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Thanks for the videos! For the first one: The conclusion as outlined by the producer was that Tesla has implemented restrictions around how autopilot can be u

Thanks for the videos! For the first one: The conclusion as outlined by the producer was that Tesla has implemented restrictions around how autopilot can be used and that it is safe when used correctly. (Someone actually in the seat, holding the wheel, paying attention). He had to jump through a significant number of hoops in a controlled environment to get exiting the car to work. The autopilot disengages when you unbuckle or open the front door, which sounds very reasonable to me. As he stated, idiots are going to be idiots, you can also get out of a moving plane if you try hard enough... Also, he didn’t ‘almost get locked out’, that is an exaggeration. He just observed that the car won’t open the doors while driving. Pretty standard. For the second one: That’s concerning that autopilot would allow you to engage without lane lines at such a high speed. What’s more concerning is that any human would engage it in that situation. You can technically land a small plane with Garmin autopilot systems but it’s really only used for emergencies when a pilot is incapacitated. Should such features be disabled? Or should it be up to the end user to not be an idiot when situationally applying the technology? As all Tesla owners know, this isn’t FSD level 5 and it’s up to the driver to situationally deem the environment safe to use autopilot. Pretty much limited to highways and large multi lane roads at this point. From my experience of ~5k autopilot miles it works very well in those environments. I’d never engage it on a backroad or parking lot etc. even if it ‘let me’. What happened to the men in this recent crash was tragic but easily avoidable.

camjohnson26 5y ago
I see where you’re coming from but have a few major disagreements. First you say that all Tesla owners know this isn’t FSD level 5. The occupants were 70 and 60 years old, I’ve seen plenty of situations of technology blind spots with older acquaintances. That’s why vehicle safety often includes the concept of predictable abuse, features that will predictably be abused. Pair this crash with all the TikTok videos with no one driving and even Elon driving hands free and claiming self driving is imminent. And I think it’s pedantic to say he didn’t almost get locked out, not sure what else you would call not being able to open the door. If that other car wasn’t there he would have had to climb through the window.
- reasonabl_human 5y ago
  I think we are ultimately on the same page.. as far predictable abuse goes, the seatbelt and door detection strikes me as reasonable. Adding detection for weight on the front seat would be another good call but could further be defeated with a dumbbell. My point was that it isn’t up to Tesla to ‘baby-proof’ a potentially dangerous feature, but to make reasonable safety precautions, which it seems they’ve done. Totally agree on the technology blind spot point and think the autopilot capability is over-hyped and the marketing angles could be dangerous when considering non-tech or older folks think it’s autonomous. However, that technology blind spot is addressed with the above precautions; if an elderly woman kicks it into autopilot thinking she can then leave the car or leave the drivers seat, the safety features will prevent her from doing so. These guys had to ‘trick’ the vehicle in order to function as it did, and evidently evidently from the video the tricks were fairly involved and required a lot of understanding how the system worked, so I don’t think the blind spot argument can be used. It isn’t like an elderly woman started napping behind the wheel because she had a false sense of safety (also wouldn’t work bc you need to actively touch the wheel), they had to have intentionally circumvented safety checks and left the seat. The ‘locked out’ bit is less relevant, agreed probably pedantic both ways, but to me locked out implies being unable to access your car without a locksmith or the like. In this case it seemed to further imply that the car was in a bad state, and mistakenly wasn’t letting its owner in... but that’s not the case- it was in drive and thus locked, it would be dangerous to have the car unlocked from the outside while driving, or from the inside too, preventing bumping the open button while groping for the window switches etc. No he wouldn’t have to had climbed through the window... autopilot disengages when you take the wheel, all he had to do was grab the wheel a bit. He mentioned this actually. Or reach inside and pull the stalk up... or adjust the speed to zero on the wheel control knob.. regardless it isn’t relevant to the discussion at hand IMO. The first video proves that these guys in the crash intentionally defeated the autopilot safety checks, nothing more. The second video, on the other hand, shows that Tesla has a long, long way to go to bring autopilot to a generally viable control system. So thank you for sharing these videos. I’ll pay even more attention on the highway now...

camjohnson26 5y ago

I see where you’re coming from but have a few major disagreements. First you say that all Tesla owners know this isn’t FSD level 5. The occupants were 70 and 60 years old, I’ve seen plenty of situations of technology blind spots with older acquaintances. That’s why vehicle safety often includes the concept of predictable abuse, features that will predictably be abused. Pair this crash with all the TikTok videos with no one driving and even Elon driving hands free and claiming self driving is imminent. And I think it’s pedantic to say he didn’t almost get locked out, not sure what else you would call not being able to open the door. If that other car wasn’t there he would have had to climb through the window.

reasonabl_human 5y ago
I think we are ultimately on the same page.. as far predictable abuse goes, the seatbelt and door detection strikes me as reasonable. Adding detection for weight on the front seat would be another good call but could further be defeated with a dumbbell. My point was that it isn’t up to Tesla to ‘baby-proof’ a potentially dangerous feature, but to make reasonable safety precautions, which it seems they’ve done. Totally agree on the technology blind spot point and think the autopilot capability is over-hyped and the marketing angles could be dangerous when considering non-tech or older folks think it’s autonomous. However, that technology blind spot is addressed with the above precautions; if an elderly woman kicks it into autopilot thinking she can then leave the car or leave the drivers seat, the safety features will prevent her from doing so. These guys had to ‘trick’ the vehicle in order to function as it did, and evidently evidently from the video the tricks were fairly involved and required a lot of understanding how the system worked, so I don’t think the blind spot argument can be used. It isn’t like an elderly woman started napping behind the wheel because she had a false sense of safety (also wouldn’t work bc you need to actively touch the wheel), they had to have intentionally circumvented safety checks and left the seat. The ‘locked out’ bit is less relevant, agreed probably pedantic both ways, but to me locked out implies being unable to access your car without a locksmith or the like. In this case it seemed to further imply that the car was in a bad state, and mistakenly wasn’t letting its owner in... but that’s not the case- it was in drive and thus locked, it would be dangerous to have the car unlocked from the outside while driving, or from the inside too, preventing bumping the open button while groping for the window switches etc. No he wouldn’t have to had climbed through the window... autopilot disengages when you take the wheel, all he had to do was grab the wheel a bit. He mentioned this actually. Or reach inside and pull the stalk up... or adjust the speed to zero on the wheel control knob.. regardless it isn’t relevant to the discussion at hand IMO. The first video proves that these guys in the crash intentionally defeated the autopilot safety checks, nothing more. The second video, on the other hand, shows that Tesla has a long, long way to go to bring autopilot to a generally viable control system. So thank you for sharing these videos. I’ll pay even more attention on the highway now...