Tesla hacker reveals what driver-facing camera is looking for
electrek.co
electrek.co
It’s a valid concern that your car manufacturer will use the interior cameras to blame a crime on you.
These automatic tagging features also bring to question the bias in algorithms. What does this mean for drivers with disabilities? Is it possible that a safe driver with ADHD or Turrets etc might be flagged as inattentive during an autopilot crash and therefore at fault?
I don't agree with that though, for two reasons.
First, it will be harder for them to fight, meaning it will still be a source of bias even if the court isn't biased at all. Even if they can show it was a false flag, that is time and money others wouldn't have to spend. Potentially time and money of someone who was in a life altering crash.
Second, it would not be surprised that the court ends up being biased towards the manufacture and would give undue weight to them because they have the fancy algorithms and all the well payed lawyers.
I'm not understanding your point here, and you seem to contradict yourself a little bit.
A driver with a disability that makes them inattentive can't be a "safe driver." Having a disability that makes them inattentive, appearing inattentive, and getting into a crash (autopilot or not), seems to be a "three strikes and you're out" situation, IMO. You'll have a very hard time convincing me the person wasn't at fault in that situation.
Certain disabilities prevent people from driving cars safely. It's unfortunate, but it's just the way it is.
If an ADD person does then get into an accident, should they endure higher civil and criminal risk, regardless of prior performance and in light of their condition?
A driver with a disability that makes a computer system classify them as an inattentive driver is not the same thing as a driver with a disability that makes them inattentive.
But when it comes to actually reviewing a case in an accident, you would want to review the actual footage, not just the metadata.
Looking at just the metadata is already problematic. For example, the “hands on wheel” metadata in a Tesla is based on angular force detected on the wheel, not actual hands on the wheel. Tesla will report that the driver didn’t touch the wheel in X seconds, when it would be more accurate to say the driver didn’t apply angular force, although their hands might have been resting on the wheel the whole time.
You mention ADHD and Turrets; a leg-disabled person (e.g. paralyzed waste down) can still drive just fine, special hand-operated equipment is installed to a car to allow the hands to take over for the foot pedals.
By design this driver may be looking down frequently at their controls (let's assume not everyone is a pro driver yet and knows them by heart) which could easily be misconstrued as looking down at a mobile phone, placing immediate bias against them on video before the facts of hand-controls are revealed in court.
Actually not, for hand controls. No more than you look at the pedals. It goes into muscle memory just as much.
I have been a passenger with two different hand-control drivers. Both were as smooth as a driver using foot pedals. I once moved their car for one of them —- in a tiny town on a quiet street, for about 5 blocks at low speed. It was difficult for me — zero muscle memory and zero “feel” for the car. It does take some practice, I will give you that, but you never have to look at the lever, even as a noob.
Fine, the software's enum value of "EYES_DOWN" doesn't quite capture the domain of nuance of all the reasons eyes might be down. But it doesn't necessarily matter.
There's some great reasons for driver-facing cameras- and if one of those trade-offs is that drivers are less likely to "get away" with causing a crash, then that's fine in my books.
Bias feels like a different argument entirely, though I do share your concern about it...
The driver is always truly at fault in the current legal environment. A driver can't just blame it on the car to escape liability. The comments here talking about the legal ramifications for these tags are misguided. For these tags to matter, there would need to be legislative changes to shift the liability to the autonomous system and that would likely only happen once we reach at least level 4 autonomy. Plus once we get to that point, whether the driver is paying attention or not shouldn't matter anyway.
That's...not entirely and exclusively true.
> A driver can't just blame it on the car to escape liability.
If it was provably due to a manufacturing defect that the driver could not reasonably have known about, I think you are wrong.
If a manufacturing defect is involved, then whether or not the driver is also liable, the manufacturer and every party in the chain of commerce (both upstream—such as suppliers of the defective component—and downstream from the vehicle manufacturer, such as dealers, etc., which are mostly irrelevant for Tesla) is liable.
When there is asymmetric access to data, it's inherently unfair because the side with greater access will cherry-pick the data that supports their side.
