This comparison really only works if you mean engaging autopilot with a bunch of other planes flying in close formation and if clouds were made of steel and concrete. Most of the time that autopilot is engaged on a flight there is next to zero risk of a collision. Commercial pilots also get a lot of training specifically related to what autopilot is and isn’t appropriate for.
Even as a private pilot you are taught to continuously scan your instruments and surroundings as you fly through the air with autopilot enabled. Flight training is much more extensive than driving tests (although still not too bad) and they really drive procedures into you.
Which is why pilots are still in control of the plane while autopilot is active. Even while active, there is still a "pilot flying" and pilots are still responsible for scanning gauges and readouts and verifying the autopilot is doing what they expect. They do not just turn on autopilot and goof off
Just like Tesla's auto pilot? Drivers are supposed to be "flying", scanning gauges and the road ahead to ensure the autopilot is doing what they expect...
I think people that say that "autopilot" is a bad name for this feature don't really understand what an "autopilot" does.
The text at the top of the homepage for Tesla Autopilot is this:
> Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Cars
> All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver.
Whatever theory you have for Tesla's naming of their feature, it doesn't match with their marketing.
You are reading into that text more than you should. Autopilot and full self-driving are two separate features. Autopilot can be used today. Full self-driving can be purchased today but won't be activated until some unknown future date. Those features are separate configurable options when purchasing the car that come with their own prices. Tesla makes it clear enough that any owner should know those are two separate features. The text you highlighted is simply promising that any car purchased today can activate full self-driving down the line with no additional hardware costs.
> You are reading into that text more than you should.
The page's title is "Autopilot | Tesla". It is the first result for "tesla autopilot" in search results. And "autopilot" appears 9 times on the page. So if that's not an intentional attempt to mislead consumers into conflating Autopilot with "full self-driving", then what would such an attempt look like, hypothetically?
Is it crazy to hold a driver to a higher standard than simply Googling "Tesla autopilot" and only reading the first paragraph of the first result? If you read that entire page, the difference between autopilot and full self-driving is clear. If you read the car's manual, the difference is clear. If you look at the configurator for the car, the difference is clear when you have to pay $3,000 extra for full self-driving. I am not sure how any responsible Tesla owner could think that this is only a single feature.
If autopilot crashes at a lower rate than the average driver, they are correct, but autopilot+attentive driver would still be better than either alone.
The current thread is about what Tesla means by use of "autopilot". The parent commenter was telling us that Tesla only intends for it to have the same meaning as it does in aviation. My response is pointing out how Tesla seems to imply "autopilot" involves "full self-driving".
At what point is an attentive driver expected to notice that autopilot has silently failed? The video linked at the top of the thread has a <1 second interval between the car failing to follow its lane, and plowing into a concrete barrier.
This is actually harder to do then just driving the car.
The fatal impact may not be seconds away but the event that sets in motion the series of actions that results in that fatal impact may take only seconds.
The issue is how long between the problem first manifesting itself and a crash becoming inevitable. Note that even as short a time as ten seconds is an order of magnitude longer than one second. There are at most only a few rare corner cases in aviation where proper use of the autopilot could take the airplane within a minute of an irretrievable situation that would not have occurred under manual control.
I'm not a pilot so I do not know the most dangerous situations when flying under autopilot. What I was trying to emphasize is that even under autopilot airplanes require constant attention. My understanding is that if the pilot or co-pilot leaves the cockpit for any reason the remaining pilot puts on an oxygen mask in case of decompression because the time frame before blackout is so tiny. The point is that autopilot in aviation is a tool that can be employed by pilots but cannot function safely on its own. From this viewpoint Tesla's Autopilot is accurately named although the public does not have the same understanding.
If the pilots are not flying, then it can be just a short time away from a crash. Like when the pilot is not paying attention and by the time the auto pilot can no longer fly, the pilot doesn't have enough situational awareness to take over.
That is very much an outlier, and if it were at all relevant to the issue it would further weaken your case, as these three pilots had several minutes to sort things out. Questioning the assumptions underlying the assumed safety of airplane autopilot use can only weaken the claim that Tesla's 'autopilot' is safe.
This isn't a debate about dictionary definitions, it's a debate about human behavior.
People who say that "Autopilot" is a bad name for this feature aren't basing it on an imperfect understanding of what autopilot does in airplanes. They're basing it on how they believe people in general will interpret the term.
So you’re saying that Tesla drivers are only educated by marketing materials and ignore what the car says every time they engage the autopilot feature?
They are saying that Tesla drivers are not super humans, and only average every day, garden variety human beings...
The funny thing is that it is the same people who are arguing for self driving tech by saying that "Humans will do dumb shit", is the same ones who justify Tesla by saying "Humans should not do stupid things (like ignoring the cars warning)"..
They aren't going to literally fall asleep, but much of the time pilots are reading a book and not directly paying attention in the same way that a driver is.
Planes don't suddenly crash into a mountain because you have looked away for two seconds, there is much more time to react in case the autopilot doesn't behave correctly.
They can very suddenly crash into another plane because you have looked away for two seconds. It has actually happened (though nowadays, technology has made it easier to avoid these accidents).
Planes are supposed to maintain a 5 mile separation distance. You aren't going to break that down in two seconds. (But head on, with both planes traveling 600 MPH, you can do it in 15 seconds. But both pilots would have to be inattentive for that time.)
They are supposed to, but if flight control doesn't help them do it, pilots have only very little time to react to what they meet. This was demonstrated in the Hughes Airwest collision with an F-4 in 1971.
Since then, air traffic control procedures have been improved to avoid these situations, but nowadays e.g. over the Baltic Sea, Russian military planes are routinely flying with their transponder turned off so that flight control does not know where they are. So, this risk is still there.