Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

Tesla could have done a better job communicating that the internal look or feel wasn't finalised.

Clearly that didn't impact pre-orders but I think a lot of people didn't love the internal look even if they thought it was nice looking externally (disclaimer: I was one of these people).

In my OPINION the 3 won't be fully self driving (for certification/legal reasons). But we can reasonably speculate that it will have things like auto-braking, lane keep assist, automatic cruise control, and similar. Since competitor's vehicles have this, and in order to achieve "five stars in every safety category" you actually need to have auto-braking.

Look at the requirements for the IIHS's "TOP SAFETY PICK+" which is the gold standard for safety. A system like EyeSight, Honda Sensing, or similar is required in 2016[0], and this vehicle will be looking for the 2017 or 2018 TSP+ rating no doubt.

So suggesting that it will have "auto-pilot"-like functionality[1] is very reasonable. But that doesn't mean it will have full self-driving ("hands off"), in particular given the regulatory landscape, development stage of the technology, and the costs. We'll see.

[0] "Vehicles with optional front crash prevention qualify for either award only when equipped with the technology." http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/TSP-List i.e. without frontal auto-braking as an option you cannot appear on the TSP+ list. But even vehicles on the list only quality as TSP+ rated when the auto-braking option is installed (without it they're TPS tier only).

[1] https://www.teslamotors.com/presskit/autopilot

They probably didn't want to make it too clear that they were just showing off a completely unfinished prototype.

They barely communicated anything at the reveal. It was like a few minutes of leadup, five bullet points about the 3, and then they showed the cars and ended it. Given the audience they had, a bit of a wasted opportunity.

I wouldn't exactly call ~300,000 one thousand dollar deposits in less than 4 days a wasted opportunity.

A third of those were before the car was even revealed.

I'm fairly certain the Part 1 reveal was intended to be a media machine/hype generator, while more details about the vehicle itself are coming in Part 2.

>auto-braking, lane keep assist, automatic cruise control, and similar

I bought a mazda cx recently with all of these feature. I must say I don't find any of these really useful, but again I don't text while driving.

I think these features breed a false sense of security and encourage users to text while driving. Features like these should be introduced only when they can protect users from all cases of distracted driving not just one or two situations.

To be fair, auto-braking isn't useful until you need it, and by that point you're about a half second away from smashing into another car so you don't have much time to think about it. That feature alone could reduce total crashes by 10% [1]

[1] http://www.autonews.com/article/20160128/OEM06/160129871/aut...

Or just, you know, keep your distance.

Although it is sometimes quite hard, my father was once going on a German Autobahn 180kmh and he didn't realize that in the front people completely stopped. My mom realized and shouted and he hit the breaks and stopped in-between cars (if there weren't enough space inbetween, he would have mildly hit the cars). But I don't think this system would have helped in this situation

Just keeping good distance isn't guaranteed to save you from other drivers. See e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X-5fKzmy38

Well keeping the distance certainly helps ... but not in all situations.

Why don't you think it would have helped? That's the exact situations these systems are designed for...

>That feature alone could reduce total crashes by 10% [1]

Well, ofcourse. I am talking about ppl become less safety conscious because these features give them (false) sense of security.

eg: Anti-Tsunami walls killed more people than they saved during great japanese tsunami because they gave people false sense of security and ppl didn't take evacuation warnings seriously assuming walls would take care of it. And ofcourse studies proved that having Tsunami walls is safer than no walls.

> eg: Anti-Tsunami walls killed more people than they saved during great japanese tsunami [..] And ofcourse studies proved that having Tsunami walls is safer than no walls.

Huh? So walls killed more people than they saved but studies showed that they are safer with the walls..?

I googled this, cannot find any information that the anti-Tsunami walls caused more people to be killed.

>Huh? So walls killed more people than they saved but studies showed that they are safer with the walls..?

Studies was done with average tsunami heights from previous tsunamis. 2011 was magnitudes higher than previous ones, walls were no match for the tsunami.

>I googled this, cannot find any information that the anti-Tsunami walls caused more people to be killed.

I remember seeing this in a documentary, where they were interiviewing poeople whose famalies died becuase they thought walls are going to save them.

I googled it now, this was the first result

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/03/22/japan-to-build-massi...

'The paradox of such projects, experts say, is that while they may reduce some damage, they can foster complacency. That can be a grave risk along coastlines vulnerable to tsunamis, storm surges and other natural disasters. At least some of the 18,500 people who died or went missing in the 2011 disasters failed to heed warnings to escape in time.'

This is not a new argument for car safety features. The same things were said about seat belts, 3-point harnesses, and air bags. In each case, they were wrong. Accident survival rates went up significantly, while overall accident rates did not.

>The same things were said about seat belts, 3-point harnesses, and air bags.

I think this is different. Putting on seat belts doesn't make you think that you'd be saved from crash while you text.

> I must say I don't find any of these really useful, but again I don't text while driving.

Lane keep assist is just a quality of life thing. You get on the highway/motorway, get in your lane, and it makes subtle movements to keep you centered in the lane. It doesn't drive for you.

So for example on windy days when the wind is pushing you constantly one way, Lane Keep Assist counteracts that lateral movement. On a straight piece of highway/motorway with no wind it does nothing at all.

Automatic cruise control is the same as regular cruise control but requires less driver input. Instead of picking an exact speed you set a goal speed, and the vehicle will either go that speed or the speed of vehicles in front of you.

The nice thing about automatic cruise control is that traffic doesn't often go at one set speed for a long period. Things like exits, construction, traffic composition, earlier accidents, etc can all cause traffic to slow for periods of time before speeding back up. Automatic cruise control means you don't have to manually adjust to these variances. It also keeps you a safe travel distance from the vehicle in front.

Automatic forward braking helps make automatic cruise control safer by allowing the vehicle to slow extremely rapidly if needed (e.g. an accident happens in front of you). Faster in fact that most humans.

But automatic forward braking isn't just useful when combined with automatic cruise control, it can brake you when a "foreign object" is in the road (e.g. animal, pedestrian, etc) which can either stop accidents entirely or reduce the damage done. It also helps with common rear-end accidents or rarely more serious accidents.

Day to day you shouldn't be using automatic forward braking.

They've already been looking at if automatic forward braking works and, yes, it does. It reduces accidents and when accidents still occur it reduces how bad they are.[0]

None of this has anything to do with texting and driving. In fact if I take my hands out of the wheel the automatic cruise control will bleep at me and eventually disengage.

[0] http://www.autonews.com/article/20160128/OEM06/160129871/aut...

This could be very useful in LA, where the traffic NEVER goes at a single speed for more than about 30 seconds.

They come in handy on those 5-10hr road trips. you don't realize how tiring driving can be until you're driving one for that long.

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