For example, there might be some angle, some time window, some sensor, etc. that makes you look attentive, while a different angle/time/sensor might make you look inattentive.
Except of course as a PR diversion, as we saw with the Uber automatic driving case.
So, it's got a bias against people who don't cover the camera.
(Full disclosure: I have not yet covered mine. But one of the many reasons I do not install dash cams in my cars is that I am not interested in having evidence against me when I start shooting up other cars in traffic [1])
1. https://nypost.com/2020/09/30/florida-man-fires-gun-at-motor...
Don't see when they would ever be responsible for a crime legally, outside of being 'blamed' in dozens of national news headlines; the current legal landscape has continued to uphold that you are responsible for the car even when it's trying to drive itself.
Even with Navigate on Autopilot, you have to continuously apply force to the wheel to prevent it from nagging at the driver. The feature mentioned in the article would be used if regulation increased to require the car use a camera/similar system to determine if a driver is inattentive while autopilot is enabled.
"Your hands are just there for regulatory reasons"
Then turns around and blames you for acting like that's true when a known defect kills your wife
(aside: Why do you think Mobileye had the same tech as AP1 in multiple other cars but never turned it on continuously? Why do you think it was always limited to highway speeds and correcting a lack of input? Well that's because it can't tell an overhead sign from a stopped firetruck very well...)
Are we really then allowed to go back and go "well they had a nice disclaimer".
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It's funny really, because calling it Autopilot wasn't enough (spare me the airplane comparisons). Now there's a feature list called "Full Self Driving... capability"
Like, the term FSD is used as part of a label for a collection of features, of which NOT A SINGLE ONE is even a COMPONENT of self driving, because EVERY SINGLE ONE requires full time driver attention.
They're literally using the fact that theoretically, one day, the SENSORS MIGHT OVERLAP WITH WHAT FSD REQUIRES to sell it as... not FSD. FSD capability.
What a joke.
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Tesla has gotten away with homicide, and I guess we're ok with them continuing to.
The useless comparisons about "Tesla with AP is safer than Tesla without", show me the comparison that Tesla with AP is safer than AEB+LKA+ACC (pretty much AP, minus the party trick that lulls drivers into a false sense of security), and I'll show you a made up study.
Because that would be AP being exactly what it already is, minus the one mode where the driver is supposed to be a safety net for the computer. Where the driver already has responsibility to make sure it doesn't crash! It's literally like removing the ability to steer your bike with the training wheels, the training wheels are still there!
It's simple really, Tesla has put marketability of a safety feature, over the actual safety benefits, at the cost of human lives.
I drive a car without any of those features. I think my car's level of safety is acceptable. If AP can beat that level of safety, it's good enough. It's okay if AP isn't the absolute safest mode, just like it's okay if companies sell cars that "only" have a 4-star crash rating.
I see it more as an assistant that makes us all better drivers by letting us concentrate on stuff the computer can't do.
Even my Hyundai can drive automatically perfectly well at highway speeds and follow the road and even slow down with the traffic. This lets me relax behind the wheel and concentrate on other things than keeping the car in the lane.
I feel I'm a lot less tired and more anttentive when driving with an "autopilot", all the little micro-adjustments needed vex on my brain like nothing else.
To use the aeroplane analogy that Tesla wants to market: the computer is the first officer in charge of flying the plane, the driver is the captain in charge of everything else.
On the other hand, event the new VW ID.3 can drive on regular roads, manage roundabouts and adjust speed according to speed signs, they're just not making a huge fuss about it.
The problem is AP is actively making itself less safe than it would be without marketing oriented features even with no additional strengths.
AP could the same collision avoidance and lane centering capabilities, but not allow the driver to engage them in "Autopilot" style. That's exactly what the AP1 hardware did in other cars.
AP would still avoid every accident it could before, but now additionally not kill people when it fails to uphold the very strongly implied (even if legally disclaimed) promises it's marketing and creator love to make.
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AP has a set of convenience features and safety features.
The convenience features all come with the disclaimer that the human must be attentive at all times while they're engaged.
