Almost every study on human behavior contradicts this. When you have no load, your monitoring and responsiveness gets poorer, not better. (Now, you can certainly go to the other extreme and get overloaded, with the same effect).

You may have a _perception_ that you're doing better, because you feel like you're glancing around a lot, and consider that equivalent to "monitoring", but most likely you're admiring / distracted by scenery, and you wouldn't have those immediate reaction times that (remember) you're meant to have, even with Autopilot engaged.

> Almost every study on human behavior contradicts this. When you have no load, your monitoring and responsiveness gets poorer, not better. (Now, you can certainly go to the other extreme and get overloaded, with the same effect)

With both a plane and a car you still have some load; you are supposed to be monitoring the performance of the systems.

I perceive myself to be safer when I have autopilot enabled on a Cirrus. My thinking goes from having to manipulate the controls to monitoring the performance of the aircraft.

I could be derelict in my duties at ignore the plane and play a game on my iPhone.

I perceive that experience to be very similar to when I engage Autopilot on my Tesla.

I go from having to manipulate the control to monitoring the performance of the car. With over 110k miles on my Tesla I really do feel with autopilot.

Autopilot is normally engaged when there's "nothing". Clear skies rarely have "sudden" obstacles. It's a no-no during severe weather or flying through mountains. I had a fascination with watching airline disaster investigations when I was making regular flights for a year. Around 70-80% of accidents were caused by relying on autopilot during sub-perfect conditions.

Using airplane autopilot as a case to use Tesla autopilot is a terrible, terrible analogy. Let's throw in an extra terrible.

My perception in sense of safety and workload reduction is about the same for aviation vs automative.

I’m a instrument rated pilot that mostly flys for fun on the weekend.

The big danger is folks disconnect from their duty to actively monitor the systems.

I would never play an iPhone game with either system.

A car in "autopilot" is more akin to the terminal environment, though. Things happen faster. Pedestrians run out in front of the car, oncoming traffic swerves to miss a pothole, and a second later you're smashing into them.

What you perceive may not be born out by the stats. It is very important to realize that humans are simply poor at self evaluation. Half the drivers think they are better than average, plenty of people think they do not suffer any adverse effects of consuming a glass of alcohol with respect to their situational awareness and reaction speed and so on.

Same goes for when I’m in the passenger seat of a car - I still monitor. I still look left/right when turning.

I don’t know if there is any additional education involved when buying a car with autopilot, but maybe that would be a good thing to learn about the risks and limitations using the equipment.

I don't doubt you, but do you know of any particular studies regarding this? I am kind of curious about how these studies are designed.

This sounds like a false sense of security. I find it extremely difficult to believe that a typical human can maintain their attention glued to the road in a purely passive manner for hours on end. Even if you were paying attention, without your hands constantly on the steering wheel you would have a slowed reaction time where milliseconds matter.

More importantly this kind of vigilance defeats the purpose of autopilot. I'm not necessarily saying you're doing anything dangerous since the autopilot function seems to be fairly safe, but your apologism comes across a bit like like an alcoholic claiming they drive better when drunk.

With manual driving you have to focus predominantly on one specific task - keeping your car between the lines. Bends in the road, poorly drawn lines, irregularities in the road surface, gusts of wind, all conspire to make this task require constant attention. Look in the rear view mirror for a couple seconds and then look back ahead and you might find that you've drifted, etc.

With AutoPilot the task has changed. You are no longer concerned with minute adjustments to the wheel, and you no longer have to maintain a constant high priority task of staying centered in the lines. Now, instead, you perform higher order functions of route planning, estimating traffic flow, observing other drivers and whether they are paying attention or drifting toward you, etc.

So by no means are you passive at all. It's actually extremely engaging, but significantly less monotonous form of driving. I find it quite pleasant, and not at all hard to stay engaged.

If I'm going to play a game on my phone, it's because I'm choosing to risk my life and the lives of the drivers/passengers around me, not because I couldn't handle looking out the window to pay attention.

