11 ms·

Tesla bows to pressure, stops allowing drivers to play video games while driving

105 points by vanusa 5y ago

bpodgursky 5y ago
I get it, but this reminds me of how my car doesn't allow my wife (in the passenger seat) to set up bluetooth pairing while I am driving. Pretty inconvenient during road trips to have to pull off the highway, because the car doesn't trust that it's the passenger working the center console...
- DennisAleynikov 5y ago
  absolutely absurd coddling of the end user
  - meibo 5y ago
    I've had enough close calls with people playing with their radio/hvac that I'd rather have everyone pull over to set up Bluetooth than end up in a ditch somewhere
    - DennisAleynikov 5y ago
      its just too agressive for the cases where you do have a passenger. I understand people usually drive alone but its gonna be hard to police this long term unless we start solving the real problems like why are touch screens being used in cars at all??? they are the worst possible ux for maximum distraction!
- fma 5y ago
  Road trips? Plural? How many times have you had to pair your bluetooth to your car...
  - Closi 5y ago
    I don't know about you, but I have had to re-pair my bluetooth quite a few times with my car. Sometimes bluetooth just seems to get itself in a state where things won't connect and you have to start again. It happens on pretty much everything with me eventually, be it my bluetooth keyboard with my laptop, my phone and my car, my headphones and iPhone...
  - bpodgursky 5y ago
    Every time we rent a car.
alphabettsy 5y ago
It seems like they could’ve used the occupancy sensor to detect a passenger. A passenger playing a game on the screen which are also where your only instruments are located seems like an unnecessary added distraction so I’d say they made the right call.
- userbinator 5y ago
  which are also where your only instruments are located I think this is the most important fact to note here. If the primary instruments were on a separate display, this would not have been as severe of a concern. It's another reason why having a single touchscreen as the interface of a car is a horrible idea. I've seen a lot of newer cars where the instruments are all in the center instead of immediately behind the wheel, and I always thought that design was less usable and more distracting --- a glance downwards is easier than one sideways and down.
  - mechinn 5y ago
    I wonder if any research has been done about safety around touch controls? It's so much easier to reach over and hit a physical button or rotate a physical dial that you know is in the same spot every time without having to look at it compared to a touch interface that will by adjust depending on the app running. Like I appreciate the power that something like Apple CarPlay and Android Auto bring to the infotainment system but every time I can't control something from the physical buttons on the wheel I know I'm not going to be as focused on the road as I should be reaching over and hoping that I am correctly aiming at what I'm trying to touch and that's already after probably quickly looking away from the road to find where to aim in the first place
    - laumars 5y ago
      I completely agree. Years ago when smart phones were just emerging, people made the same complaints about them too; saying you cannot walk and text at the same time like you could with the old feature phones with physical keyboards. I believe public opinion was so vocal about this draw back that were some research projects done using gel screens that could offer a tactile responses dynamically. But then all that seamed to fizzle out and everyone stopped moaning about tactile feedback on touchscreen phones. Fast forward a few years and the Raspberry Pi was released. My first RPi project was to built a new in car entertainment system. I used Go v1.0 (at that time even methods weren’t supported) and built a media player with text to speech. The entertainment system had 6 buttons: 1. Previous artist 2. Previous album 3. Previous song / replay song 4. Skip song 5. Skip album 6. Skip artist The media centre would then use text to speech to read the artist, album and song details out over the speakers before playing the tracks. This system was designed so I never needed to take my eyes off the road and it worked amazingly. Unfortunately I’m not an electrical engineer so the device was ugly and started to fall apart quite quickly. I think it only lasted < 1 year. But I learned a lot from that experiment: there is a lot of missed opportunities for innovation in the car entertainment domain.
olliej 5y ago
This was clearly a terrible idea from the beginning. They presumable thinking was that autopilot/fsd would be driving the car so the driver could play games. At the same time they’re claiming that they aren’t responsible for autopilot crashes because the driver is always meant to be able to instantly be in control of the car. You can’t really do both “the driver can be focused on non driving tasks” and also “the driver must be focused on driving”. That is obviously impossible.
- ajross 5y ago
