This not a feature that Autopilot or any other of the lane keeping systems have at the moment. If we are going to say that this is an issue then pretty much all lane keeping systems would have to be outlawed.
If it is really impossible for people to pay attention without their hands on the wheel at all the time then all lane keeping must be abolished or a standard needs to be established what 'paying attention' means.
Crashing into emergency vehicles happens often even without lane keeping system as well, so its a univeral problem when you have big stationary objects standing around on driving lanes.
What do people on HN actually want or expect in terms or regulation?
Here are some suggestions:
- Only allow any kind of lane keeping if a comprehensive testing that they can detect any obstetrical of any kind and have emergency breaking. This of course would simply mean less such system would be deployed as most companies don't have practical scalable solution for this as of yet.
- Only allow any kind of lane keeping if a comprehensive driver monitoring system is implemented that makes sure driver is alert. Additionally you could require wheel touches every so often in addition to that, if 'hands free' driving should not be allowed.
Tesla is in a good spot here, they have the internal cameras and already have a driver monitoring system yet despite that they have not allowed hands free driving.
Tesla new Vision Autopilot or the more extensive FSD stack (that will do highway driving with v10) should solve the stationary object problem.
I'm sure that if there was any kind of regulation, Tesla would simply comply and move on. In the worst case if regulation would somehow insist on having things named in a specific way, Tesla would just rename their features.
However the point here seems to be non of this is technological problem with Tesla, is simply a situation with no regulation and so every manufacturer picks their own solution. Tesla is the most prominent and most talked about so they are the whipping boy of anybody that wants more regulation.