Staying centered in the lane should be muscle memory for an experienced driver. The higher order functions you mentioned are all things you should be doing regardless, with or without autopilot. I can perform those tasks just fine while driving a stick shift, most drivers can.

The other side of the coin is that reduced engagement in the driving process can lead to lapses in concentration. That's not just my experience, it's the same opinion expressed by F1 drivers tasked with bringing the lead car home in an unchallenging grand prix.

Apparently it takes more than that to be an "experienced driver", because lanekeeping and speed control leave me very fatigued after a 3 hour drive. I became accustomed to eating in at lunch diners and sitting down for dinner halfway home but other co-workers were not fatigued and could go through the drive through and eat in the truck.

It's definitely easier than it was, and I don't have to think about the mechanics much at all anymore when backing up a 5th wheel or controlling a truck sliding in the snow, but this human doesn't have a chunk of my brain that can do lane centering automatically. That is not a universal brain function, every human can drive but it takes a lot more energy and concentration for some of us. My stress levels have gotten lower and my life has gotten a lot better since I realized that and cut my commute down to a 2.5 mile trip with ~monthly travel instead...

The system is supposed to immediately start heading when it detects you're not responding. Keeping hands on wheel is not good enough, an active attention system similar to train ones should be employed and sharper at that.

Something as simple as a steering wheel button which is required to press in half second after lighting a signal or automatic emergency system is engaged.

Perhaps even in all cars, not just automated, though it's hard to implement safely without automatic steering and lane system.

As others have stated, it makes you quite a bit less irritable when the drive is over. That shit wears you out.

Next time you rent a car, get one with adaptive cruise control and give it a try. It is very handy!

The amount of effort needed for this can vary wildly depending on the vehicle, it’s mechanical condition, and the speed it’s being driven at. Some vehicles are more prone to being bothered by wind, or grooves in the road, or require more constant adjustments to maintain lane position.

My tiredness is dependant on the vehicle.

I’ve had cars I’m exhausted from driving just after a 1 hour commute, and I’ve had a luxury sedan I could drive basically indefinitely (once did 3000 miles in 3 days, I didn’t mind it at all).

I wonder if the person you’re replying to previously drive a much less refined car, and would see most of the same benefits even when driving the Tesla manually.

Honestly the second part of their focus, simply being aware of their surroundings, should also be muscle memory for any experienced driver. That’s probably why they find driving so tiring, because they don’t plan ahead enough to keep a peaceful flow, rather than slightly too late scramble to gather information when they have to change lanes or something.

Yeah, I’ve driven shit boxes (see my comment about the Toyota Tercel stick shift).

But I still much prefer long drives in my Model 3 rather than my wife’s GL450. Before I got the Model 3 I drove an Infiniti G35 for 12 years, which was a perfectly “refined” car IMO.

> That’s probably why they find driving so tiring, because...

I guess you just have to try it. Again, I’m not saying driving is this exhausting thing that requires white-knuckled concentration. I’m saying that with AP it is just better in every way. You’re totally free to disagree if your personal experience with AP is different, but I think speculating on my driving ineptitude or poor choice of vehicle is kind of pointless / shooting the messenger.

Mentally, I find auditing the system while it drives way more fun and less exhausting than actually driving on an uneventful highway.

I can say, without a doubt, I am less fatigued and more alert after even an hour drive in the Honda. I was skeptical before I had it, but I'm sold now. It's not that you "aren't driving" or paying attention, but not having to deal with the most basic aspects of driving makes a surprisingly difference.

Staying centered in a lane requires constant minor adjustments which are not entirely predictable. It’s perfectly easy and totally muscle memory when you keep a distant gaze, as they teach in driver school.

Because of this we are taught to take quick glances in your mirrors, and to check blind spots before changing lanes, etc. But you have to maintain focus ahead pretty much constantly. Everything else is secondary because it will cause drifting in your lane while you address it.

That same distant gaze—which is taught because it increases peripheral vision—can also, by the way, contribute to “drivers stare” or “blind staring” where your eyes are open and focused on the horizon but your brain isn’t really registering what’s happening around you.

