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Tesla bows to pressure, stops allowing drivers to play video games while driving

theguardian.com

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Re: Tesla bows to pressure, stops allowing drivers to play video games while driving

#101

Post by buffington »

TheJoeMan wrote: post #90
bellyfullofbac wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why, why do they even offer games on the move if they (correctly) have such watchdogs? Makes me think of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TCeR_SWZM0 , just adjust Chandler's line to "0-60 in 3 seconds, top speed of 160mph, 500 mile range!"

I appreciate being respected as a responsible adult. Why would you want some company thinking what’s best or you? I assume you also try to be a responsible driver.

> Why would you want some company thinking what's best for you?

If you are a customer of a company, you're paying for what that company thinks is best for you. Whether they're right or not is another thing entirely.

In this case, Tesla decided that what's best for you is a car with a touch screen with no tactile feedback that serves as the car's only interface for everything: current speed, tire pressure, potential collision warnings, HVAC status and controls, an app that makes fart sounds, and so on. The list of what it's used for probably has over 100 possible items, with one of those items being "play games."

All of those features, including that last one, are features Tesla decided are best for its customers.

Giving their customers a choice to play games or not while driving wouldn't even be up for debate if they never shipped software with games in the first place.

Increasing a vehicle's safety isn't disrespectful and doesn't undermine responsible adult behavior. Adding features that invite drivers to be unsafe seems far more disrespectful. No one dies because their passengers can't play video games while driving on a vehicle's only interface.

I think that "respecting responsible adults" is also just silly. Why make laws that punish drivers for texting and driving? Can't we just allow people to be responsible? History has made it crystal clear that when given the chance, people will choose to not be responsible often enough to be disastrous.

Re: Tesla bows to pressure, stops allowing drivers to play video games while driving

#102

Post by Dylan16807 »

pandaman wrote: post #99
ajross wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arrgh! That's not the feature! That story showed shots of the normal games in the car that work when it's parked! That car wasn't moving! You can't play those games (Cupheads seems to ahve been shown) when it is moving! They didn't show you the games you could actually play, they showed you what they thought would make you upset. And it did. Seriously, the whole media ecosystem in this space is one intentional decept…

Even if it's just the Solitaire, as you claim, it's still something that should not be playing in the car if it's anything like Windows game with the same name, where big, high contrast cards are moving around. Nor should be the web browser accessible. There is no justification for having these stupid features in the car other than marketing. Tesla should stick to the "Fart mode" and other such gimmicks, which do not…

> where big, high contrast cards are moving around

I feel like this is really a reach. The passenger is using their hands to move around those little cards, and I don't think that sounds any more distracting than half the things they could be doing like gesturing while talking or fidgeting slightly.

Sonic would be bad, solitaire on a touch screen isn't bad unless the driver tries to play.

Re: Tesla bows to pressure, stops allowing drivers to play video games while driving

#103

Post by pintxo »

SomeHacker44 wrote: post #100
waiseristy wrote: post #8

Which brings up a fun question; At which point does pressing buttons on a screen to play a video game while driving cause just as much distraction as pressing buttons on a screen to manage your windshield wipers / drive mode / HVAC / windows? There used to be a lot of crashes attributed to "playing with the radio" in the 90's / 00's. Maybe all those buttons on the wheel and a display centered in the drivers cone of v…

I hate the Tesla Model 3 touchscreen. No muscle memory. No haptic feedback. Using it almost constantly causes attention problems. If it weren't for the ability of the car to alert lane departures, cars braking ahead of you, etc., I likely would have had many accidents already, just using the touch screen for things should be physical controls. Best bet is to engage autopilot then do whatever you gotta do.

Would be interesting to know if Tesla counts lane departure prevention caused by driver-distracted-by-touchscreen across the fleet to showcase the safety of its car, while in reality it's the lack of safety introduced by the touchscreen which caused the issue in the first place?

btw: I had the exact same experience with another brand (rental car) where the touchscreen was so ill placed, that basically any interaction with it messed with the steering.

