what most manufactures offer. When I'm trying to figure out which of two really vocal, opposed camps might be more right on some issue, I look for the really hyperbolic statements that are easily refuted but still repeated. 2016: A Tesla's Forward Collision Warning System warns the driver about an impending collision he can't even see yet and starts applying the brakes. https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/28/watch-teslas-autopilot-system-help-avoid-a-crash-with-superhuman-sight/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/28/watch-teslas-autopilot-sys... 2016: A Tesla automatically alerts the driver and swerves to the right to avoid a collision. https://www.inverse.com/article/14393-tesla-autopilot-avoiding-highway-collision-video https://www.inverse.com/article/14393-tesla-autopilot-avoidi... 2018: A Tesla's automatic emergency braking system makes it the only car in an intersection that isn't hit by a someone running a red light. https://insideevs.com/news/342781/watch-this-tesla-model-3-stop-itself-to-avoid-horrific-crash-video/ https://insideevs.com/news/342781/watch-this-tesla-model-3-s... 2019: A Tesla gets rear-ended and then swerves around the vehicle in front of it and pulls safely off to the right. https://electrek.co/2019/05/06/tesla-autopilot-maneuver-avoid-crash-video/ https://electrek.co/2019/05/06/tesla-autopilot-maneuver-avoi... 2019: A Tesla avoids a stopped vehicle on a busy road in icy conditions with extremely poor visibility. https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-3-automatic-emergency-braking-avoids-icy-collision-video/ https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-3-automatic-emergency-... There are so many different reports like this that searching for them is boring. So which manufacturers do you have in mind when you say that "most" of them are offering comparable safety systems?
  - llukas 7y ago
    Individual reports are not data. https://www.iihs.org/topics/advanced-driver-assistance https://www.iihs.org/topics/advanced-driver-assistance "study found that systems with forward collision warning and automatic braking cut rear-end crashes in half, while forward collision warning alone reduces them by 27 percent. The autobrake systems also greatly reduce rear-end crashes involving injury."
  - FireBeyond 7y ago
    You'll find that indeed most manufacturers offer AEB, forward and rear collision avoidance, many of them offering side collision detection. Subaru, Volvo, Toyota, Audi, Mercedes, for ones I know for a fact. I'm more unsure as to why you think other manufacturers don't do these things.
neotek 7y ago
>Tesla is making progress, and regardless of whether they survive these various courts of public opinion, they're helping to lay the ground work for safer roads by forcing the industry to integrate more and more automated safety systems. They're also wilfully misrepresenting the quality and safety of their technology to their customers, presenting intentionally misleading statistics to the media about it, and attempting to suppress all criticism by insisting it's part of some big oil / short seller conspiracy.
- Cookingboy 7y ago
  If you go to certain sub-Reddits or other similar forums, you will see that there is a tremendous amount of misinformation associated with Tesla, Tesla Auto Pilot, driver assist technology and Full Self Driving technology in general. I largely blame the absurdly irresponsible misinformation campaign spearheaded by Tesla and Elon personally. It's awful to get the public's understand of a nascent and potential game changing technology to start off on such a terrible note. Some of the most common mis-conceptions I've seen include: 1. Level 5 Full Self Driving tech is right around the corner, with government regulation being the biggest show stopper. Elon promised "feature complete" of FSD by end of this year, and claims that within 6-12 months of that full level 5 self driving will be ready to ship to consumers. 2. Tesla is unique in their usage of computer vision in their FSD stack, and the rest of the industry only uses LIDAR. In reality almost everything Tesla does Waymo and others also do and very likely do it better, and on top of that they use LIDAR. 3. Since companies like Waymo employs pre-mapping and LIDAR, what they are building is a completely hardcoded solution to driving with very low degree of versatility and flexibility. I've seen Tesla fan suggesting that Waymo handles Stop Signs by hard coding the location of each stop sign in the map. 4. Because Auto Pilot, a level 2 driver assist system is being shipped in production cars and are racking up millions of miles, Tesla does not need any actual comprehensive testing of their FSD stack. I've seen many Tesla fans arguing this is why Tesla has done more test and gathers more "data" than companies like Waymo, when in reality Tesla's FSD system has seen almost ZERO actual testing anywhere, and puts them far behind competitors. 5. OTA updates makes Auto Pilot safer than competitors. In reality OTA very often enables less stringent QA and less rigorous regression testing. The Mountain View driver who was killed at the 85/101 on-ramp was the result of a terrible AP regression that failed to handle concrete barriers that it used to handle. 6. Auto Pilot is already safer than human driver because it has lower accidents/mile than the national average. This one is especially egregious since Tesla used active AP safety data compared against all motor vehicle accident data, which includes motorcycles and cars of all ages, driven by drivers of all ages, employing safety techs (or lack there of) of all levels, driving in all conditions. Where as active AP data is gathered by Tesla cars that's newer than 5 years old, driven by older, wealthier drivers, employs crucial safety tech such as automatic emergency braking, and only engaged during favorable conditions (mostly highway driving, clear weather, etc). When compared against data from cars with AEB, Auto Pilot has very comparative safety record. Elon always had a tendency to be fast and loose with facts/predictions/promises, and usually I view them as entertaining at best and disappointing at worst, but with safety critical features like this what he's doing makes me feel borderline angry. A few major mistakes will set back the industry by years and as of now, Tesla is literally the only driver assist system that has a fatality count. I honestly cannot understand how any engineers with good conscious can still work on AP/FSD at Tesla and sleep well at night.
fluffything 7y ago
"Autopilot" is short for "automatic pilot" which is defined as "a device for keeping an aircraft on a set course without the intervention of the pilot." If their "Autopilot" needs any sort of human supervision, either it is faulty, or tesla marketing is misleading. Either way, in case of an accident, it's tesla's fault - the name of the feature strongly implies that no human intervention is necessary, and talking about it with many pilot friends they all agree.

