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Comment by xpda | Hacker News Reader

There will be better autopilots, but never perfect ones. Aircraft have been using imperfect autopilots since their inception. Most planes have a prominent red button you can press to disable the autopilot whenever it misbehaves.

I'm not sure why this post routes through facebook, but here is a link to the article: http://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/model-s-on-autopilot-crash...

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The difference is when a plane's autopilot goes wonky you typically have minutes to realize it and take over manually. In a car you often have less than a second. Pilots also are highly trained and rehearse emergencies. Drivers put on makeup.

Anything less than a truly 100% autonomous car autopilot is 1 massive lawsuit away from failure.

Yes the link should be replaced with yours.

I believe that the autopilot that you have to override in critical moment is worse than the driving assistance that doesn't turn on until it's critical.

In the former case, if you turn on the autopilot that you know is not just keeping the speed constant, you will tend not to be fully concentrated on the road all the time. And you'll surely seldom be able to estimate when the autopilot will work and when it won't.

In the later case, you must remain aware of the situation and you are "in the loop" for the common cases, but if there's something you estimated wrong the clever radars, lidars and computers have the chance to react better than you are able.

Part of the problem is Tesla's "autopilot" isn't designed to be fully automatic. It's a diver's assistance package. As a comment in the Facebook thread mentioned, I too wonder if the problem is partial-autopilot in general. People will tend to put their trust in the system if it appears to be automatic. We probably shouldn't be shipping partial autopilot at all. Fully automatic or bust.

I have an assisted driving system in my Jeep. I'm pretty clear on its capabilities and, for example, stay alert to the possibility I have to hit the brakes when coming up on stopped traffic at freeway speeds because I'm outrunning its detection range for it to do so safely automatically.

The problem is Tesla selling a system with similar limitations as "autopilot." It's not. It's an assisted driving system, albeit a very smart one, and they need to make it more clear that's what it is. They're setting incorrect expectations, and the various "I climbed into my passenger seat while it drives!" bits aren't helping.

Basically we're living the old urban legend of the dude putting on cruise control and then crawling into his camper for a nap. The cruise control is a little bit smarter nowadays, but it comes down to a gross misunderstanding that Tesla is (inadvertently) encouraging.

Does the Jeep system function if you don't provide any inputs? The Subaru system will brake if it has too, but won't actually drive the car for you. Same for lane holding - it'll give some steering input and beep if you start to swerve, but it won't actively steer around a curve.

Really late response, but it'll gas/brake on its own and will steer back to the center of the lane if you go past a configurable margin.

Gas/brake is meant to be "foot off pedals." You set a desired speed, and it'll go the lesser of that or the speed of the car you're following, and follow at a configurable distance otherwise. It's very, very, VERY nice for Bay Area commuting.

The only real needs to pay attention are A) if a car cuts you off and then slams brakes, B) the car in front of you locks brakes up or swerves out of the way last minute with something in front of it, or C) you're booking it at freeway speeds and come up on stopped traffic. In all three cases an alarm sounds telling you to brake, but if you don't want to to be an emergency you'll be looking out for at least C) so you can take over the slowing down before that alarm could go off. Hopefully the sensors get longer range in the future.

The lane-keeping is meant to only be an assist, though, and would leave you pinballing from one side to the other (or getting stuck on the side that's downhill from the crown) as you hit the margin and it pushes you back center. It'd also get you through a gentle curve the same way. You can go hands free with good alignment and tolerance for looking like you're driving drunk but I wouldn't recommend it. Eventually an alarm will sound if you're fully hands off the wheel.

Worth noting Tesla's system isn't much different there, though, aside from that it'll hold center of the lane and won't pinball. You're still expected to keep your hands on the wheel, and it has a similar alarm that goes off if you don't.

Don't get me wrong--their system is ultimately more advanced, with speed limit sign reading and a bunch of other cool tricks. But it's still meant to be a hands-on assist and isn't sold that way.

Edit: to be clear, I'm just describing adaptive cruise control above, and there's nothing particularly special about that. For all intents and purposes, the only difference with autopilot is the active steering for lane-keeping, even if it is smarter under the hood. It seems to be have the same limitations otherwise judging by their manual disclaimers.

> Most planes have a prominent red button you can press to disable the autopilot whenever it misbehaves.

Not really, or some pedantry.. the autopilot (heading and altitude) is disabled with a double-click on a small button either the yolk or the side-stick (boeing and airbus). Autothrottle (entirely separate) is disabled with a double-click on a small button on the sides of the throttle levers.

There is also a separate mechanism to disable it entirely, but it's usually a small button with an indistinct label (like "A/P" or "A/T") mixed in with a bunch of other buttons on the instrument cluster. Sometimes there is also a slightly larger "AP Disengage" button on some planes.

Most pilots I've seen will disable using the first method so they can be immediately "hands-on" when the system relinquishes control.

One glaring difference is that aircraft pilots have substantially higher training requirements than car drivers. And the pilots of large aircraft that typically use autopilot, are all trained professionals.

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