And in cases where the human is not full engaged because they're placing too much trust in the convenience features, suddenly the convenience features are creating a less safe situation than if the driver did not have them at all, since the driver is now driving distracted.
The safety features cannot close the gap between a distracted driver and a non-distracted driver, that's why they're not seld-driving cars.
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Or to put it another way, good enough is good enough for the safety features. But "good enough" is actually the most dangerous level of the convenience features, since they lull operators into a false sense of security with deadly consequences.
That's why Google abandoned their equivalent project (which Elon spoke to them about before developing AP. Google's project was called... Autopilot).
It was demonstrated that giving drivers that sort of "good-enough" convenience feature would be encouraging distracted behavior. But that didn't stop Elon.
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In fact, thinking about it, how sad is that? Google used cameras in their vehicle in conjunction with AP features and proved that people would misuse the system.
Knowing that Elon was in contact with them about the program, isn't it such an odd coincidence that Elon has pushed back on driver monitoring?
It's almost like he knows exactly what it would reveal, but doesn't want to invite the trouble that comes with tracking such an inconvenient truth.
That's a shame but I'm not going to worry all that much about it killing people if it's still safer than a basic car.
> Or to put it another way, good enough is good enough for the safety features. But "good enough" is actually the most dangerous level of the convenience features, since they lull operators into a false sense of security with deadly consequences.
No. We were talking about the final level of safety after factoring in the hubris-caused danger. The level of safety before factoring in hubris was much better than "good enough".
I think the point of the argument is "ship the system that doesn't cause hubris if it is much better than 'good enough'"
This doesn't make sense unless you just like senesless death.
It can be safer than a basic car and not kill people.
Or it can be safer than a basic car and kill people for the sake of marketing.
Since like I said, AP should not leave you feeling rested, full attentiveness is required, more than usual. If you're operating under the assumption you can relax a little with it active like a co-pilot or watcher, you're following for it's most dangerous trap.
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Also you realize basic cars have been picking up the safety features for a while now right?
The Toyota Corolla, the baseline of basic cars, has had LKA for 3 or 4 years now? And will warn a drowsy driver in case of excessive interventions.
It's sad again, because if anything Tesla is poisoning the well on these features since they're lulling people who don't even have the cars into a false sense of security.
AP marketing makes it seem like it can make a drive more relaxing (with Tesla salespeople using that exact phrasing on a test drive mind you) when the moment it does that, it's making you less safe than if it wouldn't pretend to be capable of that.
Now when other manufacturers intentionally omit continuous lane centering, it seems like an omission of a convenience, not an omission of a dangerously misleading liability to the safety of its users.
I don't "like senseless deaths" but I think it's acceptable if people like the former car better than the latter car and purchase more of it.
> If you're operating under the assumption you can relax a little with it active like a co-pilot or watcher, you're following for it's most dangerous trap.
If it's still safer than a car without those features even after falling into the trap then my reaction is a big shrug.
That's a problem! To any normal person, that's a problem.
You're doing this weird math where actively murdering 5 people but saving 100000 is the same as just saving 99995, but it's not when the 5 murders were not a requirement to save 100000.
Maybe your confusion is thinking the safety features are the ones doing the killing when they're not? It's extra trimmings built on top of the safety features that are doing the killing.
In other words:
> If it's still safer than a car without those features even after falling into the trap then my reaction is a big shrug.
It's not safer! Because that sentence is about the convenience features are not the safety features!
LKA, AEB, Crash avoidance, those all operate separately of the convenience features! And it's not a guess about how the internals work either, Tesla literally sells things like "Navigate on Autopilot" separately.
It's really simple logic. The safety features save lives. The convenience features, by definition, cannot save lives that the safety ones didn't.
When a Tesla avoids hitting a car coming into it's path, it's not because Navigate with Autopilot was on, it's the Active Safety Features function:
https://www.tesla.com/support/autopilot
But when a Tesla hits a stopped firetruck after Autopilot lulled the driver into thinking they wouldn't have to brake, the active safety features can't do anything! Because the convenience features are subject to the same limitations as the active safety features.
