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Tesla’s Autopilot and Full Self-Driving linked to hundreds of crashes, dozens of deaths
(www.theverge.com)
this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2024
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I’ve often wondered why the FTC allows it to be marketed as “Full Self-Driving”. That’s blatant false advertising.
As is “autopilot”. There’s no automatic pilot. You’re still expected to keep your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road.
I am so sick and tired of this belief because it's clear people have no idea what Autopilot on a plane actually does. They always seem to assume it flies the plane and the pilot doesn't do anything apparently. Autopilot alone does not fly the damned plane by itself.
"Autopilot" in a plane keeps the wings level at a set heading, altitude, and speed. It's literally the same as cruise control with lane-centering, since there's an altitude issue on a road.
There are more advanced systems available on the market that can be installed on smaller planes and in use on larger jets that can do things like auto takeoff, auto land, following waypoints, etc. without pilot input, but basic plain old autopilot doesn't do any of that.
That expanded capability is similar to how things like "Enhanced Autopilot" on a Tesla can do extra things like change lanes, follow highway exits on a navigated route, etc. Or how "Full Self-Driving" is supposed to follow road signs and lights, etc. but those are additional functions, not part of "Autopilot" and differentiated with their own name.
Autopilot, either on a plane or a Tesla, alone doesn't do any of that extra shit. It is a very basic system.
The average person misunderstanding what a word means doesn't make it an incorrect name or description.
I'd wager most people, when talking about a plane's autopilot mean the follow waypoints or Autoland capability.
Also, it's hard to argue "full self driving" means anything but the car is able to drive fully autonomously. If they were to market it as "advanced driver assist" I'd have no issue with it.
Many people are also pretty stupid when it comes to any sort of technology more complicated than a calculator. That doesn't mean the world revolves around a complete lack of knowledge.
My issue is just with people expecting basic Autopilot to do more than it's designed or intended to do, and refusing to acknowledge their expectation might actually be wrong.
Definitely won't get an argument from me there. FSD certainly isn't in a state to really be called that yet. Although, to be fair, when signing up for it, and when activating it there are a lot of notices that it is in testing and will not operate as expected.
At what point do we start actually expecting and enforcing that people be responsible with potentially dangerous things in daily life, instead of just blaming a company for not putting enough warnings or barriers to entry?
Volvo seeks to have zero human deaths in their cars. Some places seek zero fatality driving environments. These are cultures where safety is front and center. Most FSD enthusiasts (see comments in the other threads below) cite safety as the main impetus for these systems. Hopefully we would see similar cultural values in Tesla.
Unfortunately, Musk tweets out jokes when responding to a video of people having sex on autopilot. That is Tesla culture. Musk is responsible for putting these dangerous things in consumers hands and has created a culture where irresponsible and possibly fatal abuse of those things is something funny for everyone to laugh at. Of course, punish the individual users who go against the rules and abuse the systems. You also have to punish the company, and the idiot at the top, who holds those same rules in contempt.
Then the issue is simply what we perceive as the predominant marketing message. I know that in all legally binding material Tesla states what exactly the system is capable of and how alert the driver needs to be. But in my opinion that is vastly overshadowed by the advertising Tesla runs for their FSD capability. They show a 5 second message about how they are required by law to warn you about being alert at all times, before showing the car driving itself for 3 minutes, with the demo driver having the hands completely off the wheel.
Please, most people don't know how to use a scientific calculator at all.
I never said it was a scientific calculator.
Fair enough