[lgbr]

The more the better, I find. For all the hate that Autopilot gets, it really is a game changer, and I can see consumers demanding this and similar technology in all cars from now on. A majority of the driving that I do, both per mile and per minute, are spent on Autopilot, and the sheer convenience is night and day. Being able to open a bottle of water, to tweak the navigation or change the song, or to be able to just have a second set of eyes in case you're not paying attention really has a huge benefit.

At the moment, there remains some bugs to work out, as last night Autopilot decided to slam on the brakes at 150 km/h on the autobahn for no reason, but given how close it is to perfection on freeways, and how many improvements I see in the updates, I'll go so far as to say we should be requiring this technology in all cars like we now require emergency braking and backup cameras.

[feintruled]

"as last night Autopilot decided to slam on the brakes at 150 km/h on the autobahn for no reason"

Holy shit! That's a hell of a caveat!

[lgbr]

> Holy shit! That's a hell of a caveat!

Indeed it is. To make it clear, it slams on the brakes bringing me down from 150 to 120 km/h, it doesn't come to a dead stop, so unless someone is seriously tailgating, then it's not creating any danger, it's just uncomfortable.

[coldtea]

Yeah, what could go wrong going suddenly from 150 to 120 on the Autobahn...

[toomuchtodo]

Better than not hitting the brakes when there is a legitimate danger in the travel path (which is why emergency braking is activated).

Remember, it’s the responsibility of the driver behind you to keep a safe following distance. If they rear end you, they were following too closely.

[coldtea]

>Better than not hitting the brakes when there is a legitimate danger in the travel path (which is why emergency braking is activated).

In this case we've established it was activated at random by the autopilot.

>Remember, it’s the responsibility of the driver behind you to keep a safe following distance. If they rear end you, they were following too closely.

That wont be on much comfort during a pile-up...

[toomuchtodo]

Is it random? In my experience with Autopilot 2, it’s typically when the front radar is attempting to discern between a metal sign on an overpass and a large object in the travel path, and Tesla hasn’t seen that object enough yet to code it as a known false positive in the Autopilot data corpus.

https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/psa-careful-autopilo...

“But as I recall, the understanding then was that Tesla had a database of things like bridges, and the braking meant that the database was incomplete. So folks were told to file a bug report ASAP after the incident so that Tesla could fix the data.”

So! If this happens while on Autopilot, press the voice command button, and then say “Bug Report <speak bug report here>”

[itchyouch]

~90mi/hr to ~75mi isn't that bad, especially in a stable car with good tires.

[Reason077]

False positives are one of the more difficult problems in collision avoidance. Small pieces of metallic debris on the road surface (for example) can throw off a huge radar signature that looks like something that you really wouldn't want to hit.

Many automatic emergency braking implementations disable at high speeds, and/or ignore stationary objects, for this reason.

I get the impression that Tesla has made their automatic braking a bit more aggressive in recent updates, given recent publicity about cars hitting fixed objects while on autopilot.

[EADGBE]

Cue the rebuttals about how safe the Autobahn is, and no real danger was presented...

[JustSomeNobody]

> Holy shit! That's a hell of a caveat!

No! That's a "game changer!"

[Tomte]

You just need to be aware that what you're doing is illegal. Did you even know that?

That's the problem with Tesla. They show autonomous driving, make big claims, talk about "autopilot".

And in the fine print they say in legalese that few people understand or even notice that this all isn't available right now and you must never leave your autopilot unattended.

[swarnie_]

Can you explain for the uninformed what exactly is illegal about OP's actions?

[Balero]

I think Tomte is referencing that it is illegal (and dangerous see guy who died when auto-pilot drove into the back of a truck) to let the autopilot drive unassisted, for example reading a book or falling asleep.

I got the impression though that OP was stating that they used theirs as a "second pair of eyes" and added safety device when they do things in the car that require their hands and attention. This, to me, is perfectly fine. I know people who get around this in normal cars by driving with the knees, or just taking their eyes off the road for "just a second". Using autopilot has got to be safer than that.

I once had a wasp fly right into my face when I was driving, auto pilot would have been great, luckily I was on an empty road, but if I was unlucky enough to need to react fast as that happened I doubt I would have been able to.

[fabian2k]

the Autopilot can't handle certain kinds of situations, and some of them might appear without much warning. One example from accidents that made the news are stationary obstacles like a police car on the side of the road, but still partly on the road. The Autopilot will happily drive into that obstacle without braking. If there is another car in front of you, this might not be visible until you're pretty close. Taking your eyes off the road for a bit might be enough to miss this.

