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Comment by RickHull | Hacker News Reader

> Since the crash, those reports have said, Tesla has updated its Autopilot feature to include a strikeout system, whereby drivers who repeatedly ignore safety warnings risk having their Autopilot disabled until the next time they start the car.

Looks like this concern has been addressed already.

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Our new Chrysler Pacifica has a lane departure detection system that will nudge the steering wheel to always keep you in your lane. Combined with adaptive cruise control, it gets close to a rudimentary autopilot-ish system. I've experimented with it (without other traffic present, of course), and have discovered that not only will it beep and complain at me if I keep my hands off the wheel for more than a few seconds, but it will also disable the lane departure detection, just to make sure that I'm not using it for that purpose. That seems like a sensible approach for this level of autonomous system.

Interesting. How and when does it handle informing you that it’s disabled lane-departure due to your antics? Does it do this mid-drive?

The beeps are quite loud, and it displays the warnings on the screen in the instrument cluster—it's hard to miss. It also is advertised as an assistance feature, with no "autopilot"-type branding.

Somewhat, at least. It'd be nice if it did something like exponential backoff/decay on the number of ignored warnings it allowed per drive or per unit of time. Repeat offenders should probably be required to prove more rigorously that they're paying attention for the safety of the driver and others.

The "addressing of concerns" seems to happen only when people die in accidents with Tesla. They never seem to be too pro-active about this sort of safety features, despite the fact that they like to tout Teslas as the safest cars.

...next time might be too late. I'm pretty sure BMWs will pull over if you ignore the steering wheel for too long.

One concern is also whether this is fair criticism or talking shit about a dead person. Any changes that came after the crash are completely irrelevant to that concern.

They're relevant because much of this could have been easily foreseen. Some of these safety warnings have been on others cars since the features were first deployed in other brands. Tesla didn't include them and marketed it as 'autopilot' in a way that really seems kind of reckless to me.

> talking shit about a dead person

Being dead does not automatically command more respect. If someone's fuck-up caused them to die, there's nothing wrong with criticizing them for their fuck-up.

Did I say it is? I said that one concern is "whether this is fair criticism or talking shit". And for that question the state of the autopilot then is relevant, not any improvements afterwards. Speaking of autopilots I'm really curious what thought processes, if any at all, lead to such downvotes and responses. It doesn't get more simple than basic chronology, after all.

> Did I say it is? I said that one concern is "whether this is fair criticism or talking shit"

You said "whether this is fair criticism or talking shit about a dead person", which can easily be interpreted as saying you think people that are dead deserve an extra level of respect simply for being dead.

Obviously your message has been misinterpreted by multiple people.

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