[mirzmaster]

I'm not convinced that this is an instance of autopilot "saving the day", as the title of the driver's video would suggest.

The driver states in his video description that he was "watching stopped traffic to my right". Think how you would react were you in full control of a car in that instance. You have a virtually stopped lane of traffic to your right, you see cars braking about 100 ft ahead of you. Wouldn't you start slowing down? I would, as clearly travelling as fast as the driver is where all surrounding traffic is slowing or stopped doesn't make sense, however the driver doesn't appear to slow down at all, by his own admission focused on the cars to his right. Was he legitimately distracted by cars to his right, or was he depending on the car's situational awareness? I'm leaning towards the latter, what I believe is an affordance offered by autopilot systems.

I think we'll start hearing and seeing many such "success" stories of close calls involving autopilot, but I'm not sure how many of these will be incidents of autopilot truly saving an otherwise attentive driver by reacting faster/better than the attentive driver. It seems to me that autopilot is going to be both cause and saviour in far too many cases.

[zobzu]

The advantage of the autopilot is that its reproducible, 100% of the time. When something could have been done better given a situation, the code is fixed and the autopilot will handle the situation better every single future time.

Humans arent as reliable. And then of course theres perfect collision course distance calculations and millisecond reflexes.

[ensignavenger]

Google has posted some interesting situations where their cars have predicted other driver behavior and avoided accidents in situations where it is quite possible an average human driver would not have been able to make the same prediction and avoided the accident. I agree that not every situation like this would have resulted in an accident for certain, I also strongly suspect the computers are much better at avoiding these types of accidents more consistently than humans.

[facetube]

I watched the video for the first time full-screen, as if I was driving, and tried to stomp my foot when I would have applied the brakes. I would have been in an accident.

[arprocter]

I've always thought drivers of automatic transmissions seem less aware of what is happening around them, because they don't have to pay as much attention.

Since joining the 3 pedal master race, going back to an auto definitely doesn't engage me as much as manual.

[Tiksi]

I remember seeing this a while back: http://www.columnfivemedia.com/work-items/infographic-stick-...

It's a MINI ad but still interesting.

I have a gut feeling that people who drive manual cars are less likely to get in an accident simply because you kinda have to pay more attention, its harder to text and drive, etc. Also, in the US it seems like generally the only people that drive manual these days are people that enjoy driving and take it more seriously so I would expect less accidents due to that as well. I don't have any data to back any of that up so take it as you will.

Still, even the best driver isn't gonna react as fast.

[tshannon]

I think regardless of the car, you can't count on humans to always be paying attention.

[arprocter]

This is true.

I guess it's a trade off - the more the car does for you the less you have to think about what you're doing, but then again I see people driving in the dark without their lights on all the time.