Re: Tesla bows to pressure, stops allowing drivers to play video games while driving

#104

Post by perl4ever »

metaphor wrote: post #67
perl4ever wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If your eyes aren't on the road, you aren't driving. >I have zero sympathy for any of the edge cases people tend to bring up except checking your speed. You're saying the speedometer is the only instrument that needs to be scanned regularly? I would've said that the speedometer really isn't needed - if you go with traffic and don't hang out in the passing lane, you're never going to get in trouble. It's a lot more i…

> You're saying the speedometer is the only instrument that needs to be scanned regularly? In practice, I'd hazard a yes. Keyword: regularly ...unless you're driving something that's pissing oil all over the place and/or has a cooling system that's out of service, at which point you clearly have much bigger maintenance problems and probably shouldn't be on the road with that vehicle anyways (perhaps even in a lawful…

I actually have had the speedometer break on my car. There's no idiot light to tell you it's broken, let alone that it's going to break.

I never had to use it as an excuse.

Re: Tesla bows to pressure, stops allowing drivers to play video games while driving

#105

Post by perl4ever »

ehnto wrote: post #57
perl4ever wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If your eyes aren't on the road, you aren't driving. >I have zero sympathy for any of the edge cases people tend to bring up except checking your speed. You're saying the speedometer is the only instrument that needs to be scanned regularly? I would've said that the speedometer really isn't needed - if you go with traffic and don't hang out in the passing lane, you're never going to get in trouble. It's a lot more i…

While you're underway there aren't many other things you should be keeping an eye on, but that was an absolutist stance to make a point. I know people are going to be glancing at fuel or temperature or whatever. > I would've said that the speedometer really isn't needed - if you go with traffic and don't hang out in the passing lane, you're never going to get in trouble That's really location specific, and situation…

>10kmph faster in town could be the difference between killing someone or not hitting them at all.

I think of the difference between hitting someone and not hitting them as measured in distance, not speed.

Re: Tesla bows to pressure, stops allowing drivers to play video games while driving

#106

Post by perl4ever »

ehnto wrote: post #71
perl4ever wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If your eyes aren't on the road, you aren't driving. >I have zero sympathy for any of the edge cases people tend to bring up except checking your speed. You're saying the speedometer is the only instrument that needs to be scanned regularly? I would've said that the speedometer really isn't needed - if you go with traffic and don't hang out in the passing lane, you're never going to get in trouble. It's a lot more i…

> It's a lot more important to me to know if I've lost oil pressure or am overheating. > And if the HVAC controls are unnecessary to mess with while driving, they are still not an "edge case". Nor is the radio. I forgot to address these sorry. I've driven some pants cars in my time so I get it, but I'd say you be the judge of just how distracted you are with mechanical worries and if that's a safe amount or not. I th…

There's an implicit message from new cars having lane-keeping features that we as a society (whichever society) are going to compensate for distractions rather than cracking down.

Re: Tesla bows to pressure, stops allowing drivers to play video games while driving

#107

Post by perl4ever »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #43
perl4ever wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If your eyes aren't on the road, you aren't driving. >I have zero sympathy for any of the edge cases people tend to bring up except checking your speed. You're saying the speedometer is the only instrument that needs to be scanned regularly? I would've said that the speedometer really isn't needed - if you go with traffic and don't hang out in the passing lane, you're never going to get in trouble. It's a lot more i…

Unfortunately in AU too many people speed. Going with the flow would result in a few fines I’d rather not have.

If you drive at the 49th percentile of speed, you would expect financially burdensome fines on a regular basis?

This may be naive, but I've assumed that it is practically impossible to enforce laws that a majority of the population habitually breaks.

Re: Tesla bows to pressure, stops allowing drivers to play video games while driving

#108

Post by leobg »

happytoexplain wrote: post #92
leobg wrote: post #89

I think what they did was the same as Waze. It warns against playing while driving and asks you to confirm that you’re the passenger. In other words, the software treats you as an adult. Someone who lease correct me if that is not how it was implemented. I’ve never tried to play a game while driving, for obvious reasons. If we need software to kindergarten us against endangering ourselves and others, we have much big…

>If we need X to kindergarten us against endangering ourselves and others This sentence is confusing to me - at the risk of sounding curt, we obviously do need to protect people from idiots. Given a game to play while driving, some people will. The more convenient and present it is, the more people will do it. I'm not sure how one could formulate an argument that these people don't exist . The key here is of course t…

True.