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That's the crux of the issue that you keep missing. No one is saying the active safety features should save more lives, they're saying the convenience features need to stop tricking people into driving distracted. Because those people sometimes die in accidents that wouldn't have happened if they didn't have them.
The safety features would still save the same number of people, just no one would die needless deaths in the name of marketing and looking cool.
I don't see it that way.
It's a completely random set of people that die either way. And all the deaths basically boil down to "driving is dangerous". It's not one set of people being saved and a different one dying. It's all one group, so only the total number matters.
> It's not safer! Because that sentence is about the convenience features are not the safety features!
Your sentence was about that. My counterpoint was about more than that.
I'll reword my point without the word safer: If the risk reduction from the safety features is bigger than the risk increase from the convenience features, I think things are acceptable.
> The safety features save lives. The convenience features, by definition, cannot save lives that the safety ones didn't.
I wasn't trying to say the convenience features saved lives.
> No one is saying the active safety features should save more lives, they're saying the convenience features need to stop tricking people into driving distracted.
I'm the one saying that safety features need to save a certain number of lives. And that number is "enough to make up for the risk caused by the convenience features".
> Because those people sometimes die in accidents that wouldn't have happened if they didn't have them.
Eh, someone that's distracted could easily die in similar accident in a dumb car. To me it's all risk vs. risk. Nobody is getting murdered by the car as some kind of sick trade-off. It's not a trolley problem. It's just undoing some of the safety. But undoing the safety is acceptable, just like a car that had none of those safety features (and none of those convenience features) would also be acceptable.
> The safety features would still save the same number of people, just no one would die needless deaths in the name of marketing and looking cool.
If it was just marketing and looking cool that would be one thing. But it's also quite hard mentally to pay attention when everything is on auto. And it's a much nicer driving experience that's inherently dangerous no matter what the marketing says. So I don't think it's possible to have the convenience without the danger. You'd have to disable AP.
You're very alone in this line of thought.
If you save 100000 people _by murdering_ 5 people, it's unfortunate and a hard choice, but at least arguably good. Most people will be ok with this (this is pretty much how the world turns to some degree)
But if you save 100000 lives, then murder 5 victims. And those 5 victims were just murdered to murder tham, no one being saved was resting on it.
Most basically ethical people would consider that indefensible.
Maybe you're confusing this situation with the former, where lives are treated as fungible to save great numbers.
That can be tricky ethically, but at least the greater good is on your side. Here you're treating lives as fungible for the sake of it.
It's not really an admirable thing to lack the ability to see why that's wrong, so I implore you to dig a little deeper.
This isn't sacrificing people to help more people, it's helping people then sacrificing some people for fun.
If you talk someone down from a ledge do you now go around thinking you get to murder someone and it cancels out?
> If it was just marketing and looking cool that would be one thing. But it's also quite hard mentally to pay attention when everything is on auto. And it's a much nicer driving experience that's inherently dangerous no matter what the marketing says. So I don't think it's possible to have the convenience without the danger. You'd have to disable AP
This is literally what every comment in this entire thread by me has said. Maybe you finally get it.
Car without convenience features saves lives doesn't kill.
Car with them saves same lives and kills.
I basically agree with everything you said about saving some people and murdering others.
But "saving less people" is a totally different situation. If I donate some money to charity, and I'm asked to donate more money, it's okay for me to say no.
So the question is whether these features fall under "saving some people and killing others" or if they fall under "saving less people".
You believe it's the former, and I believe it's the latter.
Remember that even pure safety features are imperfect and they are subject to the butterfly effect. Anything you change about a car design will cause some shift in who dies while driving that car. You have to determine if there are really two separate risk groups, one sacrificed for the other, or if it's all really one risk group.
As a thought experiment, imagine we made a car that was all-around much safer, and then we let 14 year olds drive it. Well that actually happens, with mini-cars that have strict speed limits. (Usually they're legally not cars.) We could only allow normal licensed drivers to use them, and they'd be very safe! But then, purely for convenience, we let younger teenagers use them. Is that a moral abomination? Some of them are going to die. But I think it fits into the normal risk of driving, and as long as a 14 year old in one of those is safer than a normal driver in a normal car, I'm satisfied.