I’ll also add that observing other drivers on the road, it is rare to see someone perfectly centered and maintaining that perfect center for mile after mile. They will drift left and right in the lane, sometimes enough to make you wonder what their plan is, or what else they may be doing in there. AutoPilot doesn’t just make driving easier for the driver, it makes driving easier for cars around you because the car moves more predictably.

My main point, speaking from experience, is that you actually can be totally engaged in the driving process even without your hand on the wheel. It may sound paradoxical to you just because it’s the only way you’ve ever driven.

Between the 1) constant touches that Tesla needs to feel on the wheel, the 2) guidance computer showing your immediate surroundings, upcoming traffic conditions, and route planning, and 3) the ability to spend more time on higher order driver functions... basically without trying to nerd out, it’s more like piloting a spacecraft than driving a car. It’s fun, and engaging, and IMO a lot safer. By no means is it boring.

Here’s what I will say — that someone who would drive recklessly by using a phone while driving, they may feel like they can “get away with it” better with AutoPilot, just because the car isn’t swerving in the lane when they take their eyes off the road. And you know what, most of the time they actually are safer making that reckless choice with AP than without it.

So the issue is actually incredibly nuanced. Cars today are not built to always prevent drivers from driving recklessly. We do this because driving is a form of freedom, and being subjugated to a machine which is supposed to “enforce perfect driving hygiene” is going to be a very frustrating and at times a buggy and unbearable process.

Instead, with or without ADAS, we rely on personal responsibility. This is a terribly flawed and imperfect solution, but until we actually have FSD and humans are totally out of the loop it is IMO the only option.

Once true FSD is live, we can regulate a date when manual driving can become illegal.

I'm no longer exhausted after a long drive and it's amazing.

i dunno, if you have trouble doing both the minute adjustments (which is usually a mostly subconscious task) and the higher-order functions while driving, maybe you need more practice/training.

there are 30-40k motor vehicle deaths per year in the US (and over a million worldwide). distracted driving is the main culprit (not speed, as most people assume).

we should expect no less than this kind of active driving from every driver.

And you've very clearly never tried autopilot.

"Where milliseconds matter"? You are wildly overestimating the abilities of literally any driver. No one reacts that fast, in any situation.

Which is precisely the problem. When autopilot goes wrong at high speed the driver needs to react that quickly and that's an unrealistic expectation to put on the driver.

I've heard people claim to drive better drunk, and justify it with their perfect crash record. I remain fairly dubious.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopilot

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...

Are you serious?? Literally everyone.

Definitions are what things mean. People incorrectly interpreting a word is their own fault and are in need of education.

Also, that's a terrible study to highlight. It is totally safe to take your hands off the steering wheel as long as you are ready to react.

Do you honestly think Tesla called it "auto pilot" with your pedantic, "technically correct" definition in mind? Or do you think they intentionally called it "auto pilot" to invoke a sense of "hey, this thing can drive itself!". I mean, in some of their marketing they even have a whimsical blurb about how "the driver is only present to make the lawyers happy".

Let's be honest here. Product naming is marketing designed to invoke certain emotions. Calling it "auto pilot" instead of "driver assist" or whatever most other manufacturers call it was very intentionally done.

Exactly. You can read one piece of copy about Summon, that says "Have your finger on this button. Maintain visual contact and pay attention with vehicle at all times", and on the same page. "Have your car come to you while you are distracted by a fussing child".

It's all very nudge nudge wink wink.

Words mean what people think they mean. Definitions are what the author of the dictionary thinks people think they mean.

Unless you're going to spend the time and money and effort educating people on what a word might have once meant and what you would like it to mean again, you're kind of stuck with it. Tesla has absolutely chosen AutoPilot as their name because they know some people will think it has more capability than it does because some people don't know most plane's autopilot is fairly dumb.

You misused "Literally".

This fundamental mis-branding is why various regulators across the globe are cracking down on Tesla marketing.

autopilot in aviation requires the pilot to be attentive, and maintain situational awareness.

it’s not autonomous flying.

When autopilot gives up in a plane, the PIC will respond in seconds. But anything dangerous is typically minutes or at least tens of seconds away from happening at that moment, if at all.