You can't rely on the Autopilot to prevent accidents, it's simply not designed for this. So you have to pay the same amount of attention as if you were driving entirely manually. So if you're doing stuff that would be impossible while driving yourself, you're almost certainly not paying enough attention to the road and are at least negligent. Not sure about US laws, but usually there are laws against driving in a reckless or dangerous fashion, that can catch all kinds of behaviour.

[coldtea]

You're not supposed to be using the "autopilot" as an autopilot.

You need to be always focused on the road and ready to take the wheel at any moment -- which in practice means you can't be using it at all, since "at any moment" means that 2-3 seconds can be all it takes between crashing and recovering from an autopilot error.

[Tomte]

"not paying attention"

[swarnie_]

I've been opening bottles or changing the radio station in my non-auto pilot cars for years.

Does everyone else pull over to change the CD or take a sip of water?

[Tomte]

Yes, we all do stuff like that.

I may have worded my reply too strongly, see another comment about "second set of eyes".

But this is dangerous. When I open a bottle in my car, I know that it's a more dangerous situation than usual, I pay more attention, choose the right moment and see that I finish drinking quickly.

A Tesla driver can easily fool himself into "everything's fine, let me sip from the bottle for sevetal minutes and maybe search through my audio CDs".

[mohaine]

But you said it was illegal, which it clearly isn't.

[EADGBE]

I'm not supposed to take a drink out of my cup holder either. Or change the radio station "old school" style.

[greglindahl]

Is a notification that's shown to the driver every time autopilot is engaged "the fine print"?

[coldtea]

>For all the hate that Autopilot gets, it really is a game changer

Only if it works and has a better than human average driving.

Which might not even be enough itself.

If someone is a better than average driver themselves, then by using a "better than average" but lower than his capacity auto-pilot, they increase their risk, not decrease it.

Consider that the "averages" in accidents per miles also include drunks, elderly, people never really knowing how to drive well, people crashing in bad conditions (e.g. snow and heavy rain) and so on.

The average accident/miles for a fit good driver that usually drives in good roads in a state with good weather can be bigger than the average of the above.

So having an autopilot be merely better than the general average is not enough to make it "as safe".

>At the moment, there remains some bugs to work out, as last night Autopilot decided to slam on the brakes at 150 km/h on the autobahn for no reason, but given how close it is to perfection on freeways

Yeah, who cares if it can kill you at any moment with some bizarro sudden move, since it's "so close to perfection on freeways".

Thankfully, early adopters will help improve both the autopilots of the future and the human evolutionary pool.

[lgbr]

> If someone is a better than average driver themselves, then by using a "better than average" but lower than his capacity auto-pilot, they increase their risk, not decrease it.

This isn't a lowest common denominator issue, but rather addressing the swiss cheese model of driving safety. Autopilot catches problems that I, as a driver, might miss. At the same time, I catch problems that Autopilot might miss. The best example is emergency braking with this or any emergency braking system is truly superhuman. On the other hand, anticipating drivers that are about to veer into my lane is something I'll see before the car will.

Sure, if a great driver is not paying attention, then the safety of the car is completely left to the computer, but there's no evidence that this is done in large numbers. You can point me to some counterexamples on YouTube or that crash in Mountain View, but there's no evidence that this is done at scale.

> Yeah, who cares if it can kill you at any moment with some bizarro sudden move, since it's "so close to perfection on freeways".

I never said anything about almost killing me, and a blip of the brake pedal would only kill you in the event that someone is tailgating to an absurd degree, which is illegal and reckless by itself.

> Thankfully, early adopters will help improve ... the human evolutionary pool.

This is an unfounded statement. The death rate while using autopilot is still significantly lower than when not using it.

[coldtea]

>This isn't a lowest common denominator issue, but rather addressing the swiss cheese model of driving safety. Autopilot catches problems that I, as a driver, might miss. At the same time, I catch problems that Autopilot might miss.

Too bad that, due to lack of awareness while delegating to the Autopilot, one can end up dead in the second case.

>I never said anything about almost killing me, and a blip of the brake pedal would only kill you in the event that someone is tailgating to an absurd degree, which is illegal and reckless by itself.

You didn't say, but you should have said about it. But you still see it under the very constrained situation where it happened, and the results it had. Not as an error that could happen elsewhere, and with more dire results.

As if the specifics of the road and the traffic at that moment where the only possible ones where this could happen.

While a fuller interpretation would be: "It has this BS error in judgement -- in what other cases could it be engaged and get me killed".

I'd expect people with no autopilot incidents to feel like it's perfectly OK. But to excuse it (because it's cool tech and they'll still ironing it out) when they have seen some, that's just reckless.

Like the unfortunate engineer who had seen the same issue that killed them, but brushed it off.

https://www.fastcompany.com/40551516/apple-engineer-who-died...