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Would this be a news story if autopilot were not engaged and he was simply texting? People drive while distracted all of the time.
by cwhiz 6y ago
Would this be a news story if autopilot were not engaged and he was simply texting? People drive while distracted all of the time.
- brokenmachine 6y agoNo it wouldn't, but that's not what happened here. So-called "Autopilot" is not supposed to get distracted, so this is a news story because it's pretty terrible to crash into a cop car with its warning lights on. Only the worst driver would plow into a cop car with its warning lights on, so what does that say about Autopilot?
- 0xdeadb00f 6y agoThank you
- cwhiz 6y agoPeople hit stationary cars all the time. In the UK there are about 9,000 such accidents per year. It’s extremely common. Someone in the US crashed into a stationary car during the time it took for me to write this up. It happens all the time. It’s not news. Not unless it was a Tesla.
- brokenmachine 6y agoStationary cars maybe. Stationary cop cars with their warning lights on, not so much. Personally, I'd hope a Tesla with "autopilot" would be able to avoid such an obvious obstacle.
- cwhiz 6y agoIt happens way more often than you would think. There is an even a named phenomenon about how people naturally drift toward stationary objects. It's called "target fixation."