When tesla 'autopilot' gives up in a car, the driver may have less than a second before a collision. Or worse, as we've seen with the 'tesla tries to drive into a barrier' cases, the 'autopilot' might not give up at all and just straight up try to murder you with the only safety remaining being your own attention to the situation.

The fundamental problem with <99.99% reliable autonomous driving is that the driver's attention is guaranteed to stray due to lack of stimulation, and their reaction time will be at ~3s whereas the impeding crash might be only 0.3s away. In that regard, it's much better to just be manually driving and have your attention on the road.

And the consumer flip side of this is, what the fuck is the point of a self driving car if it requires you to fully pay attention and be ready to intervene at any given moment on such short notice? Waymo observed that their test drivers get bored and tired really quickly when operating like that, due to the simultaneous lack of stimulation but need to be able to take over on short notice. The answer is that SAE level 2 autonomy shouldn't be labelled as self driving because it isn't.

Tesla 'autopilot' is an over-marketed lane-keeping cruise control system which has virtually no chance of ever becoming SAE level 3. Tesla marketing has mislead a significant percentage of owners that they're in fact buying a level 3 system, which is why various regulators across the world are cracking down on Tesla now.

Disclosure: I own Tesla stock.

That's a very strong claim. Can you provide any evidence?

I own neither Tesla stock or car.

This is uncommon in planes.

TCAS, for example: https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/64847/how-much-...

> Traffic advisories are provided 35-48 seconds out and a Resolution will be provided 20-30 seconds out.

It's exceedingly rare you have 20-30 seconds warning of an impending car crash.

Fewer things to hit in the sky but you can never be complacent.

Imagine playing an iPhone game while PIC and accidentally flying into the clouds? The CFIT stats are terrifying.

There is almost never a situation where a plane on autopilot can face catastrophe in <20 seconds.

Midair collisions are why we have ADS-B (even in my dad's little four-seater prop plane) and TCAS. The are also exceedingly uncommon.

People driving into a ditch, pedestrian, barrier, or oncoming traffic is commonplace.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-lion-air-cras...

> Lemme described "a deadly game of tag" in which the plane pointed down, the pilots countered by manually aiming the nose higher, only for the sequence to repeat about five seconds later. That happened 26 times during the 11-minute flight...

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/04/what-passengers-expe...

8:39:55 a.m.: In a clear sign that something is amiss, the autopilot turns itself off.

8:40:00 a.m.: The MCAS activates.

8:43:04 a.m.: For minutes now, the captain has been using brute physical force to pull the control yoke back in order to keep the plane’s nose from sinking.

8:43:20 a.m.: The demon awakened by the restoration of electric trim reappears. MCAS kicks back in, pushing nose steeply down.

8:43:45 a.m.: Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 impacts a farm field at nearly 700 miles per hour

That's more than three minutes during which properly disabling MCAS would've been successful and saved the aircraft.

The nature of the MCAS issue is it kept firing every 5 seconds, making things progressively harder to counteract. It takes a while to get to the “can’t counteract” point.

https://www.quora.com/Why-did-the-pilots-on-the-Lion-Air-and...

To return back to the original point for a moment:

40 seconds is a shitload more time to react than the 1-2 seconds you've got when oncoming car traffic veers into your lane unexpectedly. Things in cars happen faster than in planes. A couple seconds of inattention in a plane won't kill you in the same way they will in a car.

People think autopilots do a lot more than they actually do, which is part of the problem with Tesla's naming. They probably should've called it "assisted cruise" or "driver assist" or something, but that's less sexy on the marketing side.

It doesn't help that their marketing pages for Autopilot have done a clever job of blurring the line between what's currently implemented and what's aspirational. https://www.tesla.com/autopilot has a giant header titled "Full Self-Driving Capability". You have to read more closely to see the big caveats.

The only reason it isn't automated is because there's no monetary gain in doing so, the people you are paying is still sitting around for the same amount of time.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/autopilo...

"a device that keeps aircraft, spacecraft, and ships moving in a particular direction without human involvement"

Either way, I think the wording causes people to trust it too much.

