It's really tragic what happened but as a driver you should be aware of what's happening. I've put ~15k miles of Autopilot on our Tesla and while it helps with the mental fatigue I was still watching the road 100% of the time exactly for reasons like this.
Also I think the killer app for Autopilot is rush hour traffic. Things happen much slower and this is where I found the larger percentage of mental fatigue happens.
Daimler actually shipped something intended to do this and beep/yell at you if it thought you were "distracted" or tired, but I honestly never knew what it was measuring. If you could point a camera at the driver it would be trivial, but people would definitely have an issue with that!
> It's really tragic what happened but as a driver you should be aware of what's happening. I've put ~15k miles of Autopilot on our Tesla and while it helps with the mental fatigue I was still watching the road 100% of the time exactly for reasons like this.
Yes, even just adaptive cruise control is a big help and wonderful in traffic. But the ACC I'm familiar with will turn off as soon as you let go of the wheel. I'm happy to hear that the features have worked well for you, and it's nice that the Tesla yells at you, but it just needs to turn off.
https://www.mbusa.com/mercedes/technology/videos/detail/titl...
Agree that on straightaways, the pings are pretty infrequent.
That will require a stage of using Autopilot for five minutes without your hands on the wheel, and it won't even beep at you.
Currently Tesla's cars act as though they've satisfied that assumption even though they haven't, and someone died over it. Tesla absolutely should not be acting like they've created a self-driving car with safety features that let you ignore the road when in fact they are driving assists and you still have to maintain awareness.
As a side note, radar in cars and semi trucks are a difficult match. The height of tractor trailer trucks makes it difficult to figure out if they are actually obstacles or if you're really seeing a bridge or something. Normally there's enough hanging down in back that it's not an issue, but in this case the truck was perpendicular to the car. It would not surprise me if the radar went right underneath the truck and either didn't see it, or saw it but thought it was something like a bridge that the car could go under. These are difficult and complex systems to engineer.
I am driving an '14 Audi A6 and I can tell you, the radars + software on it are the most advanced I ever saw. They even catch a small cat when was trying to cross the street. The car actioned a emergency break before I even realized. The only time when this wasn't working, was during a snow blizzard, when the radar sensors got iced and they couldn't see anything. Otherwise, they are pretty wide range, at least 100m.
It also keeps the car in between the lanes - this is done with a camera, but if you take your hands of the wheel, you get a max of about 30 seconds of free driving to maybe open a bottle of water, before it get's really loud.
TIL everyone on Hacker News drives a much nicer car than I do. The crash avoidance measures run in tandem with the autonomous driving features, but the system (which is mainly licensed technology from Mobileye) just doesn't get any depth intelligence from it. Presumably if autonomous driving pointed you into a brick wall, the radar stuff would still trigger the AEB features (autonomous braking).
no such thing exist ...
I suppose I don't really know, but that was Elon's answer to "why didn't the radar see it?"
That's what puzzles me. I don't get how overhead road signs can be a problem, and it couldn't detect something at car height. Its just really odd.
Why is that a problem? An autopilot system is designed to assist, not replace, human operators. And that's exactly what Tesla's Autopilot does.
> … but the larger issue is that the car does not enforce what the company often says in press releases, which is that you need to remain alert and with your hands on the wheel.
Cars without Autopilot (i.e. every car ever manufactured in the past 100 years) also do not enforce that the driver must hold the steering wheel. I don't see anyone complaining about that. It's the driver's responsibility to place their hands on the wheel.
> Why is that a problem?
The US is not in the business of allowing companies to sell products that pose a safety hazard to users or people around them.
Tesla's version of autopilot is a new feature that government agencies take pretty seriously. NTSB is now investigating the Florida crash.
There are several Youtube videos of people abusing the tech. Other drivers do not want those people driving around them. To get people to use the system safely, the government can (a) ask police to check that people are paying attention while driving, or (b) require stricter hardware controls such as hands must be on the wheel. (a) is impractical
> Cars without Autopilot (i.e. every car ever manufactured in the past 100 years) also do not enforce that the driver must hold the steering wheel. I don't see anyone complaining about that.
Other car systems are irrelevant. This is new tech that had to be approved for use in the US. It was approved last October.
I'd argue it's the manufacturer's responsibility that they ensure a driver using their "autopilot" feature keeps their hands on the wheel and maintains attention so I am not hit by one of their broken vehicles.
Other cars that do automated driving tasks alert drivers loudly when they take their hands off the wheel, there is no reason that shouldn't be standard.
Pushing the responsibility on to consumers when it's a solved problem in the industry is negligent and irresponsible on the manufacturer's part.
Yes, Tesla should not call it "autopilot," but if you want to really prevent people from using the system in a way in which it's not intended, you need to enforce it in hardware.