If Tesla autopilot relies on good quality road markings, then it's not yet usable in 80% of the world.
I think this is a bit of an exaggeration. As long as the driver keeps paying attention and uses it as a driving aid, not a driver replacement, everything is fine. It's the moment that people start relying on it doing something that it wasn't built for, that the problems arise.
I think this is a bit too optimistic. People will start relying on it to be an autopilot. I think most people see this as the desired result: a car that can drive itself. Do you really think anyone wants "a car that will drive itself while you are paying full attention to every detail"? Otherwise, what is a driver really gaining from this? They're still expected to pay just as much attention (if not more) and I'd bet it's even more boring than regular driving (no interaction from the driver means it's like the world's most boring VR movie)
Humans are not machines, we love to find the lazy/easy way and we love to do things rather than stare at the road, eventually people will grow complacent (hopefully not before the tech is up-to-snuff).
EXACTLY. They're at even more risk for accident due to inattention because it's so hard to focus on doing nothing.
The feature is called Autopilot after the namesake of flight systems where the pilot doesn't need to be constantly hands on. It is marketed as an autonomous driving system that allows the car to drive safely without human intervention.
In the same breath, Tesla says that it isn't really an autopilot system, and that even though they market it as autonomous driving, it is still essential that you act as if you were driving.
As you've stated, it's a tool for assisting drivers. So why do they market it as fire and forget?
To make matters worse, it's trivial to run across a case where the road curves AND splits, causing the 'neutral' path to go straight into a barrier… which is exactly what's seen in the video. The straight path would be toward the split-off road, but it veers slightly to the right before splitting.
Makes me wonder if GPS can play a role in determining whether the lane markings are liable to seduce the autopilot into splitting the difference. Given established roads, the car should have some clue this scenario is approaching. If we can see a 'V' approaching on a simple freaking Garmin, the car ought to be able to have that information.
Ouch. That's really harsh on following traffic. Now, obviously they shouldn't be following closely enough for that to be a problem but in practice I'm pretty sure if I stomped hard on the brake a couple of times per day with regular traffic following it would not take long before someone would ram into the back of my car and if not then the one behind it.
It's also a great way to start traffic jams.
The punchline was that all the other cars also fell off the cliff because they were following the line instead of looking at the road.
It's crazy to think, that's where we are now with so-called self-driving cars.
What if all the connected autoupdating self driving cars suddenly learn to follow each other off a cliff in pursuit of an optimisation gone wrong.
It would be ironic if the Bulterian Jihad[1] were kicked off as a result of Elon Musk's machinations.
I have personally watched this happen, last year (I think?) the where repainting the lines on interstate 64 near shortpump and for ~ a week that summer my commute there was insane, just a bunch of cars going 70MPH with no real lanes.
My 2015 S 70D can't but then again the problem only arises if I ignore the road works signs and continue driving on autosteer in circumstances where the UI has clearly told you not to.