That's not really why this is getting attention. The core issue here is that Tesla is shipping a product called "autopilot", which gives the expectation that it is in fact an autopilot. In the background, people are hearing that autonomous cars are "3 years away!!!" so the expectation is that the Tesla Autopilot feature is the real deal.

Thus you have people watching movies, falling asleep, or driving on dangerous roads using a technology that nowhere near delivers what the name promises. The result is people are dying and getting hurt by an immature technology being pushed too hard by an irresponsible company.

> The core issue here is that Tesla is shipping a product called "autopilot", which gives the expectation that it is in fact an autopilot.

An autopilot system is defined as a system that assists, but does not replace, the human operator of a vehicle. Therefore Tesla's system is, in fact, an autopilot.

From wiki: "An autopilot is a system used to control the trajectory of a vehicle without constant 'hands-on' control by a human operator being required."

That's the clear opposite of what Tesla's manual suggest. If it required hands-on wheel and constant attention, call it what it is -- a driver assistance system, not autopilot.

The actual implementation only requires periodic, not constant, hands-on-wheel. Although it's in the driver's interest to pay attention constantly, as evident from this accident.

Tesla has gone out of their way to get more and more attention. For a company that sells only tens of thousands of cars it's pretty amazing. Until these recent crashes the majority of that press has been very positive.

The downside of this is that when you get bad publicity it's going to be much bigger as well.

That's the price of celebrity.

It was exactly the same with previous crashes. Electric vehicles are dangerous etc. etc. People would read one or two reports and jump to the conclusion that the cars were not safe.