There are separate sets of features that you can't just glue together, they're not even offered together, you have to pay separately for the second set.
One set saves people, one set kills people. The set that kills people, doesn't save people.
You think it's ok to sell the set that kills people because they have a set thats save people.
I know it's not ok to sell features that kill people and don't save anyone. It'd be one thing if it could save people, but it doesn't. The other set does that.
This set just kills people. Doesn't save anyone.
Stop selling it.
Simple as that.
Only if all three of the following are true:
A) they both affect the same risk factor (Just because they're "separate" features and sold separately doesn't make this false. And the way the autopilot is so intertwined with the others, I don't think it's really fair to say they are truly separate features. They build upon each other.)
B) it's impossible to run the dangerous one without the safety one
C) running both is safer than running neither
If you want to make cars safer, then you should be insisting that all cars be safer. The car that kills people because it lacks any of these electronics is just as bad.
To elaborate on (A), with these particular features I don't see the car as causing distinct people to die compared to who it's saving. It's not trading between different groups of people in any meaningful way. It's just a single number of how many people die per mile. With other features you could get into that moral dilemma. With these features I don't think it does.
I worked at a pizza place in high school. There was a delivery driver with cerebral paulsy who was constantly being accused of being drunk. Sometimes customers just called the cops on him. It was sad, he was a super nice young guy already on a short clock and he had to deal with that all the time.
The real feature should just be a button that shifts insurance liability to Tesla for the period of the autopilot engagement and charges you a floating premium for it based on traffic conditions per mile/km while the autopilot is on.
The real problem is "free" auto pilot means people will use it often enough to make a catastrophe an actuarial inevitability, whereas if they have to pay to text while driving on autopilot, they're going to do it less, and live long enough to be killed by something else.
No amount of money makes up for human lives. You can pay a premium of $1mil per mile, if the car end up smashing into a family car at 80mph because the system was fooled by a shadow or a reflection it's still a net negative
Sure, but no human life is worth spending infinite resources to protect.
In that case we should not allow cars driven by humans either?
Trivially untrue since you can save one life for under $1000 but almost everyone with $1000 will keep it rather than save the life - revealing that $1000 is worth more than an arbitrary human life.
They have more detailed information elsewhere. They are generally trustworthy. Of course I boosted the cost (based on memory) a little, and literalized the value (the truth is that each additional mosquito net has a marginal reduction in the probability of a child contracting and then dying of malaria).
And it looks like I made two errors:
* I had a memory of an older model - the newer one makes it more expensive
* I misremembered the optimal strategy (it isn't anti-malaria, it's Deworm the World at $1003 / child under age 5 saved).
You clearly don't actually believe that, or there are a ton of activities you would stop doing. You wouldn't drive to work, because there is a chance you might kill someone while driving, and you only go to work for money, so why do it?
However I disagree that a human life can't be equated with resources. Would you destroy $10 billion of value/resources in the economy to save 1 person? I don't think that's worth it, because that $10 billion of value could've been food and medicine which can save thousands of people. This is really just the trolley problem. But the bigger you make the sum (if you don't agree at $10 billion, what about $1 trillion?), at some extreme point you're going to have to say "ok, one life isn't worth that much."
You can spin any arguments by framing them in such ridiculous scenarios. My comment is obviously in the context of people able to pay money to get rid of their personal responsibilities.
From reading the many other replies to your comment, everyone else was left with the same impression by what you said.
This is a metric human drivers fail to hit every single day.
There is some acceptable level of risk in shifting driving to a robot. How you draw that comparison and draw the line is tough. It's complicated greatly because the kinds of failures autopilot makes are significantly different from the kinds of failures humans make.
Yes exactly, and when they fuck up they suffer the consequences. Which if you were reckless will most likely be years in prison. You shouldn't be able to get away by paying money which is what the comment I replied to asks for.
You can point towards the anomymous software engineer you supposedly paid off your responsibility to.
But you're still the one that literally killed a family.
