Re:Tesla's Autopilot Chief Keller Steps Down After Two Years
by dawnerd on Thursday April 26, 2018 @11:47AM
(#16932927)
Yep literally just lane keep with a much longer warning time than other higher end cars. Shows the power of marketing.
Re:Tesla's Autopilot Chief Keller Steps Down After Two Years
by Piskvorrr on Thursday April 26, 2018 @11:03AM
(#16932502)
Partially agree. OTOH, giving 20% attention is a much harder task than giving 80% - we (people) suck at multitasking, which means the larger task eventually gets 100%, and the smaller slip towards 0%. Lethal.
Re:Tesla's Autopilot Chief Keller Steps Down After Two Years
by outworlder on Thursday April 26, 2018 @02:16PM
(#16934220)
Planes have autopilots. Even so, they don't fly themselves. Not sure where people have been getting these notions from, unless it is from works of fiction.
Re:Tesla's Autopilot Chief Keller Steps Down After Two Years
by paulmd on Thursday April 26, 2018 @07:14PM
(#16936850)
Much like the automation levels of self-driving cars, there are different kinds of autopilots. A small aircraft might have heading-hold/altitude-hold only. A modern airliner will pretty much fly itself and the crew is only there to "supervise" (to the extent that they are seeing a similar rise in accidents in situations the autopilot cannot handle, because the crew doesn't know when to override it and they don't have the proficiency to fly the plane properly in those situations).
You might be surprised to learn that autoland has been around since the 60s... the UK were early pioneers due to notoriously poor weather in the British Isles, autoland systems allowed them a highly safe all-weather landing capability in zero-visibility conditions. The US was much slower and our aircraft really only caught up to some of the UK aircraft's capabilities in the 80s and 90s, and tended to rely much more heavily on ground guidance.
From anecdotal experience I would explain it as normal driving requires 80% of your mental attention, regular cruise control requires 60%, adaptive cruise control requires 40%, and Tesla's autopilot requires 20%. If you use it in that manner it is almost certainly safer than manual driving. The problem is that people get complacent and spend large stretches of time without dedicating enough attention to the task. This is supported by the fact that neither of the drivers involved in the two confirmed autopilot fatal accidents made any evasive actions. Yes, autopilot is partially to blame for that, but so are the drivers who weren't spending enough mental capacity on driving. That isn't a problem limited to autopilot. It is the same problem when people manually driving get distracted by their smartphone.