That's what it does - it alerts drivers, and when their hands are off for some amount of time the car will pull off to the shoulder and stop until your hands are back on the wheel (IIRC).

What's the interval between when you take your hands off and it decides to pull over? From what I've seen in discussions and videos, it's pretty long. Other car manufacturers seem to only allow a few seconds.

The article seems to imply that the warning is given if driving conditions become "uncertain" and the driver's hands are off the wheel. Perhaps the time interval between warning and the car automatically stopping should be lower. What's the point of the car continuing on autopilot if it's uncertain of where it's headed?

More details here:

http://www.teslarati.com/what-happens-ignore-tesla-autopilot...

Based on that account, it seems the warning is triggered if the road becomes curvy. There may also be additional triggers.

It seems insufficient to me. IMO there should be an interval of at most 5 seconds before the first warning, and another 5 seconds before the second, and then the car should start decelerating.

> What's the point of the car continuing on autopilot if it's uncertain of where it's headed?

Haha agreed! I don't know exactly how the system works. My sense is Tesla's AP let's you be hands off for a much longer time than other self driving systems

I think about three minutes. My VW Passat demands the hands back on the steering wheel after 15 seconds or so I believe. Same experience driving a recent Audi.

Ah okay, I don't own a Tesla and this wasn't covered in news articles.

In that case, it sounds like it might actually work more or less as it should. It's just a bit useless in its current form.