[dfxm12]

A lot of people don't understand that there are even levels at all.

People shouldn't really have to. The phrase "self driving car" is a binary yes/no in common, regular English. I don't know if this is Tesla's fault or some committee's fault (SAE?), but it's really terrible marketing to call things "self driving cars" when they can't drive by themselves.

Cars shouldn't be allowed to be marketed self-driving, or autonomous, etc., until a driver isn't required.

[curryst]

I'm certain the colloquial use will remain, but "doesn't require a driver" should really be the one to get it's own name. Fully Autonomous Vehicle or Driverless Autonomous Vehicle.

"Self-driving car" is just woefully inadequate to describe the capabilities it encompasses. A century old Model T with a brick on the accelerator could be accurately described as a "self-driving car". It's not very good at driving, but neither are drunk people and we still say that they're driving.

Likewise, I would argue that a car that can maintain speed and steer itself to stay in it's lane is conceptually closer to a "self-driving car" than it is a "fully manual car".

> Cars shouldn't be allowed to be marketed self-driving, or autonomous, etc., until a driver isn't required.

That's going to be a licensing thing. Frankly it probably is time for the government to step in and create some kind of licensing for cars that indicates they're fully autonomous. Even if they aren't going to issue any at the moment, it would be good to set the direction that only cars with whatever government seal are actually able to operate without a driver. Then it'd be a little harder for companies to play word games.

[masklinn]

> People shouldn't really have to. The phrase "self driving car" is a binary yes/no in common, regular English. I don't know if this is Tesla's fault or some committee's fault (SAE?), but it's really terrible marketing to call things "self driving cars" when they can't drive by themselves.

It's Tesla's, they're the ones calling their system "autopilot" (conjuring the idea of the car driving itself in the 99.99% of the population which has never flown a plane with an autopilot and has no idea how limited they can be) and literally selling a "Full Self-Driving Capability".

Other companies have generally been careful to bill their tech as assistive (Volvo's automation system is even carefully called "Pilot Assist").

And SAE is levels of automation, describing how little / how much automation there is in the driving system, it doesn't intrinsically imply self-driving capability, only that some aspects of driving can conditionally be handled automatically. SAE levels 1 and 2 are specifically worded in terms of assistance as well, here's SAE2:

> The driving mode-specific execution by one or more driver assistance systems of both steering and acceleration/deceleration using information about the driving environment and with the expectation that the human driver performs all remaining aspects of the dynamic driving task