  > They presumable thinking was that autopilot/fsd would be driving the car so the driver could play games. Arrgh. It was a feature for the passenger to play games while preserving the driving UI. Absolutely no one intended for this to be used by drivers. There isn't even any evidence of a driver being caught doing this. The coverage is basically clickbait, and you appear to have bought it exactly as it was intended. Whether it's really a good idea or not? I mean, the driver can pull out a phone or iPad and game/text/whatever to their hearts content already. And many do. And lots of them die. Why exactly are we treating this any differently?
  - greyface- 5y ago
    > There isn't even any evidence of a driver being caught doing this. Elsewhere in this very discussion, a driver admitted to doing this. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29670414 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29670414
    - Dylan16807 5y ago
      They said they tried and the car wouldn't let them. A quick test even if successful shouldn't count, and a failed test definitely doesn't count.
  - bestcoder69 5y ago
    Not seeing how this could be clickbait or even misleading. No one had to intend anything, and there doesn't have to be evidence of drivers doing anything. The NHTSA is investigating to see if they have to enforce some laws, and that made Tesla pivot. Also the rule seems to be that you can bring a distraction into a car but you can't build the distraction into the car. Which seems totally reasonable to me. I mean, even after Tesla got rid of the games, passengers can still play any non-Tesla-exclusive game on their iPhone, so it seems like no one is really harmed.
waiseristy 5y ago
Which brings up a fun question; At which point does pressing buttons on a screen to play a video game while driving cause just as much distraction as pressing buttons on a screen to manage your windshield wipers / drive mode / HVAC / windows? There used to be a lot of crashes attributed to "playing with the radio" in the 90's / 00's. Maybe all those buttons on the wheel and a display centered in the drivers cone of vision were actually huge advancements in safety...
- warning26 5y ago
  Honestly, I wish the powers-that-be would crack down harder on touchscreens in vehicles. There is no case where manipulating a touchscreen while driving is safe, for one simple reason: you have to look at the screen to use it because there's no tactile feedback. They are truly, as that one book title went, unsafe at any speed.
  - jeroenhd 5y ago
    There have been some experiments with effective tactile feedback provided by touch screens, but they're complicated to produce and expensive. Most of the research seems to be aimed at providing touch screens to the visually impaired. It's possible to get some kind of tactile response mimicking the edges of buttons well enough. I'd say a good implementation of this technology would be safe IF the position and availability of the controls would be static. I'm not sure what you'd get out of a touch screen with those constraints (less parts?), especially with the added cost and research, but that's the only way I can see a touch screen in a car that should ever be legal. A Tesla driver in Germany already got fined for using the touch screen of his car while driving. It's strange how this obvious flaw of a car design has ever been allowed onto the roads.
    - warning26 5y ago
      > ...safe IF the position and availability of the controls would be static Agreed -- this was also why the Apple Touchbar failed, IMO. Typically keyboard use relies on a lot of muscle memory, and so the touchbar's "you get a different set of controls with different shapes and sizes that do different things depending on which app you're using" design ethos didn't really fit with how people actually use keyboards.
paweladamczuk 5y ago
What about the idea that, as a customer who bought and owns something, you should have control over that thing, not the other way around? I am not saying this is the stronger argument. It's still an argument, though, and it surprised me to find this sentiment missing from the comments (granted, we're at only 7 comments right now). Why would something we want applied to smartphones and PCs not apply to cars?
- userbinator 5y ago
  I am in complete agreement, but it seems Tesla is strongly pushing for a model where you don't actually own it.
- DSingularity 5y ago
  … because it’s really hard for me to misuse my smartphone to the point where it kills someone/myself.
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    Actually, smartphones are a pretty significant cause of death, but when people are using them while driving. For Apple iPhone, for example, you just have to assert that you aren't driving to use it while driving (assuming the iPhone could be used by a passenger instead, so they can't really tell).
    - teawrecks 5y ago
      Yeah, that's why doing so is illegal.
