News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier. Parent comment

Re:Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier by Amezarak on Friday April 06, 2018 @09:46AM (#16773149)
I think Tesla is losing out here by calling what is little more than adaptive cruise control plus lanekeeping "autopilot." Adaptive cruise control + lanekeeping + collision avoidance is available on a ton of cars now, even economy cars, and it works great. I regularly make a ~200 mile drive on the Honda system and it is 100% the whole way. But when you sell it as Autopilot instead of driver assist, people have much higher expectations and blame your car rather than the driver - though there very well could be serious problems with the Tesla implementation.

Lanekeeping is actually very nice. The system in Teslas and most (all?) others do require you to keep your hands on the wheel and pay attention, but having to constantly manually steer the car is much more fatiguing than you would think. It's really annoying to drive cars without lanekeeping now.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier by iainmerrick on Friday April 06, 2018 @10:01AM (#16773255)
My concern is, if you have both cruise control and lanekeeping, what's left to keep your attention and stop you zoning out?

I don't find steering onerous, but it requires just enough attention to keep you alert.

(I've never used a lanekeeping system, though. Maybe I'd like it, I dunno)

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier by pfooti on Friday April 06, 2018 @11:14AM (#16773837)
I use lanekeeping on the freeway, usually with adaptive cruise control as well (subaru). I focus more on the Big Picture of all the cars around me, can see further and have a better sense of who is doing what. That's anecdotal, of course, and could well be placebo effect, but I still pay a lot of attention to the road.

Plus, lanekeeping can be really annoying if you rely on it all the time. The car sometimes tends to drift back and forth in a lane a little between corrections, instead of just going straight. So: you're still steering. It's just that you're steering less and have a defense in depth against loss of focus, and can drive without exhausting yourself.

[ Parent | on HN ]