[nickff]

If the average person does not know what an autopilot does, why would they expect Tesla's 'autopilot' to take such good care of them? I am reminded of a case many years ago when a man turned on the cruise control in his RV and went to the back to make himself lunch, after which the RV went off some sort of hill or cliff.

Rudimentary 'autopilots' on aircraft have existed for about a century now, and the earlier versions (before transistorization) only controlled heading and attitude (if conditions and other settings allowed it), with little indication of failure.

[D-Coder]

> If the average person does not know what an autopilot does

The average person does know what an autopilot does, they're just wrong.

I think the example you provided supports that.

[tass]

This would be more like they enabled cruise control, hit the brakes, and sued the manufacturer because they were rear-ended.