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  The difference is that it's very hard to accidentally kill a family by messing with your PC or smartphone, assuming you're not doing it while driving. Your own safety is your own responsibility and if you want to try for a Darwin award you should be allowed to, but you're not the likely victim of something goes wrong. Cars are inherently dangerous, mostly to the people around you. Modern car safety makes sure you can practically drive into a wall and come out fine, but any people you might hit on the way won't share your fate. You should have control over the stuff you buy, but to use that stuff on public roads you'll have to get it certified for safety. If you want to build your own race track to play video games on, be my guest, but keep your mods off the streets.
rektide 5y ago
a reminder that automobiles in the united states kill 36 thousand people a year (~6k being pedestrians), cause >3 million medically consulted injuries, and >10m property damages/non-disabling injuries. i have a hard time with this issue of what is permitted in a car. personally i feel like a good driver, like i will handle things fine. but i also once was going up an icy highway late at night & ended up spinning 360 around (thankfully with no one around me & staying on the road) because i spent about 1 second going for some last fries in a take out bag & couldn't re-stabilize. it had just so happened to be the wrong moment. in driving, mostly things are boring & unexciting. but secretly we are surrounded by just the wrong moments, dotted here & there amid the boring. typically there's enough slack to navigate & avoid the little hazards, to prevent catastrophe or damage. but a little compounding factor can matters a lot. it's hard to impress onto drivers- who typically see such boring, easy, unassuming tasks, endlessly playing out- that this is serious work, that it requires vigilance. eternal, unrelenting, persistent vigilance. to believe in the hazardousness of the situation, especially whenever there is another human soul anywhere in a couple hundred meters. human's aren't built for hyper-vigilance, for attentiveness in such fast moving, high energy situations. so i don't know what we can do, but keep locking down on driving. anyone in charge of over 0.5kg of moving mass: sorry, but society has a moral obligation to clamp down on, to restrict potential distractions. whether it's your passenger playing a game or them just futzing with bluetooth. there's so so so many hours lost to driving, and having such a spartan existence at the wheel, having machines that refuse to interact (be it passenger or driver) or distract, that monitor the driver conditions... it just seems mandatory. i don't like it, don't want it for myself, it feels stupid. but i don't see that we have any other choices to pick from, given what absurd catastrophe driving enacts, every single second on this planet.
- 1123581321 5y ago
  Passionate but too austere. This would lead to people packing speakers in the car and other distracting behavior, and lead to too many people zoning out or falling asleep. Additionally, for those who have to drive many hours of their lives, it would be wasteful. Some value must be assigned there.
- perl4ever 5y ago
  I don't know if you're a Californian or not, but what do you think of the car culture there? Particularly as it exists along with all of the regulations that are distinct to the state? What do you think of the people to whom automobiles are art, pastime, recreation, lifestyle?
gnicholas 5y ago
When I first heard about video games in Teslas, my first thought was about Ender’s Game. Will there be a time where self-driving cars are piloted/assisted by players of massive online gaming platforms? It’s been shown that monitoring a vehicle that is mostly driving itself is not an easy task for humans. But if you gamify it and add several layers of redundancy (multiple people effectively monitoring the same vehicle), it could be made fun and also sufficiently safe for passengers. Latency is a risk, of course, as are evildoers.
- zeusk 5y ago
  or basically outsource driving to some 3rd world country?
  - MomoXenosaga 5y ago
    No need we have poor people at home, as the gig economy has shown.
    - zeusk 5y ago
      Ah, so uber for your own car.
- neilv 5y ago
  Even closer Ender's Game than gamifying crowdsourcing driving is if [spoiler alert] the players thought they were only playing a game, not controlling real cars. (On the off chance that's the actual situation, all my hours of GTA Online griefing mean I probably owe quite a few people an apology. :) )
  - eyelidlessness 5y ago
    Considering the actual Enders Game, if any of this hypothesis is real you and many more of us very much owe some bugs an apology.
- MereInterest 5y ago
ryzvonusef 5y ago
https://twitter.com/greentheonly/status/1474238289355943949 >Look like no more pretending you are a passenger to play games while driving. The car will now ask you "Adjust the passenger seat controls to verify you are a passenger." >Suddenly that passenger lumbar control becomes super used I guess? not exactly clear what has been implemented
- saberdancer 5y ago
  They are asking user to use the passenger seat control which is hard to reach if you are in the driving seat.
