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Comment by mindfulplay | Hacker News Reader

The carelessness and dangerous way this entire thing has been "rolled out" is alarming.

People are touting this as some sort of "amazing" feature, I think this guy Elon Musk is a crazy whackjob who puts people's lives at risk.

All the videos I saw from Tesla were " ideal well-lit" situations; well of course! University graduate students have Legos and basic robotics that do that crap. Getting it to work in "normal" (read "edge-cases) is the most difficult part. And they conveniently just ignored that part.

It's insane people are putting these death machines on public roads.

Before people claim "this is just a parking lot", imagine how many parents use their stroll-cartd with babies in them or how many kids run around in parking lots.

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I think "death machines" is a bit hyperbolic, the speed is capped at 5mph, and I imagine that Tesla is better at avoiding hitting humans in parking lots than a normal driver since it has sensors all around it. Avoiding hitting people isn't the hard part, navigating in a predictable way and following the unwritten expectations of driving in a parking lot is, and that is something Tesla doesn't seem to do a great job of yet.

yes. you have a couple thousands pounds of "self-driving" technology that does not do well in parking lots (that's like 95% of where I usually park my car). It's definitely not going to hit or kill anyone. Also, it's the responsibility of pedestrians 100% to look for cars.

Give me a break. You can either handle what your feature advertises or you cannot. This is in the cannot bucket - the same way autopilot is in the cannot bucket.

The sad story with Tesla is that they should probably focus on the one thing that works beautifully on the car and that is the fact that it's electric. Focus on making a beautiful, insanely fast electric car. People love it already - just stop w/ the gimmicks.

There is a big different between not doing well in parking lots, and being dangerous in parking lots. From the videos I have seen, it doesn't do well in parking lots because it is too cautious - it is safe, but not very functional. Now of course we have to wait longer before determining if it is safe or not, but I would imagine that it is not hard for Tesla to avoid hitting people, and if it does hit someone it is only going at walking speed anyways.

To me doing unpredictable things, in a parking lot, is dangerous. I would like to not be hit, period.

And good luck with the liability when accidents happen. You explain that it was the car and the car manufacturer explains it was you. In the meanwhile I'm in a wheel chair or worse for the rest of my life.

I am also not a big fan of experimenting if something is safe or not using others' people lives. I would think that if you're going to put something out there you will be liable if it's malfunctioning.

You want to have really cool features that don't work in the real world? Play with them on your private estate - just don't force people to be guinea pigs.

Also as a side rant: we live in a world where a significant chunk of people doesn't have clean water or access to internet, but hey I can remotely summon my car! (but have to be sure it's in my line of sight...). How about we focus on giving everyone clean water and internet and stop with the gimmicks?

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