It’s a broad side of the trailer which is a challenge. Tesla will stop for the rear-end of a trailer, but may disregard the broad side of a trailer stretching across the highway because it looks too much like an overpass.

Definitely corner cases like the broad side of a tractor trailer stretched across the highway will prevent FSD from being remotely possible in 2020. Complex traffic light arrangements in multi-lane intersections, unprotected left turns, even driving over a lane marker to avoid a fixed obstacle are still TBD features in the AutoPilot code base.

Those are the features they will be adding in 2019/2020 to get what Musk is calling “feature complete” but regardless of what he has claimed, from personal experience, I do not see how the cars could operate without any human driver in 2020 except under highly constrained conditions like “in parking lot not to exceed 3mph” and even that I think will expose corner cases with cars getting stuck and needing driver assistance.

What I do think we will see in 2020 is a respectable percentage of trips being completed start-to-finish with AutoPilot engaged the entire time.

However, then and now, the driver absolutely, positively, must always be looking out the window when operating AutoPilot.

Musk is Tesla's worst enemy here - first in naming the thing "AutoPilot" and then in doubling down with his absurd claims about "Full Self Driving" within a year. What the general public thinks "Full Self Driving" means is Uber - I get in a car, I set a destination, and it goes there as if a human driver was at the wheel - I can browse the web, take a nap, whatever. We are a decade from that, if not more. But as long as Tesla insists on calling it "AutoPilot (now with Full Self Driving!)" they will keep getting sued when an unfinished technology encounters a problem.

I can’t help but think of Bart Simpson sitting in the back of the car while driving down the highway - “cruise control my dude!” Right before the road turns off and he goes into a cornfield

Cruise control has been called AutoPilot in the past, and this is closer to Autopilot on planes anyway.

I think autopilot is an apt name. It’s not like planes on autopilot do everything and just fly themselves. It’s more like setting the cruise control. I still need to be paying attention when my car is on autopilot, real pilots don’t set their autopilot and then just leave the cockpit.

Reminder that the start of the marketing video for Autopilot says "The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car drives itself." [0]

[0] https://www.tesla.com/autopilot

Common people, laymen, don’t completely understand it the same way you might, full of nuance.

So Tesla's autopilot has no history or world model?

If you approach a truck from the rear, you have a rear aspect on it before having a side aspect on it.

If you have overtaken by a truck, you have a front aspect on it before having a side aspect on it.

If an overpass is falsely identified as the broadside of a truck, even a very small percentage of the time, then sudden breaking in the middle of the road would be very dangerous. Also, from a PR standpoint, I think there would be many articles about how AP caused a fatal accident rather than merely failing to prevent it...

From a PR standpoint, how is it advantageous to Tesla for laypersons to be told that Autopilot, which is ostensibly safe enough for hands-off highway driving, can't recognize what is to every human driver an unambiguously dangerous situation?

In terms of overpasses being falsely identified as the broadside of a truck, this explanation feels more and more confusing to me as Tesla doubles down on vision-only self-driving (as opposed to LIDAR-assisted). Why would a camera and computer-vision algorithm ever falsely identify an overpass, which in normal weather is viewable and trackable from at least a mile away, as a broadside of a truck suddenly running through an intersection?

I think we have to consider the idea that Tesla is run by a futuristic utopian maniac who doesn’t take “no” for an answer. I mean... possibly.

My aunt's vision isn't so great any more, and quite often she'll brake for what she thinks is an animal or car, but is just a shadow. Other times, if the sun is low in the sky, she will not notice other vehicles that really are there.

I just make sure that when I'm a passenger in her car I have my hand resting on the emergency brake, so I'm ready to stop the car if I need to. It's much safer that way.

I don't think your aunt should be driving.

The guidance system will show the truck approaching from the rear. It will show it drive along side you, and pass, and it will show it driving in front of you.

GreenTheOnly posts lots of videos of internal captures from his Tesla AutoPilot (I believe he “jailbreaked” his Tesla to capture them. Here’s an example of what the software is tracking [1].

He was able to capture one case where there happened to be a trailer backing up / parking in front of him a couple months back [2]

[1] - https://youtu.be/7ztK5AhShqU

[2] - https://twitter.com/greentheonly/status/1118330606146998272?...

I'm waiting for the first federal bill to require that all trucks over a certain size must be painted with some recognizable pattern, to these driving systems. All white, and perhaps all some other colors, will be illegal.

(I'm 1/2 waiting for this to appear in The Onion.)

You know what? You might be joking, but I wouldn't exclude that something along these lines could be put into law.

Or they could just copy the EU regulations and put an underride barrier on the trailers.

You don’t have that in the US???

No, there's a lobby against it, because it's extra cost for.the trucking companies.