  - koonsolo 5y ago
    So either driving gamers will give up on gaming while driving, or do even more crazier shit.
greggman3 5y ago
Meh, Sure, save the user from themselves while driving. Still, I wish Tesla was much more open on the car. For example I wish it had Chromecast/Airplay so I could play movies from my phone (fine if it's only when parked). I also wish it supported iOS CarPlay and Android Auto, even if was just in 2/3rd of the screen in a window. I don't use the self driving feature and I'd rather use the full google maps experience than their limited built in version. And, I wish they allowed apps (heavily sandboxed).
- Xylakant 5y ago
  > Sure, save the user from themselves while driving. The problem is that those people are driving a ton of steel around and are likely to kill someone other than themselves. And people have proven to be irresponsible when using cars - alcohol, text and drive, stupid ideas are abundant. So that’s not saving the users from themselves. It’s saving me and you from idiot users.
michelb 5y ago
Time and again this company proves that it still doesn't realise what cars currently are, including the ones they try to make. Maybe they should just not release this stuff until they actually have a really, really reliable level 5 autonomy.
- packeted 5y ago
  That's exactly why Tesla are so good at what they do! I've had VW , BMW and Ford rental cars in the last year and they are literally stuck in the dark ages when it comes to on car entertainment and the things that just work and are very responsive in a Tesla.
  - nojito 5y ago
    Why wouldn’t you just use CarPlay or Android auto?
FridayoLeary 5y ago
A nice example of what should have been a non story, blown out of proportion. Obviously not Teslas business whether or not people use their touchscreen while driving. But make enough noise and anything can be an issue. Also, news headlines should really be "tesla adopts path of least resistance" because obviously there's nothing to discuss here, but some driving regulator doesn't understand their job and tesla isn't interested in the headache. Also, i can't think of a more minor potential distraction while driving then this.
MrDresden 5y ago
This is the kind of situation where there should not be any action described in any other terms than the hammer coming down hard. Saying there was pressure just makes it sound like regulators are completely impotent.
- Traster 5y ago
  Given what Tesla has said publicly about their cars/software and the response of regulators, I would say impotent is pretty accurate.
  - MrDresden 5y ago
    Yeah, sadly I think that is the case.
leobg 5y ago
I think what they did was the same as Waze. It warns against playing while driving and asks you to confirm that you’re the passenger. In other words, the software treats you as an adult. Someone who lease correct me if that is not how it was implemented. I’ve never tried to play a game while driving, for obvious reasons. If we need software to kindergarten us against endangering ourselves and others, we have much bigger problems as a society. Out of the same philosophy, Tesla allows you to set Autopilot speed slightly above the applicable speed limit. You can cry out that that’s illegal. But then again, try to drive exactly the speed limit in real world situations. You might actually be creating more dangerous situations than you avoid. Hence Tesla treats you as the driver. It’s your ship, and you are the captain. The tech is just there to assist you.
- happytoexplain 5y ago
  >If we need X to kindergarten us against endangering ourselves and others This sentence is confusing to me - at the risk of sounding curt, we obviously do need to protect people from idiots. Given a game to play while driving, some people will. The more convenient and present it is, the more people will do it. I'm not sure how one could formulate an argument that these people don't exist. The key here is of course that they endanger others - if it were just themselves, the conversation would be much more subjective.
  - leobg 5y ago
    True. But they might as well drink and drive. Or text on their phone. Cars are dangerous weapons. But we trust the public to use them. I have no interest in playing video games while driving. But I do appreciate Tesla for treating owners as adults. That is to say, I think I can see where they’re coming from. They don’t want people to get into accidents because they’re playing a video game while driving. But they also don’t want to be their customers’ nanny. I like that. To me, that’s a very human touch. Especially for a tech company. Perhaps I also resent the implicit attempt at shifting the responsibility. If someone crashes into my car because they’re playing a video game I’m gonna sue them. Not Tesla. It’s the driver who made the choice. To say “But Tesla put the screen in front of him. They enabled it”, to me, is to say that people are just automaton consumers, reacting to cues in their environment like some dog to clicker training.
tibbydudeza 5y ago
Dumbest "feature" ever - what were they thinking.

