There seems to be a valley between the way the user expects something works and how it actually does. When users detect a difference they may compensate, if they survive long enough to learn.

Of course if users get to used to such differences then those can become 'features' which only makes progress harder.

The problem is that you don't know what the car is going to do. E.g. if you see a barrier you would mentally prepare to steer. But if you trust the car you don't prepare and then suddenly have to take over at the last moment when you realize the car is doing something wrong.

That means the autopilot doesn't help at all since you would have to basically drive manually all the time anyway.

Exactly - the only safe way to drive using autopilot assist is to keep your hands on the wheel and mime steering every corner... and at that point how is it assistance?

Maybe one solution would be to actually show you what the car is "thinking". E.g. it could project the outlines of what it's seeing and what it's planning to do on the windshield.

Aren't there regulations/requirements about what's allowed on the windshield?

I would think it'd be seen as a "distraction", those suction cup mounts for example are illegal in a lot of states.

In this case I'd agree that the cons outweigh the pros. Surprising Tesla can legally market the feature or even offer it to the general public in its current form.

EDIT: typo

No - this is not a fair comparison. Tesla, without the autodrive feature, functions like a regular car. It is upto you if you want to turn on the autodrive or not.

We are discussing the use of Autopilot, so it is a fair comparison. Nobody is worried about the safety of a Tesla with autopilot off.

Well if you are worried about safety with autopilot on don't turn it on. To expect a system to function 100% from day 1 or even on day 1000 is unreal. Look at aeroplanes - they used to be notorious with their safety records in the 50s and 60s. However, with each crash, problems were identified and improvements were made. This is what led to the current world where aeroplanes are one of the safest mode of traveling.

Sorry, comparison with airplanes is not fair in my opinion.

The purpose of the autopilot is to increase safety for drivers that are not attentive. However, it turns out that Tesla requires drivers to be even more attentive than regular vehicles. This is not a sign of progression.

Not true in my opinion. While for now the positioning of autopilot is to increase safety for non attentive drivers, eventually autopilot's main goal is to have completely self driven cars and that is where the industry is heading (and Tesla wants to be in the forefronts of it).

We can differ in opinions but I strongly feel that the eventual utopia of self driving cars will be much safer than the current world. And we are making progress on this daily. There will be few unfortunate incidents but in the long term a lot more lives will be saved.

I'm not really sure what the eventual safety of self-driving cars has to do with Telsa providing an unsafe system right now.

Unless you're suggesting that Tesla is justified in actively making people less safe because it helps them develop self-driving technology faster?

> While for now the positioning of autopilot is to increase safety for non attentive drivers, eventually autopilot's main goal is to have completely self driven cars and that is where the industry is heading (and Tesla wants to be in the forefronts of it).

In that case they should issue a recall, and not use real users as their test drivers. Once they get to their eventual goal, they can resume selling autopilot cars.

> We can differ in opinions but I strongly feel that the eventual utopia of self driving cars will be much safer than the current world. And we are making progress on this daily. There will be few unfortunate incidents but in the long term a lot more lives will be saved.

I totally agree with you that in the long term self-driving cars are much safer. What I do not agree with is Tesla's approach towards achieving that goal. They are selling an unsafe product while marketing it as much safer than the existing products. This is just plain fraud.