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Tesla's 2M car Autopilot recall is now under federal scrutiny

arstechnica.com

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Re: Tesla's 2M car Autopilot recall is now under federal scrutiny

#31

Post by Ajedi32 »

ado__dev wrote: post #13
psunavy03 wrote: post #8

At some point, I just don't get how a lot of this is Tesla's problem. I'll buy that they should have called it something other than "Autopilot" and "Full Self Driving." But ultimately if it's in the manual saying "this is not fully automated and you must pay attention to the road," it should be on the driver to be held liable for abusing the system. Sure, go after Tesla if the system endangers people via spurious inp…

A lot of Tesla marketing over the years has been super deceptive to the point that a lot of people assume the car is capable of fully self driving itself. I've had a model 3 since 2018 and the number of people that have asked "do you ever drive yourself?" is too damn high. So Tesla actively does everything they can to make people thing the system is way more capable than it really is. Then shows a small popup the fir…

> A lot of Tesla marketing over the years has been super deceptive to the point that a lot of people assume the car is capable of fully self driving itself

The thing is, it's not just marketing that's contributing to these misunderstandings. The car actually is capable of fully driving itself... most of the time. So it's not so much that their marketing is misleading as it is that the reality of the situation is itself misleading, if you don't pay close enough attention to the system's limitations and caveats.

Re: Tesla's 2M car Autopilot recall is now under federal scrutiny

#32

Post by londons_explore »

> , it only records an accident if the airbags deploy,

I've often wondered if Tesla is gaming the figures by only deploying the airbags in really bad crashes, whereas other manufacturers might deploy the airbags for pretty minor bumps.

This in turn makes them look really good on 'number of accidents where airbags deploy'.

Re: Tesla's 2M car Autopilot recall is now under federal scrutiny

#33

Post by jeffbee »

psunavy03 wrote: post #8

At some point, I just don't get how a lot of this is Tesla's problem. I'll buy that they should have called it something other than "Autopilot" and "Full Self Driving." But ultimately if it's in the manual saying "this is not fully automated and you must pay attention to the road," it should be on the driver to be held liable for abusing the system. Sure, go after Tesla if the system endangers people via spurious inp…

> it's also not Tesla's responsibility to nanny people

Yes, it is. An L2 driver assist system must ensure that the driver is always actively supervising, and Tesla's systems failed to do that. That's why they recalled 2 million cars.

Re: Tesla's 2M car Autopilot recall is now under federal scrutiny

#34

Post by wil421 »

lukan wrote: post #10
loudmax wrote: post #7

If Tesla hadn't named their driver assistance system "Autopilot" they would have saved so much trouble (not to mention lives).

Autopilots in planes maintain altitude and speed and no landing or evasion. But full self driving was a broken promise.

[deleted]

Re: Tesla's 2M car Autopilot recall is now under federal scrutiny

#35

Post by londons_explore »

> a portion of the remedy both requires the owner to opt in and allows a driver to readily reverse it

I think ~all recalls are opt-in. The owner of the car can simply not bother taking the car in to the garage, turn off auto updates, etc.

It would be funny if Tesla decides to separate out software updates for 'recalls' vs software updates for new features, and lets users have the new features without installing the 'nannying' recall fixes. In most cases it would be easy to implement via feature flags.

Re: Tesla's 2M car Autopilot recall is now under federal scrutiny

#37

Post by grecy »

bottlepalm wrote: post #23

I'd rather be driving on the road with Autopilot cars than the impatient drivers, road ragers, distracted people on their phone, and people who drive like they're in a video game. I drive with it on 95% on the time, and I really only need to interrupt when it's too slow and too cautious.

Don't forget all the drunk, high & exhausted drivers too.

100 people are killed every single day on the roads in the US. Day in and day out.

Re: Tesla's 2M car Autopilot recall is now under federal scrutiny

#38

Post by bangaladore »

londons_explore wrote: post #32

> , it only records an accident if the airbags deploy, I've often wondered if Tesla is gaming the figures by only deploying the airbags in really bad crashes, whereas other manufacturers might deploy the airbags for pretty minor bumps. This in turn makes them look really good on 'number of accidents where airbags deploy'.

The IIHS has repeatedly shown that Tesla airbags are the best in class. Deploying airbags when not needed can do significant harm to occupants. Not to mention total vehicles for no good reason.

There isn't a need to wonder when independent data gatherers have already answered the question.

Re: Tesla's 2M car Autopilot recall is now under federal scrutiny

#39

Post by kurthr »

bottlepalm wrote: post #23

I'd rather be driving on the road with Autopilot cars than the impatient drivers, road ragers, distracted people on their phone, and people who drive like they're in a video game. I drive with it on 95% on the time, and I really only need to interrupt when it's too slow and too cautious.

I generally agree it does great on freeways, but not in urban situations where there are tight corners and lots of parked cars, or rural areas with twisty roads and farm equipment. I'd turn it off in construction areas too.

Re: Tesla's 2M car Autopilot recall is now under federal scrutiny

#40

Post by HPsquared »

d_theorist wrote: post #25

The relevant metric should be accident rate per million miles driven. What is the rate with autopilot vs without autopilot.

Not all "miles driven" are the same. Autopilot is going to be engaged on highway driving which already has a lower accident rate per mile driven. So that biases a simple comparison.

Edit: and even within highway miles, autopilot will be enabled more in the "easy" stretches and turned off in roadworks etc.

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