105 points by vanusa 5y ago

I get it, but this reminds me of how my car doesn't allow my wife (in the passenger seat) to set up bluetooth pairing while I am driving. Pretty inconvenient during road trips to have to pull off the highway, because the car doesn't trust that it's the passenger working the center console...

DennisAleynikov 5y ago
absolutely absurd coddling of the end user
- meibo 5y ago
  I've had enough close calls with people playing with their radio/hvac that I'd rather have everyone pull over to set up Bluetooth than end up in a ditch somewhere
  - DennisAleynikov 5y ago
    its just too agressive for the cases where you do have a passenger. I understand people usually drive alone but its gonna be hard to police this long term unless we start solving the real problems like why are touch screens being used in cars at all??? they are the worst possible ux for maximum distraction!
fma 5y ago
Road trips? Plural? How many times have you had to pair your bluetooth to your car...
- Closi 5y ago
  I don't know about you, but I have had to re-pair my bluetooth quite a few times with my car. Sometimes bluetooth just seems to get itself in a state where things won't connect and you have to start again. It happens on pretty much everything with me eventually, be it my bluetooth keyboard with my laptop, my phone and my car, my headphones and iPhone...
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  Every time we rent a car.

alphabettsy 5y ago

It seems like they could’ve used the occupancy sensor to detect a passenger. A passenger playing a game on the screen which are also where your only instruments are located seems like an unnecessary added distraction so I’d say they made the right call.

userbinator 5y ago
which are also where your only instruments are located I think this is the most important fact to note here. If the primary instruments were on a separate display, this would not have been as severe of a concern. It's another reason why having a single touchscreen as the interface of a car is a horrible idea. I've seen a lot of newer cars where the instruments are all in the center instead of immediately behind the wheel, and I always thought that design was less usable and more distracting --- a glance downwards is easier than one sideways and down.
- mechinn 5y ago
  I wonder if any research has been done about safety around touch controls? It's so much easier to reach over and hit a physical button or rotate a physical dial that you know is in the same spot every time without having to look at it compared to a touch interface that will by adjust depending on the app running. Like I appreciate the power that something like Apple CarPlay and Android Auto bring to the infotainment system but every time I can't control something from the physical buttons on the wheel I know I'm not going to be as focused on the road as I should be reaching over and hoping that I am correctly aiming at what I'm trying to touch and that's already after probably quickly looking away from the road to find where to aim in the first place
  - laumars 5y ago
    I completely agree. Years ago when smart phones were just emerging, people made the same complaints about them too; saying you cannot walk and text at the same time like you could with the old feature phones with physical keyboards. I believe public opinion was so vocal about this draw back that were some research projects done using gel screens that could offer a tactile responses dynamically. But then all that seamed to fizzle out and everyone stopped moaning about tactile feedback on touchscreen phones. Fast forward a few years and the Raspberry Pi was released. My first RPi project was to built a new in car entertainment system. I used Go v1.0 (at that time even methods weren’t supported) and built a media player with text to speech. The entertainment system had 6 buttons: 1. Previous artist 2. Previous album 3. Previous song / replay song 4. Skip song 5. Skip album 6. Skip artist The media centre would then use text to speech to read the artist, album and song details out over the speakers before playing the tracks. This system was designed so I never needed to take my eyes off the road and it worked amazingly. Unfortunately I’m not an electrical engineer so the device was ugly and started to fall apart quite quickly. I think it only lasted < 1 year. But I learned a lot from that experiment: there is a lot of missed opportunities for innovation in the car entertainment domain.

olliej 5y ago

This was clearly a terrible idea from the beginning. They presumable thinking was that autopilot/fsd would be driving the car so the driver could play games. At the same time they’re claiming that they aren’t responsible for autopilot crashes because the driver is always meant to be able to instantly be in control of the car. You can’t really do both “the driver can be focused on non driving tasks” and also “the driver must be focused on driving”. That is obviously impossible.