I mean absolutely no disrespect to you and I understand your feelings are probably coming straight out your heart. However I would like to point out that when you say that the world does not meet your expectation and that somehow is a problem with the world and not your own self is very arrogant.

There is an interesting implication here, a point that I've tried to make a couple of times but this anecdote does a better job of it. Automation of self driving will lead to much more driving than we have today because today the requirement is that someone needs to be willing to make the trip as well as the vehicle. With automated driving that requirement drops away so there will be many more trips that do not happen now. This will lead to more congestion and will to some extent undo the 'green' effects of the electric revolution.

> With autopilot engaged, I am monitoring everything - probably with more accuracy then if I was driving, due to the decreased cognitive load.

But you've lost situational awareness and won't be able to recover it in time if the autopilot decides to call it a day due to the complexity of the situation. This has been studied countless times for airliner pilots and operators of rail vehicles.

Furthermore, in bumper to bumper traffic, you're better off staying stopped and letting the gap in front of you grow, only taking your foot off the brake and letting your engine idle move you forward at the average speed of traffic once the interval is large enough. Helps destroy traffic waves by keeping everyone moving forward slowly rather than having to constantly stop and go.

Try it some time. It takes some getting used to, but once you bust your first traffic clot, it starts to feel like a game where the objective is to keep everyone moving forward for the longest time without everyone having to stop. Completely counter-intuitive, but I'll be damned if it doesn't work.

Enjoy. The point isn't to modify the behavior of those in front of you, But to keep traffic behind you moving forward even if only slowly.

I couldn’t own a car without it anymore.

I definitely don’t feel Tesla is responsible for the crashes caused by people ignoring all the warnings and notices. People have been ignoring warnings and dying in stupid ways since warnings first existed.

When I read the manual it specifically called out several situations where ACC could cause a problem. Completely stationary objects and using it around a sharp corner can cause it to lose sight of the car in front of you.

As you said people have found stupid ways of dying and not paying attention while driving is one of them. I keep an eye on ACC and will keep my foot above the break if my intuition tells me to.

This is akin to the argument that we should replace steering wheel airbags with massive spikes in the center to promote safe driving. Could it work? Maybe, but seatbelts and airbags are more effective than regulating human behavior. In the same vein, there needs to be innovation in the self-driving safety space until we actually achieve Level 5. Autopilot operates in a weird chasm where the general public understands that it's not there yet, but expects it to be very soon. This leads to false assumptions about the capabilities of the system.

You've got quite a bit of time before it actually does this. As long as you jiggle the steering wheel every ~20 seconds or so, it shouldn't actually stop the car or disable autopilot.

Super dangerous and stupid, but people do it.

I definitely think Tesla works hard to keep things this way, and my comment was mostly neutral.

This keeps getting repeated and is complete misdirection. The barrier isn't intended to save lives from a headon crash, its to improve the slim odds of survival. Had the vehicle not accelerated toward it, chances would have still been grim.

Imo, noone should be operating a vehicle in this mode at high speeds.

I think thats a bit of an overstatement. Try it.

It's all well and good saying the driver should pay more attention - almost treating it like a normal tech product, I suppose, but most "tech" products don't control almost a Megajoule (mental maths might be wrong but you get the idea) of kinetic energy and the lives of the occupants of both the car and any others it hits.

I'm not saying that it's an impossibility to get it right, just that it needs to be held to even higher standards than the existing engineering present in the car (and planes if I'm being honest), not Sillicon Valley. Luckily this doesn't seem to be too much the case, but it could happen - the few people I know who own Tesla's are all non-car people ("What's suspension?"), i.e. The gadget-factor of the car is definitely attractive. Tesla do seem to be doing a pretty good job, so hat's off to them so far.

[0] Well think and say you do. Most people overestimate how much attention they're actually paying.

[1] And may never be with their camera system but that's another story entirely. I'm still dubious that cameras alone provide a reliable enough picture of the environment for CV systems to go 100% self driving.

Everything about this line is unsupported supposition.

[0] https://twitter.com/DakRandall/status/1170777292768985089