justapassenger 7y ago

> they're helping to lay the ground work for safer roads by forcing the industry to integrate more and more automated safety systems. They focus more on driver-aid systems that encourage not paying attention. Their automated safety systems aren't anything special compared to what most manufactures offer.

agitator 7y ago
I disagree. Which other vehicles on the road actively steer your vehicle away from an imminent collision when it's safe to do so? Tesla's blind spot monitoring doesn't just detect what's in your blind spot, like other vehicles, it also detects whether a vehicle is slowing down or accelerating into the "blind spot" adjacent to your vehicle. Their autopilot or automated emergency braking doesn't just brake when a vehicle in front of your slams on it's brakes, it slows down when someone in front of that vehicle hit the brakes. There's a lot of intelligent engineering there, and a lot of improvements that are pushing the industry to be safer and more responsible. There's a lot of negative press out there, but much of it is not based on fair statistics.
- cjcenizal 7y ago
  My Model 3 did exactly that this morning. I was in the act of changing lanes, expecting the car behind me in the target lane to either maintain speed or slow to avoid hitting me. Instead it sped up, my car alerted me, and as I glanced in the side view to see the car approaching, the steering wheel gently tugged me (us??) back into our lane, avoiding collision. I’ve never felt so grateful to an object before.
  - antmanler 7y ago
    Similar situation happened to me few days ago, my Model3 brake for myself to avoid a collision
  - astazangasta 7y ago
    Whereas, i presume, in your previous non-Tesla cars you were regularly getting into pileups?
    - Dylan16807 7y ago
      How reductive. Let's try looking at it as getting closer to accidents before managing to fix the issue. So now with this system, one-in-a-million odds of that type of accident might become one-in-ten-million odds.
      - astazangasta 7y ago
        My point, ill-made, is this is anecdotal data and therefore useless in evaluating anything.
        cjcenizal 7y ago
        To be better understood, you could try directly stating your point instead of making a snarky remark that requires interpretation. :) as far as anecdotes, that’s all I have to offer on this topic. Feel free to ignore them if they don’t help you in evaluating something.
thaumaturgy 7y ago
> Their automated safety systems aren't anything special compared to what most manufactures offer. When I'm trying to figure out which of two really vocal, opposed camps might be more right on some issue, I look for the really hyperbolic statements that are easily refuted but still repeated. 2016: A Tesla's Forward Collision Warning System warns the driver about an impending collision he can't even see yet and starts applying the brakes. https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/28/watch-teslas-autopilot-system-help-avoid-a-crash-with-superhuman-sight/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/28/watch-teslas-autopilot-sys... 2016: A Tesla automatically alerts the driver and swerves to the right to avoid a collision. https://www.inverse.com/article/14393-tesla-autopilot-avoiding-highway-collision-video https://www.inverse.com/article/14393-tesla-autopilot-avoidi... 2018: A Tesla's automatic emergency braking system makes it the only car in an intersection that isn't hit by a someone running a red light. https://insideevs.com/news/342781/watch-this-tesla-model-3-stop-itself-to-avoid-horrific-crash-video/ https://insideevs.com/news/342781/watch-this-tesla-model-3-s... 2019: A Tesla gets rear-ended and then swerves around the vehicle in front of it and pulls safely off to the right. https://electrek.co/2019/05/06/tesla-autopilot-maneuver-avoid-crash-video/ https://electrek.co/2019/05/06/tesla-autopilot-maneuver-avoi... 2019: A Tesla avoids a stopped vehicle on a busy road in icy conditions with extremely poor visibility. https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-3-automatic-emergency-braking-avoids-icy-collision-video/ https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-3-automatic-emergency-... There are so many different reports like this that searching for them is boring. So which manufacturers do you have in mind when you say that "most" of them are offering comparable safety systems?
- llukas 7y ago
  Individual reports are not data. https://www.iihs.org/topics/advanced-driver-assistance https://www.iihs.org/topics/advanced-driver-assistance "study found that systems with forward collision warning and automatic braking cut rear-end crashes in half, while forward collision warning alone reduces them by 27 percent. The autobrake systems also greatly reduce rear-end crashes involving injury."
- FireBeyond 7y ago
  You'll find that indeed most manufacturers offer AEB, forward and rear collision avoidance, many of them offering side collision detection. Subaru, Volvo, Toyota, Audi, Mercedes, for ones I know for a fact. I'm more unsure as to why you think other manufacturers don't do these things.