ajross 5y ago
> They presumable thinking was that autopilot/fsd would be driving the car so the driver could play games. Arrgh. It was a feature for the passenger to play games while preserving the driving UI. Absolutely no one intended for this to be used by drivers. There isn't even any evidence of a driver being caught doing this. The coverage is basically clickbait, and you appear to have bought it exactly as it was intended. Whether it's really a good idea or not? I mean, the driver can pull out a phone or iPad and game/text/whatever to their hearts content already. And many do. And lots of them die. Why exactly are we treating this any differently?
- greyface- 5y ago
  > There isn't even any evidence of a driver being caught doing this. Elsewhere in this very discussion, a driver admitted to doing this. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29670414 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29670414
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    They said they tried and the car wouldn't let them. A quick test even if successful shouldn't count, and a failed test definitely doesn't count.
- bestcoder69 5y ago
  Not seeing how this could be clickbait or even misleading. No one had to intend anything, and there doesn't have to be evidence of drivers doing anything. The NHTSA is investigating to see if they have to enforce some laws, and that made Tesla pivot. Also the rule seems to be that you can bring a distraction into a car but you can't build the distraction into the car. Which seems totally reasonable to me. I mean, even after Tesla got rid of the games, passengers can still play any non-Tesla-exclusive game on their iPhone, so it seems like no one is really harmed.

waiseristy 5y ago

Which brings up a fun question; At which point does pressing buttons on a screen to play a video game while driving cause just as much distraction as pressing buttons on a screen to manage your windshield wipers / drive mode / HVAC / windows? There used to be a lot of crashes attributed to "playing with the radio" in the 90's / 00's. Maybe all those buttons on the wheel and a display centered in the drivers cone of vision were actually huge advancements in safety...

warning26 5y ago
Honestly, I wish the powers-that-be would crack down harder on touchscreens in vehicles. There is no case where manipulating a touchscreen while driving is safe, for one simple reason: you have to look at the screen to use it because there's no tactile feedback. They are truly, as that one book title went, unsafe at any speed.
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  There have been some experiments with effective tactile feedback provided by touch screens, but they're complicated to produce and expensive. Most of the research seems to be aimed at providing touch screens to the visually impaired. It's possible to get some kind of tactile response mimicking the edges of buttons well enough. I'd say a good implementation of this technology would be safe IF the position and availability of the controls would be static. I'm not sure what you'd get out of a touch screen with those constraints (less parts?), especially with the added cost and research, but that's the only way I can see a touch screen in a car that should ever be legal. A Tesla driver in Germany already got fined for using the touch screen of his car while driving. It's strange how this obvious flaw of a car design has ever been allowed onto the roads.
  - warning26 5y ago
    > ...safe IF the position and availability of the controls would be static Agreed -- this was also why the Apple Touchbar failed, IMO. Typically keyboard use relies on a lot of muscle memory, and so the touchbar's "you get a different set of controls with different shapes and sizes that do different things depending on which app you're using" design ethos didn't really fit with how people actually use keyboards.

paweladamczuk 5y ago

What about the idea that, as a customer who bought and owns something, you should have control over that thing, not the other way around? I am not saying this is the stronger argument. It's still an argument, though, and it surprised me to find this sentiment missing from the comments (granted, we're at only 7 comments right now). Why would something we want applied to smartphones and PCs not apply to cars?

userbinator 5y ago
I am in complete agreement, but it seems Tesla is strongly pushing for a model where you don't actually own it.
DSingularity 5y ago
… because it’s really hard for me to misuse my smartphone to the point where it kills someone/myself.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  Actually, smartphones are a pretty significant cause of death, but when people are using them while driving. For Apple iPhone, for example, you just have to assert that you aren't driving to use it while driving (assuming the iPhone could be used by a passenger instead, so they can't really tell).
  - teawrecks 5y ago
    Yeah, that's why doing so is illegal.
jeroenhd 5y ago
The difference is that it's very hard to accidentally kill a family by messing with your PC or smartphone, assuming you're not doing it while driving. Your own safety is your own responsibility and if you want to try for a Darwin award you should be allowed to, but you're not the likely victim of something goes wrong. Cars are inherently dangerous, mostly to the people around you. Modern car safety makes sure you can practically drive into a wall and come out fine, but any people you might hit on the way won't share your fate. You should have control over the stuff you buy, but to use that stuff on public roads you'll have to get it certified for safety. If you want to build your own race track to play video games on, be my guest, but keep your mods off the streets.