You'll realise there are some things you can't transfer responsibility from, when you're sitting behind the brains dripping off your window.
But at least all the people who have literally zero idea what you just went through, will tell you it's really Tesla's fault who wrote the software and they're responsible really. And there's no amount of money you can pay, to make you believe them.
How many end up in jail?
That would require the system to be safe enough to text while using it.
If you mean that the feature should always be pay-to-use, that seems ridiculous. Why try to minimize the use of a driver assist feature?
I mean both, and specifically that driver assist should be pay to use to offset usage because it is likely higher net risk for a collision than a human. Free driver-assist has a "tragedy of the commons" problem, or a moral hazard, where there is no cost to over-using it and courting a collision event, so this overall risk can be reduced by metering its use.
Also, yes, the system should be safe enough to text while using it. That's what "self driving car" should mean. Another criteria would be that a person should be able to use it with a blood alcohol level higher than is legal today as well, and that it absolves people of an "impaired driving" charge. There is a division between driver assist and full autonomous self driving, but these are features that could be pay per use based on relative actuarial risk.
To people who say you can't put a price on human life, clearly you do not have auto insurance?
That's kind of a messy definition. A drunk person might start messing with the controls, and a car that is perfectly able to drive itself might not be able to handle that. You could fix that with a breathalyzer but it would be ridiculous if the difference between self-driving and not-self-driving is the presence of a breathalyzer.
So I would say something more like "drive from the passenger seat" or "drive while asleep".
A car you can drive drunk is the problem the tech solves, which is what makes it both viable, and provides success criteria instead of making it just about unreasonable hypothetical standards of perfect safety.
The entire ML and machine vision endeavour should be called what it is, a moonshot to create a drunk driving car.
I would regard doing the former, while not the latter, to be deeply unethical, as, at least in my book, motive matters.
I am not saying thet I expect Tesla to do so, but it is possible that the incentives could be to do just that: for example, if it turns out to be impractical to produce an effective warning and intervention system that is not regarded as too intrusive by its customers. Don't take that route, Tesla. Nothing but either true (not necessarily perfect) self-driving, or effective monitoring and intervention, is acceptable.
1) in case future regulation requires "monitoring if the driver is paying attention to the road"
and
2) for their robo-taxi service that might or might not come out within the next 5 years as Elon says (hint: it will not)
I own a Tesla and would love if this internal camera were to be available to Sentry mode/saved with dashcam footage (for insurance reasons, internal dashcams are great for strengthening the driver's case), but that's not possible currently.
Why? Did they suddenly engineer themselves into a new type of corporation that doesn't drop its ethics at the first opportunity?
I have nothing specifically against Tesla, but I fully expect them to simply do whatever if they are incentivised by the right profit structure. The "best" corporations have disappointed me in this manner, no shame on Tesla for existing, but that is what it will do, given the chance.
"Tesla" is not your human friend that you can talk to or appease in the hope that it won't do what is its nature. Talking into the void won't tame it.
well this seems inevitable now - the amount you pay out of pocket for body damage repairs depending on the machinations of high-speed-trading algorithms acting on the sensor data streaming out of your car. not just the price of autopilot fluctuates but every non-essential function distracting enough to influence the actuarial tables. want to listen to music? in this traffic? too expensive!
- DRIVER_ON_PASSENGER_SIDE
- DRIVER_MISSING
- DRIVER_PICKING_BOOGERS
- DRIVER_SEAT_FULLY_RECLINED
- DRIVER_SNORING
- DRIVER_SHAVING
- DRIVER_VAPING
- DRIVER_LIVESTREAMING
- DRIVER_ADJUSTING_MAKEUP
- DRIVER_APPLYING_LIPSTICK
- PASSENGER_ON_DRIVER
- PASSENGER_UNDER_DRIVER
I've actually seen drivers doing all 3 of these. The shaving (with an electric razor, obviously) I only saw once, but I frequently see women applying makeup and lipstick.
One day I drove with a fellow student to some university event, and he suddenly at a red light took out an electric razor and started shaving. "Want me to take over and drive?" "Nah, you're not insured to drive this car" (true).
