Tesla footage of braking before crash ahead [video]

You have highlighted a fundamental misunderstanding people have about Auto Pilot in its current form it is an SAE Level 2[1] driver assistance function.

It is not supposed to be functioning in spite of the driver. The driver is in charge and should be responding to events. It is dangerous to behave otherwise - examples include pretty much all Tesla Auto Pilot attributed fatalities.

[1] Level 2: The driver is obliged to detect objects and events and respond if the automated system fails to respond properly. The automated system executes accelerating, braking, and steering. The automated system can deactivate immediately upon takeover by the driver.

Edit: Formating

And yes, I would say that the autopilot reacted faster than a competent human driver not expecting a crash while watching a 30 second clip. Probably by time measured in seconds.

I do agree safe following distance made the auto-breaking pretty irrelevant in this specific case as there was plenty of time for a human to react. But it's still impressive to see things working, and a bit of positive public PR hype over this tech can't be an entirely bad thing.

(sorry, link in German) http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/anschlag-von-berli...

You really haven't. This entire thread is you taking disposablezero's "Relying on error-prone, distracted, slow humans to guide massive killing machines is playing Russian roulette" comment out of context as some moral statement about human beings.

There's a bunch of things humans are worse at than machines, you're the only one asserting that this somehow "devalues" people without any further clarification.

I'm also worse at shoving nails into wood than a hammer is. How does that devalue me?

> [Because certain types of technical advancement requires an element of devaluing people]. That's your quote. What did you mean?

The set of things machines are better at than humans is only increasing over time. Today nobody disputes that a combine harvester is better for the task than a team of humans, but there's a tendency to overvalue human work as machines are getting better.

I've noticed that changing with "handmade" within my lifetime, and we're probably about to see it change with "human-driven vehicle" within the next decade.

> There's a difference between preferring tech to do the driving and saying the human has "less value". You don't see that?

No, I really don't. You haven't defined what you're talking about when you're saying "value" or "devalue", but I will. I'm talking about value in the economic sense. I.e. if you've made a combine harvester instead of needing 50 people to do manual labor for 16 hours a day you've optimized your economy and added net value to our civilization.

I really don't buy this argument that saying a human has less value is a negative. The logical conclusion to that argument is saying that we should unwind civilization and technological advancements until we're all hunter-gatherers again. Because surely the existence of the food industry devalues hunters everywhere.

> In any case, a hostile regard for human fallibility that approaches promotion of the dispensability of humans isn't a good thing.

No, it's the exact opposite. It's saying that we shouldn't waste a human being's potential on some menial task like manually picking corn in a field or driving a car.

To someone living in the future we're hopefully heading towards the notion of someone needing to make driving a vehicle their full-time job will be as ridiculous as the notion of of a human being needing to manually carry freight is today, as opposed to using a truck.

1) Approaching the SUV too closely (can't be sure of this one, it's possible that the SUV moved into the left lane just prior to the start of the video). Even at the beginning of the video, the hatchback was too close to the SUV.

2) Attempting a lane change while too close to the vehicle in front and the vehicle to the right. Lane changes are the most dangerous maneuvers in highway driving, because they divide your attention and may not be anticipated by other motorists. You want more space than you would normally need both in front and to the side you're merging toward.

3) Accelerating during to the lane change. I'm not sure that this is what happened; it's difficult to tell without stereoscopic depth perception. What I think happened is that the driver of the red hatchback accelerated during the lane change, approaching the speed they wanted once they were in the clear lane. This is very commonly done, but it trades away a lot of safety in exchange for a little time. In any significant traffic, you should complete the lane change first, then accelerate to the desired speed for the new lane.