rektide 5y ago

a reminder that automobiles in the united states kill 36 thousand people a year (~6k being pedestrians), cause >3 million medically consulted injuries, and >10m property damages/non-disabling injuries. i have a hard time with this issue of what is permitted in a car. personally i feel like a good driver, like i will handle things fine. but i also once was going up an icy highway late at night & ended up spinning 360 around (thankfully with no one around me & staying on the road) because i spent about 1 second going for some last fries in a take out bag & couldn't re-stabilize. it had just so happened to be the wrong moment. in driving, mostly things are boring & unexciting. but secretly we are surrounded by just the wrong moments, dotted here & there amid the boring. typically there's enough slack to navigate & avoid the little hazards, to prevent catastrophe or damage. but a little compounding factor can matters a lot. it's hard to impress onto drivers- who typically see such boring, easy, unassuming tasks, endlessly playing out- that this is serious work, that it requires vigilance. eternal, unrelenting, persistent vigilance. to believe in the hazardousness of the situation, especially whenever there is another human soul anywhere in a couple hundred meters. human's aren't built for hyper-vigilance, for attentiveness in such fast moving, high energy situations. so i don't know what we can do, but keep locking down on driving. anyone in charge of over 0.5kg of moving mass: sorry, but society has a moral obligation to clamp down on, to restrict potential distractions. whether it's your passenger playing a game or them just futzing with bluetooth. there's so so so many hours lost to driving, and having such a spartan existence at the wheel, having machines that refuse to interact (be it passenger or driver) or distract, that monitor the driver conditions... it just seems mandatory. i don't like it, don't want it for myself, it feels stupid. but i don't see that we have any other choices to pick from, given what absurd catastrophe driving enacts, every single second on this planet.

1123581321 5y ago
Passionate but too austere. This would lead to people packing speakers in the car and other distracting behavior, and lead to too many people zoning out or falling asleep. Additionally, for those who have to drive many hours of their lives, it would be wasteful. Some value must be assigned there.
perl4ever 5y ago
I don't know if you're a Californian or not, but what do you think of the car culture there? Particularly as it exists along with all of the regulations that are distinct to the state? What do you think of the people to whom automobiles are art, pastime, recreation, lifestyle?

gnicholas 5y ago

When I first heard about video games in Teslas, my first thought was about Ender’s Game. Will there be a time where self-driving cars are piloted/assisted by players of massive online gaming platforms? It’s been shown that monitoring a vehicle that is mostly driving itself is not an easy task for humans. But if you gamify it and add several layers of redundancy (multiple people effectively monitoring the same vehicle), it could be made fun and also sufficiently safe for passengers. Latency is a risk, of course, as are evildoers.

zeusk 5y ago
or basically outsource driving to some 3rd world country?
- MomoXenosaga 5y ago
  No need we have poor people at home, as the gig economy has shown.
  - zeusk 5y ago
    Ah, so uber for your own car.
neilv 5y ago
Even closer Ender's Game than gamifying crowdsourcing driving is if [spoiler alert] the players thought they were only playing a game, not controlling real cars. (On the off chance that's the actual situation, all my hours of GTA Online griefing mean I probably owe quite a few people an apology. :) )
- eyelidlessness 5y ago
  Considering the actual Enders Game, if any of this hypothesis is real you and many more of us very much owe some bugs an apology.
MereInterest 5y ago

ryzvonusef 5y ago

https://twitter.com/greentheonly/status/1474238289355943949 >Look like no more pretending you are a passenger to play games while driving. The car will now ask you "Adjust the passenger seat controls to verify you are a passenger." >Suddenly that passenger lumbar control becomes super used I guess? not exactly clear what has been implemented

saberdancer 5y ago
They are asking user to use the passenger seat control which is hard to reach if you are in the driving seat.
- koonsolo 5y ago
  So either driving gamers will give up on gaming while driving, or do even more crazier shit.

greggman3 5y ago

Meh, Sure, save the user from themselves while driving. Still, I wish Tesla was much more open on the car. For example I wish it had Chromecast/Airplay so I could play movies from my phone (fine if it's only when parked). I also wish it supported iOS CarPlay and Android Auto, even if was just in 2/3rd of the screen in a window. I don't use the self driving feature and I'd rather use the full google maps experience than their limited built in version. And, I wish they allowed apps (heavily sandboxed).