And the makeup thing too, seen that a lot of times, once even two ladies (driver and passenger) in the next car applying eye makeup at the same time, as if to make sure neither of them could watch the traffic.
But nothing beats the guy who was so deep down in his seat he was barely visible except for his feet on his dashboard. He apparently thought that being able to use the brake was optional on the autobahn. I can only hope that his car was one of the rare special fitted cars that had a hand operated break paddle, tho the car's steering column looked pretty regular from my POV.
Also, you could add more items like, DRIVER_ON_PASSENGER_TOP.
I just assumed that Tesla is monitoring the driver to detect surprise.
I also assume that Tesla's awesome sauce onboard AI is running a simulation. For both the driver and other vehicles. Make predictions, gather actuals, continuously try to narrow the delta. Forward anything really weird up to the mother ship for detailed analysis.
Knowing when the driver is surprised would be a pretty good signal. If both the driver and the simulation are surprised, then the simulation could infer which events were way out of scope.
I have no reason, data, or insight for my conjecture.
It's just how I'd do it. And would account for why the onboard computer is so beefy.
I saw it on a highway. The driver had a 9 columns newspaper open on the steering wheel, hopefully hands on the wheel. Probably at least 130 km/h. It was before the web.
Yes, of course, safer drivers (whether automatic or fleshy) is a great thing, but this still hits that deep-seeded paranoia level for me.
I mean, what if FaceID had been proven out the same way? The number of times I unlock my phone every day and the number of times I’m doing it somewhere that the government/my employer/my significant other/a random hacker would find objectionable or lucrative to exploit... That’s with just me there (or an ex, or a former employee or prospective employer, or someone I met at a bar who turns out to be on some list...).
Turn this back around to the car I’m driving and it’s honestly slightly terrifying for me. It could be the next evolution of those devices insurance companies want you to plug into your OBD port so they can monitor how quickly you accelerate, take turns, etc. Except now Tesla (and whomever they decide to sell it to) know that when that innocent-seeming accident happened you seemed to be looking down, so now you’re completely liable for damages.
With the good comes the bad, but I’m terrified of the bad and the good doesn’t seem that much better than the current.
It seems like they're working on an on-board system to detect distracted drivers.
The data showed that the "hands on the wheel" alert preceded the crash by 8 minutes.
Tesla will absolutely use any data you send them to attack you, especially if you have the bad taste to die in their car with autopilot active.
Tesla has never released the data from an accident. They only release their assessment of the data to authorities and authorities have decided whether to communicate that to the public.
> The driver had received several visual and one audible hands-on warning earlier in the drive and the driver’s hands were not detected on the wheel for six seconds prior to the collision. The driver had about five seconds and 150 meters of unobstructed view of the concrete divider with the crushed crash attenuator, but the vehicle logs show that no action was taken.
https://www.tesla.com/blog/update-last-week%E2%80%99s-accide...
This is from March 30 2018 (the accident occurred on March 23). The NTSB and Tesla dissolved the commitment to investigate in parallel as a consequence of this premature release of data in an attempt to exonerate themselves.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/12/17229518/tesla-ntsb-autop...
It's also quite telling that part of Tesla's statement to the press at that time included of the following:
> Mr. Huang was well aware that Autopilot was not perfect ... yet he nonetheless engaged Autopilot at that location
The NTSB report didn't come out until Feb 11, 2020.
https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NR20200211.as...
Tesla absolutely intentionally released log data on their own.
EDIT: "If you're going to keep spamming the comments of this thread" This was both unnecessary and untrue. With this comment, I'm up to a grand total of two comments in this entire article's discussion thread.
Tesla may not release all of the data (and it's clear from their selection of data that they do not), but they definitely do release some data.
Indeed, Tesla's release of data is worse than nothing, because they only release data that slanders the deceased drivers when autopilot was the cause of the crashes in all cases.
But given Tesla's history of skirting other legal rules, and their history of releasing driver data from autopilot accidents, I would expect the opt-out to operate more as "we record anyway and then delete it after the fact if you opt out and we don't need the data to protect Tesla."
