[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...