A non-touchscreen way to operate windshield wipers. VW makes a car with an electric drivetrain, Tesla makes an electric drivetrain with a place to put people and things.
I don’t really get what you mean, sorry? Why does a family need different wiper controls to a single person? And obviously you can put people and things in a Tesla.
So the person responsible for keeping their family alive doesn't look away from the road trying to perform a very common task. A car is designed around the idea that maintaining the driver's attention on the road is the primary function. I am not sure what is driving the design of Teslas for the newer models.
I like Teslas in general, but their decision to remove things like buttons and stalks from their vehicles is both dangerous and stupid, and people have already died because of it.
You’d imagine they would have engineers think about this stuff. Such dummies!
Looking forward for that link of a death caused by operating the wipers. I haven’t touched mine (not Tesla) for years since they work automatically, maybe other families have special windshield wiper adjustment needs?
Tesla resists efforts to prevent distracted driving, and also resists the consistent call from regulators properly set expectations for the capabilities of its autopilot feature. People are dying as a result. You'll notice that you won't find the same articles about GM's SuperCruise feature, because they don't oversell the feature and have more safety measures in place to make sure drivers aren't distracted.
Waymo's CEO even claims that Tesla isn't a competitor. There is an obvious conflict here, but he's not the only one saying that 1) Tesla will never have a fully autonomous driving system and 2) their existing autopilot feature is falsely advertised and dangerous.
Hold on, you were talking about the danger of operating the wipers on the touchscreen. That is completely unrelated to autopilot.
You’re just pushing your agenda here. By the way, a tip on that: that first site completely discredits any kind of safety discussion as soon as it’s mentioned. It scares you with a long list of accidents when only 6 are potentially related to autopilot in a decade of its existence, vs 1.3 million deaths happening every year for all car brands.
> Remember that BMW and Audi combined had 9 driver fatalities in nearly 900,000 vehicle years? Clearly, 11 Tesla driver fatalities in 265,000 vehicle years is not a good start. But even those numbers likely understate the danger of driving a Tesla...
> Even without making any adjustment whatsoever for missing fatality data, Tesla drivers are much more likely to die than their peers driving other luxury cars. Eleven deaths in 265,290 vehicle-years is a stunningly high driver fatality rate of 41.46. That’s quadruple the rate of Audi and BMW, and more than triple the rate of all luxury cars combined.
The issue is whether design decisions by Tesla are leading to fatalities. They are, if you compare them to the luxury segment they are in. Advertising an autopilot feature which does not work, and moving standard controls to a distracting, inconsistent touch screen interface is leading to more crashes and more deaths.
Tip of the hat: don't discredit information because you don't like it.
There's a really great video about the cockpit design of fighter aircraft. Basically, everything is color coded and feel the same in every plane to avoid mistakes like what telsa is introducing.
Teslas have a physical button that controls the wipers when needed. They also can run automatically. Finally they also can be operated via the touch screen, but I never use this last option. You seem to think it’s the only option, but that’s not the case.
In every safety system, there is a point where human intervention can override automated activity. In almost every car these systems have standard tactile controls so you can override through muscle memory in an emergency without taking your eyes off the road. (If you haven't noticed, even the icons used on stalks and buttons are standardized across the industry as a matter of safety). In a Tesla, overriding the auto sense wiper feature is available through an interaction with the touch screen at the precise moment when a driver should not be distracted (ie, when they are having trouble seeing through the windshield). As far as I know, they are the only auto manufacturer that doesn't stick with standard stalks for things that affect visibility (wipers/headlights/turn signals, etc).
This is why I don't think a Tesla is a feature complete car -- it simply lacks the common set of safety features found in every other modern vehicle.
> On Model 3 and Model Y vehicles, Tesla didn’t install normal windshield wiper settings through a steering wheel stalk.
> Instead, the automaker is detecting the rain through its Autopilot cameras and automatically adjusting the speed based on the strength of the rainfall.
> If the driver wants to adjust the speed, they need to do it through the center touchscreen.
> The driver in Germany was adjusting those settings when he lost control of the vehicle and crashed.
The wiper can actually be activated via the stalk on Model 3 and Model Y. Not every fine grained setting, but the actions you need.
> The driver in Germany was adjusting those settings when he lost control of the vehicle and crashed.
Yes, user error. He should have used the physical button or voice controls instead. I mean, when driving, the first rule is pay attention to the road.
Anyone can snipe and nitpick, but in actual use with responsible drivers the system works great. With irresponsible drivers, all bets are off, as with any car.
That doesn’t take away the fact that the physical controls are there for the using.
As well as automatic and voice controls.
As with any car, if the driver chooses to look away from the road for any reason, they have to be responsible about it, and they did have other options here.
As I said in another reply, Tesla is the only company advertising automated driving and other features that don't work in edge cases which is bad news for staying alive, even if you aren't the person driving a Tesla. They are also actively removing standard physical controls that have been around for decades, and through design, they are training people to rely on a touchscreen device that is not consistent or reliable.
Sure there are people who also hit cruise control on a 96 Accord and expect it to drive itself, but Honda never told them that would work. These are the kind of realities Tesla should responsibly deal with as a mass market manufacturer, but they don't want to take the PR hit to accept accountability and potentially have to refund millions of dollars for a feature that doesn't work as advertised. They'd rather blame the drivers for as long as they can get away with it.
> training people to rely on a touchscreen device that is not consistent or reliable.
This is a common misconception, easily avoided by getting some firsthand experience owning a Tesla.
We literally do not use the touchscreen for driving. And for that matter, almost not at all while driving.
As with any tool there will be those who misuse it and put others at risk. I look forward to hearing you give even a single example where a human driver was not to blame. And, preemptively so you won’t waste your own time, I don’t mean citing links where if you dig in you find that the link does not support your case.
It’s true that over time people will learn to rely on controls less and less. The world has been through similar transitions with horse and buggy -> car for example. There will be accidents along the way but the end result will be a world with far fewer accidents.
Its possible there is a better way to get to that world, but I haven’t thought of one. Perfect systems do not just spring up out of nowhere.
There are at least 3 known cases where autopilot failed and someone died. (Also note that no one has died from the failure of Waymo or SuperCruise driver assist tech.) Here are a few articles in the past few days on the same subject.
> The investigation identified the following safety issues:
> - Driver Distraction.
> - Risk Mitigation Pertaining to Monitoring Driver Engagement.
> - Risk Assessment Pertaining to Operational Design Domain.
> - Limitations of Collision Avoidance Systems.
> - Insufficient Federal Oversight of Partial Driving Automation Systems.
> - Need for Event Data Recording Requirements for Driving Automation Systems.
As far as I know, Tesla has not even responded to this report. A good place to start heading towards that better world is for Tesla to demonstrate some accountability.