But they might as well drink and drive. Or text on their phone.

Cars are dangerous weapons. But we trust the public to use them.

I have no interest in playing video games while driving. But I do appreciate Tesla for treating owners as adults. That is to say, I think I can see where they’re coming from. They don’t want people to get into accidents because they’re playing a video game while driving. But they also don’t want to be their customers’ nanny. I like that. To me, that’s a very human touch. Especially for a tech company.

Perhaps I also resent the implicit attempt at shifting the responsibility. If someone crashes into my car because they’re playing a video game I’m gonna sue them. Not Tesla. It’s the driver who made the choice. To say “But Tesla put the screen in front of him. They enabled it”, to me, is to say that people are just automaton consumers, reacting to cues in their environment like some dog to clicker training.

Re: Tesla bows to pressure, stops allowing drivers to play video games while driving

#109

Post by pandaman »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #102
pandaman wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it's just the Solitaire, as you claim, it's still something that should not be playing in the car if it's anything like Windows game with the same name, where big, high contrast cards are moving around. Nor should be the web browser accessible. There is no justification for having these stupid features in the car other than marketing. Tesla should stick to the "Fart mode" and other such gimmicks, which do not…

> where big, high contrast cards are moving around I feel like this is really a reach. The passenger is using their hands to move around those little cards, and I don't think that sounds any more distracting than half the things they could be doing like gesturing while talking or fidgeting slightly. Sonic would be bad, solitaire on a touch screen isn't bad unless the driver tries to play.

The passenger is supposed to play these games by touching the only screen in the car, the one that driver also uses for speed and navigation indications? Indeed, the size of the cards does not matter in this case, it's already distracting. I thought they have some gamepads for these games.

Re: Tesla bows to pressure, stops allowing drivers to play video games while driving

#110

Post by leobg »

vanusa wrote: post #98
leobg wrote: post #89

I think what they did was the same as Waze. It warns against playing while driving and asks you to confirm that you’re the passenger. In other words, the software treats you as an adult. Someone who lease correct me if that is not how it was implemented. I’ve never tried to play a game while driving, for obvious reasons. If we need software to kindergarten us against endangering ourselves and others, we have much big…

The problem isn't that the software is overprotective. But that these companies specifically (fraudulently) market these assisted driving capabilities as providing more safety / autonomy than they actually do. By giving these features names like "Autopilot" when it's just L2 for example. It isn't the drivers, but rather the companies that need to be "kindergartened". Or in my view simply shut down by this point.

I don’t see anything fraudulent.

Self driving is hard. Nobody has ever done it. It’s akin to the first moon landing. You can’t fault the people trying to get there for missing deadlines.

When I build an app, I always underestimate how long it’s going to take. I get to some local maximum and think “one more week and I’ll be there”. Then I discover that, to get from 80% perfect to 90% perfect, I need to backtrack and try a completely different angle.

I own a Tesla. I paid for Autopilot. I love what it can do today. And I know that even Elon cannot predict when we can take off that steering wheel.

I also know that their Autopilot team is pushing the envelope. Look up Andrej Karpathy on GitHub. Do you really think that guy is driven by money? That he has even the faintest I interest in participating in some marketing scheme?

These people are geeks. They know they are right. They are wrestling not public opinion. They got no time for that. They are wrestling Nature. That is to say, physics, AI, and the bandwidth of human-computer-interaction.

I also haven’t heard of anyone who bought a Tesla because they believed the car could do more than it actually can. Buyers today are extremely well informed. They watch all the YouTube reviews. That story that Tesla over promises features in order to sell more cars makes for great headlines. But to believe such headlines is to miss the real reasons why people buy Teslas.

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