neotek 7y ago

>Tesla is making progress, and regardless of whether they survive these various courts of public opinion, they're helping to lay the ground work for safer roads by forcing the industry to integrate more and more automated safety systems. They're also wilfully misrepresenting the quality and safety of their technology to their customers, presenting intentionally misleading statistics to the media about it, and attempting to suppress all criticism by insisting it's part of some big oil / short seller conspiracy.

Cookingboy 7y ago
If you go to certain sub-Reddits or other similar forums, you will see that there is a tremendous amount of misinformation associated with Tesla, Tesla Auto Pilot, driver assist technology and Full Self Driving technology in general. I largely blame the absurdly irresponsible misinformation campaign spearheaded by Tesla and Elon personally. It's awful to get the public's understand of a nascent and potential game changing technology to start off on such a terrible note. Some of the most common mis-conceptions I've seen include: 1. Level 5 Full Self Driving tech is right around the corner, with government regulation being the biggest show stopper. Elon promised "feature complete" of FSD by end of this year, and claims that within 6-12 months of that full level 5 self driving will be ready to ship to consumers. 2. Tesla is unique in their usage of computer vision in their FSD stack, and the rest of the industry only uses LIDAR. In reality almost everything Tesla does Waymo and others also do and very likely do it better, and on top of that they use LIDAR. 3. Since companies like Waymo employs pre-mapping and LIDAR, what they are building is a completely hardcoded solution to driving with very low degree of versatility and flexibility. I've seen Tesla fan suggesting that Waymo handles Stop Signs by hard coding the location of each stop sign in the map. 4. Because Auto Pilot, a level 2 driver assist system is being shipped in production cars and are racking up millions of miles, Tesla does not need any actual comprehensive testing of their FSD stack. I've seen many Tesla fans arguing this is why Tesla has done more test and gathers more "data" than companies like Waymo, when in reality Tesla's FSD system has seen almost ZERO actual testing anywhere, and puts them far behind competitors. 5. OTA updates makes Auto Pilot safer than competitors. In reality OTA very often enables less stringent QA and less rigorous regression testing. The Mountain View driver who was killed at the 85/101 on-ramp was the result of a terrible AP regression that failed to handle concrete barriers that it used to handle. 6. Auto Pilot is already safer than human driver because it has lower accidents/mile than the national average. This one is especially egregious since Tesla used active AP safety data compared against all motor vehicle accident data, which includes motorcycles and cars of all ages, driven by drivers of all ages, employing safety techs (or lack there of) of all levels, driving in all conditions. Where as active AP data is gathered by Tesla cars that's newer than 5 years old, driven by older, wealthier drivers, employs crucial safety tech such as automatic emergency braking, and only engaged during favorable conditions (mostly highway driving, clear weather, etc). When compared against data from cars with AEB, Auto Pilot has very comparative safety record. Elon always had a tendency to be fast and loose with facts/predictions/promises, and usually I view them as entertaining at best and disappointing at worst, but with safety critical features like this what he's doing makes me feel borderline angry. A few major mistakes will set back the industry by years and as of now, Tesla is literally the only driver assist system that has a fatality count. I honestly cannot understand how any engineers with good conscious can still work on AP/FSD at Tesla and sleep well at night.

fluffything 7y ago

"Autopilot" is short for "automatic pilot" which is defined as "a device for keeping an aircraft on a set course without the intervention of the pilot." If their "Autopilot" needs any sort of human supervision, either it is faulty, or tesla marketing is misleading. Either way, in case of an accident, it's tesla's fault - the name of the feature strongly implies that no human intervention is necessary, and talking about it with many pilot friends they all agree.