Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for deadly crash

Re:Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for d... by BeetleB on Wednesday April 11, 2018 @04:18PM (#16815121)

>People invariably let down their guard and go "hey, this works" and promptly stop paying attention because there's nothing for them to do.

This is not specific to Tesla.

Trivial example: A coworker has a car that has blind spot detection. She knows the manufacturer says "you should still check, it is not 100% accurate". And she admitted that despite knowing this, she does not check her blind spots and relies solely on blind spot detection.

More serious example:

I have a car that has adaptive cruise control. You can get on the highway, set the CC to 60 mph, but if traffic slows down, it automatically slows down and maintains a distance to the next car. It speeds up to 60 mph when the traffic picks up again.

I love it, but for the inexperienced driver, this is dangerous. It requires one to be more vigilant than regular CC. Every so often (rare, but has happened a few times), it will not detect that the vehicle in front of me is a vehicle, and will not slow down. The more you rely on it, the more vigilant you need to be. My wife has never used CC before, and this would be too much for her to handle, compared to simpler CC.

It's a general problem. Tesla is just a convenient target.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for d... by switchbak on Wednesday April 11, 2018 @07:33PM (#16816779)

I very much agree with your opinion. Systems which take over most but not all responsibility seem to lull us humans into a false sense of security/reliability. The psychological aspect of this is actually quite intriguing, but it's also a very dangerous phenomena.

I don't know anything about your wife, but that does sound perhaps a touch condescending. Besides that I think you make a very good point, one that many people seem to want to wish away.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Tesla issues strongest statement yet blaming driver for d... by BeetleB on Wednesday April 11, 2018 @08:48PM (#16817136)

>I don't know anything about your wife, but that does sound perhaps a touch condescending.

That's probably because you don't know anything about my wife :-)

This isn't about my wife. I would never recommend anyone to learn CC on this type of system. They should learn CC on a regular car, and once they're comfortable with that, switch to something like this. You simply have to be more alert for a "safe" CC than a regular one.

[ Parent | on HN ]