| There are plenty of technologies that are working in a limited scope for driver assist, and functioning reliably if not perfectly. Tesla's death rate (measured in vehicle years) is three times that of their competition in the luxury segment. Step 1 is to not sell something called Full Self-Driving/Autopilot when it can't do either of those things. Step 2 is to develop a reliable system (per NTSB advice) to make sure the driver is paying attention. Step 3 is to make sure it's only active in the domain where it can be trusted. Step 0 is to not do anything else until your collision avoidance works as well as your competitors. Consider these differences: "Subaru EyeSight Driver Assist Technology" -- with disclaimer about not being optimal in all conditions "GM SuperCruise hands-free driving-assistance" -- with a similar disclaimer "Tesla Full Self-Driving" -- and their disclaimer is "Full Self-Driving is in early limited access Beta and must be used with additional caution. It may do the wrong thing at the worst time, so you must always keep your hands on the wheel and pay extra attention to the road. Do not become complacent." The marketing bait and switch is pretty common, but this is "Thanks for the $10,000 USD for Full Self Driving. It doesn't work. Don't trust it. In fact, pay extra attention while it's on." I have never seen the tech community so excited about paying to be alpha testers for technology that is literally killing its users. |
I don’t agree that the system is killing its users of course. That kind of inflammatory wording doesn’t help anything imho. The users are possibly contending for Darwin awards… they are doing it to themselves.