[zemptime]

I see a lot of comments here postulating how autopilot is a terribly designed feature from people who appear not to be speaking from first hand experience and now I feel compelled to comment, exactly following that HN pattern someone posted about how HN discussions go. That said thanks for keeping this discussion focused & framed as a system design one, doesn't feel like a Tesla hate train so I feel comfortable hoppin' in and sharing. This is a little refreshing to see.

Anyway, perhaps I'm in a minority here, but I feel as though my driving has gotten _significantly safer_ since getting a Tesla, particularly on longer road trips.

Instead of burning energy making sure my car stays in the lane I can spend nearly all my time observing drivers around me and paying closer attention farther down the road. My preventative and defensive driving has gone up a level.

> I just don't understand how you can have a "self driving car but you must but be ready to put your hands back on the steering wheel and your foot on the pedal(s)".

I've not hit animals and dodged random things rolling/blowing into the road at a moment's notice. This isn't letting autopilot drive, it's like a hybrid act where it does the rote driving and I constantly take over to quickly pass a semi on a windy day, not pass it on a curve, or get over some lanes to avoid tire remnants in the road up ahead. I'm able to watch the traffic in front and behind and find pockets on the highway with nobody around me and no clumping bound to occur (<3 those).

To your suspicion, it is a different mode of driving. Recently I did a roadtrip (about half the height of the USA) in a non-Tesla, and I found myself way more exhausted and less alert towards the end of it. Could be I'm out of habit but egh.

Anyway, so far I've been super lucky. I don't think it's possible to avoid all car crashes no matter how well you drive. But I _for sure_ have avoided avoidable ones and taken myself out of situations where they later occurred thanks to the extra mental cycles afforded to me by auto-pilot. My safety record in the Tesla is currently perfect and I'll try and keep it that way.

I don't think autopilot is perfect either but I do think it's a good tool and I'm a better driver for it. Autopilot has definitely helped me spend better focus on driving.

[malwrar]

This expresses the mindset I find myself in when I use Autopilot. It's like enabling cruise control, you're still watching traffic around you but now you don't need to focus on maintaining the correct speed or worry about keeping your car perfectly in a lane. You can more or less let the car handle that (with your hands on the wheel to guard against the occasional jerky maneuver when a lane widens for example) while you focus on the conditions around you.

[throwaway0a5e]

Exactly. It frees the driver from increasingly advanced levels of mundane driving (cruise control manages just speed, adaptive cruise also deals with following distance, lane keeping deals with most of the steering input, etc) allowing the driver to focus more on monitoring the situation and strategic portion of driving rather than the tactical. Of course, this relies on the driver to actually do that. They could just use devote that extra attention to their phone.

[scrumbledober]

my 2021 Subaru Forester does all of these things and I do feel like I am safer with them on and paying attention to the rest of driving.

[somedude895]

Exactly this. I treat AP like I'm letting a learner drive. Constantly observing to make sure it's doing the right thing. I've been on long road trips and with AP my mind stays fresh for much longer compared to with other cars.

[AndrewBissell]

The problem is, even if your subjective idea of how Autopilot affects your own driving is correct, it appears not to be the case for a significant subset of Tesla drivers, enough that they've been plowing into emergency vehicles at such an elevated rate as to cause NHTSA to open an investigation.

Also, your subjective impressions may be what they are simply because you have not yet encountered the unlucky set of conditions which would radically change your view, as was surely the case for all the drivers involved in these sorts of incidents.

[TacticalCoder]

There's zero Tesla hate here and certainly zero EV hate here, on the contrary: I just feel the interior build quality on the Tesla could be a bit better but I'm sure they'll get there.

I wouldn't want my, strangely enough upvoted a lot, comment, to be mistaken for Tesla hate. I like what they're doing. I just think the auto-pilot shouldn't give a false sense of security.

> I've not hit animals and dodged random things rolling/blowing into the road at a moment's notice.

> I don't think it's possible to avoid all car crashes no matter how well you drive.

Same here... And animals are my worst nightmare: there are videos on YouTube just terrifying.

For I do regularly watch crash videos to remind me of some of the dangers on the road.

[somerandomqaguy]

I think you two are talking about different things.

You're talking about Autopilot which is just driver assistance technologies; lane keep assistance, adaptive cruise control, blind spot monitoring, etc. It's not to replace driver attention, it's just monitor sections of the road the the driver can't pay attention to full time. The driver is still remaining in control and attentive to the road.

The person you're responding to seems to be talking talking about the Full Self Driving feature who's initial marketing implied that the driver need not be mentally engaged at all or too impaired to drive normally. Which was later back pedal led to say that you need to pay attention.

[gugagore]

Some people activate cruise control and then rest their right foot on the floor. I activate cruise control whenever possible because while it is activated, I can drive with my foot resting on the brake pedal. I like being marginally more responsive to an event that requires braking since I don’t need to move my foot from the accelerator.

[kwhitefoot]

What I always tell people is that together me and my car drive better than either of us on their own (Tesla Model S 70D, 2015, AP1.5).