Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by enraged_camel 3570 days ago
>>Since Tesla must understand this effect, I resent them using this a marketing term since they can exploit the misunderstanding while not being technically wrong.

I resent that you're accusing Tesla of intentionally misleading the public on what the feature does.

The car issues very obvious and repetitive warnings to the driver to explain the shortcomings of the technology and what the driver has to do to compensate. If the driver fails to act in accordance with the warnings, the car turns off the feature.

I mean, I dunno. To me, it looks as if Tesla has already gone above and beyond to communicate accurately, and the main reason they're pushing things even further is because of the intense media scrutiny on Tesla accidents (which the incumbent manufacturers probably love).

1 comments

> I resent that you're accusing Tesla of intentionally misleading the public on what the feature does.

Whether or not they intend to mislead, in practice the name is misleading, and I think it is a mistake they could easily fix.

For example 'copilot': a competent, capable partner, but the ultimate responsibility still rests with the pilot.

I can't agree more. For a company that is expected to understand the science behind the control systems they develop, they absolutely do not get a free pass on what would historically be called "human factors".

They are both fully aware of the importance of the human awareness implications not expecting continuous input from the human driver and choosing to encourage it.

Humans fundamentally can't stay attentive when their attention has no reactive feedback loop and they're only using the "stay attentive" (even though we know that it's essentially impossible at a psychological level) argument to shield themselves from legal liability.

It's both fair play because they knew in advance (and have since proven) that they can beat the odds against a human driver, and have simultaneously built in their legal defense to mitigate their downside. "We told you to pay attention. Your death is not on our hands."