What the GP was referring to, which is what I've see it referred to in Google presentations is level 3 automation. That is what autopilot is supposed to be, where you can take you hands off the wheel and the car can drive itself but needs constant supervision.
What you're referring to is passive assistance such as collision detection which don't drive the car but provide alerts. There is nothing wrong with this technology, it works because the driver has to drive as they normally would but it provides assistance when it spots something the driver doesn't. Here humans do the object detection and the computers stay alert as a backup.
There is a problem when the car drives itself but the driver has to stay alert. This is a problem because the human is much better at object detection and the car is much better at staying alert.
A level 2 system has to be monitored 100% of the time, because it can not be trusted to warn the driver and fall back to manual automatically in every situation. A level 3 system is robust enough to make this guarantee, which means that the driver can take his/her hands off the wheel until prompted to take back control.
Autopilot is a level 2 system, because you can not take your hands of the wheel of a Tesla and expect to not die. In fact the car itself will tell you to put your hands back on the wheel after a short while. After the fatal crashes started getting into the media, Tesla themselves have stated that it's only a level 2 system. Their CEO's weird claims of Autopilot being able to handle 90% of all driving tasks, there being a coast-to-coast Autopilot demonstration run in 2017 etc. are just marketing BS.
However I still disagree with your original comment:
> Sorry, but this is the exact wrong conclusion to make from the available data. Partially automated cars have been driven by average people on the public roads since 2006, when the Mercedes S class got active steering and ACC. There is no data that says that these systems, which are available on cars as affordable as e.g. a VW Polo, lead to more crashes. In fact the only data I have seen suggests that they reduce crashes and driver fatigue significantly.
Firstly, I don't see any examples of VW Polo claiming to have a steering assist, even the most recent 2017 edition [1] only has level 1 features [0]. Steering assist only came to the Mecedes S-Class in 2014 [2].
What I (and the parent comment you initially replied to) was tying to claim was that where as Level 1 features [0] (cruise control, automatic braking, and lane keeping) are great, level 2 (and level 3 according to Google/Waymo) is risky because humans cannot be trusted to be alert and ready to take over.
[0]: www.nhtsa.gov/staticfiles/rulemaking/pdf/Automated_Vehicles_Policy.pdf
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Polo#Sixth_generati...
[2]: https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1080502_2014-mercedes-be...
Tesla can easily fix this - disable autopilot if the user does not have his hands on the wheel. Disable autopilot at construction zones. Disable autopilot sooner when confidence level is lowered.
I test drove an “autopilot 2” Tesla a while back. Avoiding hitting trash cans and parked cars was much harder than it would have been if Autopilot had been off. When you’re on a road and the car decides to steer toward an obstacle, you have very little time to correct the car.
Sorry, but this is the exact wrong conclusion to make from the available data. Partially automated cars have been driven by average people on the public roads since 2006, when the Mercedes S class got active steering and ACC. There is no data that says that these systems, which are available on cars as affordable as e.g. a VW Polo, lead to more crashes. In fact the only data I have seen suggests that they reduce crashes and driver fatigue significantly.
The issue that such a feature is systematically crashing and even killing its users is very specific to Tesla. Tesla's system has had a tendency to run into stationary objects for as long as it has been available to the public. Teslas have a significantly higher rate of causing insurance claims. There are countless videos showing it happening, the two (possibly three) fatalities so far are just the tip of the iceberg. Tesla blamed MobilEye (their previous supplier of camera-based object detection hardware), but it seems fairly evident that Tesla's system has the exact same systemic issue even with their new in-house object detection software.
My opinion as an engineer working on this exact kind of system for one of Tesla's competitors is that Tesla's system just isn't robust enough to be allowed to be used like all other manufacturer's autosteer/ACC systems. IMO that's because their basic approach (doing simple line-following on the lane markings) is super naive. A much more intricate approach needed. One that does some level of reasoning on what is a driving surface and what isn't. This has been known in the automotive industry for over a decade. Sorry to be so absolute, but frankly it's just unnacceptable that Tesla is gambling their customer's lives on such a ridiculously half-baked implementation.
> Lane following assistance without good automatic braking kills.
Correct. It also kills when it lies to the driver about how confident it is in a given situation. Many of the crashes, instances of cars veering off into oncoming lanes etc. we have seen would not have happened, if Tesla would fall back to the driver in sketchy situations. However what it does do instead is not even notfy the driver that the system is hanging on by the barest of threads. This works out fine quite often and makes it seem like the car can detect the lanes successfully even in sketchy situations. Yet once the system (and the driver) runs out of luck, there is absolutely no chance to rectify the situation.