Speak for yourself. In general, "Autopilot" is misleading. There's no need to just guess about how people interpret it, we know how they do. See https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/new-studies-highlight-drive...

People in general think this is what autopilot means since that is how it is portrayed in movies and books.

What movies are you watching where they turn on autopilot and the plane lands itself??

If anything, movies portray planes as extremely hard to fly, and the heroic pilot always has to take over from the autopilot.

In the movie “Airplane” the autopilot is an inflatable humanlike doll full on manning the plane. :-)

My airplane can land itself. I always assumed that was normal.

Regardless of what autopilot means to pilots, it means something else to drivers.

Why? Autopilot is a term borrowed directly from aviation.

Most drivers aren't pilots. They don't know what autopilot actually does. They expect it to drive the car for them, and they probably think autopilot does the same on planes. It was a mistake for Tesla to borrow the term.

You're purely speculating on people's knowledge:

> They don't know

> They expect

> they probably think

The alternative is some people are terrible and there will always be people that abuse nice things on purpose.

They know what they are doing, that's why they are trying to trick the warning systems.

These are the same people on the phones and merging without looking in normal cars.

All of that is speculation, but imo it's more likely than yours.

There's no need to speculate.

IIHS did a survey of 2000 people and a driver assistance system named "Autopilot" received the most responses that overestimated the system's capabilities. For example, "Nearly half — 48% — thought it would be safe to take hands off the steering wheel when using the system." In general, about 50% more people overestimated the capabilities of Autopilot compared to the names used by industry leaders (ex. SuperCruise, ProPilot Assist). Other things users were more likely to think they could do with "AutoPilot" included texting and watching a video.

See https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/new-studies-highlight-drive...

Only 6% thought taking a nap was okay though... 16% thought texting was okay.

So clearly not the majority in all aspects and the other names had similar results for those questions.

Because meanings of words can change depending on context.