Xylakant 5y ago
> Sure, save the user from themselves while driving. The problem is that those people are driving a ton of steel around and are likely to kill someone other than themselves. And people have proven to be irresponsible when using cars - alcohol, text and drive, stupid ideas are abundant. So that’s not saving the users from themselves. It’s saving me and you from idiot users.

michelb 5y ago

Time and again this company proves that it still doesn't realise what cars currently are, including the ones they try to make. Maybe they should just not release this stuff until they actually have a really, really reliable level 5 autonomy.

packeted 5y ago
That's exactly why Tesla are so good at what they do! I've had VW , BMW and Ford rental cars in the last year and they are literally stuck in the dark ages when it comes to on car entertainment and the things that just work and are very responsive in a Tesla.
- nojito 5y ago
  Why wouldn’t you just use CarPlay or Android auto?

FridayoLeary 5y ago

A nice example of what should have been a non story, blown out of proportion. Obviously not Teslas business whether or not people use their touchscreen while driving. But make enough noise and anything can be an issue. Also, news headlines should really be "tesla adopts path of least resistance" because obviously there's nothing to discuss here, but some driving regulator doesn't understand their job and tesla isn't interested in the headache. Also, i can't think of a more minor potential distraction while driving then this.

MrDresden 5y ago

This is the kind of situation where there should not be any action described in any other terms than the hammer coming down hard. Saying there was pressure just makes it sound like regulators are completely impotent.

Traster 5y ago
Given what Tesla has said publicly about their cars/software and the response of regulators, I would say impotent is pretty accurate.
- MrDresden 5y ago
  Yeah, sadly I think that is the case.

leobg 5y ago

I think what they did was the same as Waze. It warns against playing while driving and asks you to confirm that you’re the passenger. In other words, the software treats you as an adult. Someone who lease correct me if that is not how it was implemented. I’ve never tried to play a game while driving, for obvious reasons. If we need software to kindergarten us against endangering ourselves and others, we have much bigger problems as a society. Out of the same philosophy, Tesla allows you to set Autopilot speed slightly above the applicable speed limit. You can cry out that that’s illegal. But then again, try to drive exactly the speed limit in real world situations. You might actually be creating more dangerous situations than you avoid. Hence Tesla treats you as the driver. It’s your ship, and you are the captain. The tech is just there to assist you.

happytoexplain 5y ago
>If we need X to kindergarten us against endangering ourselves and others This sentence is confusing to me - at the risk of sounding curt, we obviously do need to protect people from idiots. Given a game to play while driving, some people will. The more convenient and present it is, the more people will do it. I'm not sure how one could formulate an argument that these people don't exist. The key here is of course that they endanger others - if it were just themselves, the conversation would be much more subjective.
- leobg 5y ago
  True. But they might as well drink and drive. Or text on their phone. Cars are dangerous weapons. But we trust the public to use them. I have no interest in playing video games while driving. But I do appreciate Tesla for treating owners as adults. That is to say, I think I can see where they’re coming from. They don’t want people to get into accidents because they’re playing a video game while driving. But they also don’t want to be their customers’ nanny. I like that. To me, that’s a very human touch. Especially for a tech company. Perhaps I also resent the implicit attempt at shifting the responsibility. If someone crashes into my car because they’re playing a video game I’m gonna sue them. Not Tesla. It’s the driver who made the choice. To say “But Tesla put the screen in front of him. They enabled it”, to me, is to say that people are just automaton consumers, reacting to cues in their environment like some dog to clicker training.

tibbydudeza 5y ago

Dumbest "feature" ever - what were they thinking.