NHTSA requires cars with EDRs to record 15 specific attributes. They’ve also considered making EDRs mandatory, but basically didn’t bother since the vast majority of cars already have them.
You need an EDR to implement ADAS features, and some of those are becoming mandatory.
The only thing opt-in is remote data sharing.
It's opt-in until an insurance company mandates it (or heavily encourages it).
Welcome to 14 years ago, which is when Toyota first introduced their DMS/DAM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver_Monitoring_System
More generally, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver_drowsiness_detection
The "hacker" mentioned in this article discovered these detection labels on the Model 3/Y "selfie" camera:
BLINDED
DARK
EYES_CLOSED
EYES_DOWN
EYES_NOMINAL
EYES_UP
HEAD_DOWN
HEAD_TRUNC
LOOKING_LEFT
LOOKING_RIGHT
PHONE_USE
SUNGLASSES_EYES_LIKELY_NOMINAL
SUNGLASSES_LIKELY_EYES_DOWN
Maybe I'm missing something. But it seems like an apples to oranges in comparison to me. Correct me if I am wrong, but Comma.ai's driving monitoring feature is currently the only one in production that is comparable.
You are asserting with no idea whatsoever, or relevance really given you're apparently ignoring that I was answering a very specific comment.
> What you're implying is akin to saying Nokia/Ericsson/Palm had smartphones before the iPhone 1 came along. Therefore the iPhone is a non-event. ️
One, it really is not, there's nothing impressive-looking so far. Two, tesla's record of "game changing" is mostly "game changing marketing", and while you should absolutely feel free to give them all the benefit of every doubt, I really don't feel so inclined.
> The "hacker" mentioned in this article discovered these detection labels on the Model 3/Y "selfie" camera:
These are just events it might be able to generate, it tells you nothing about how well the events are detected and how the consumer of those events integrates them.
What do you think exactly, that other manufacturers just get a magical yes/no blob?
I am directly addressing your comment about "DMS/DAM". How is that not relevant?
> One, it really is not, there's nothing impressive-looking so far.
What is impressive to you? That's what the critics said when the iPhone 1 was announced. That's what many also said about electric cars. Funny how the metrics (sales/safety) played out on that one.
> These are just events it might be able to generate, it tells you nothing about how well the events are detected and how the consumer of those events integrates them.
The fact that it can detect those events using a specialized redundant NPU hardware is a far cry from "Driver drowsiness detection" and "DMS/DAM" from "14 years ago". Hence, an apple to oranges comparison.
> What do you think exactly, that other manufacturers just get a magical yes/no blob?
It's interesting you ask that, because they mostly are binary logic if you look at the ECU firmware. Some "Driver drowsiness detection" (MBenz) systems will also just beep at random intervals after driving non-stop for 1 hour. But they still market them as being able to "detect" drowsiness.
George Hotz talked about this many times. They also don't have any firmware code signing whatsoever (esp Toyota) which presents a security risk.
Out of curiosity, which of the DMS/DAM systems do you have experience with?
Since OTA is not a thing on most cars. This becomes a permanent problem that a dealership cannot fix. Even if they wanted too.
With a Tesla (only one in the industry AFAIK), you can submit a bug report at the exact location via voice and a future software update might address it.
https://www.gm.com/our-stories/technology/cadillac-to-increa...
What OP was implying, is that the Tesla system mentioned on the article is on par with offerings from other OEMs from 14 years ago.
Open Pilot can't use your blindspot cameras or any other additional sensors in your car. If I try to merge into another lane, and someone is in my blind spot, Open Pilot will try (and will crash my car).
Super Cruise and Smart Eye don't have this problem.
And yes, I have an Open Pilot for my Lexus RX 450h.
What you're describing is the entire semi-automated driving system + driver monitoring feature. Another Apple to Oranges comparison...
It's obvious to anyone familiar with Open Pilot that it can't access OEM blindspot cameras since it only uses the Comma Two smartphone cameras and hooks into CANBUS. So I am not really sure what point you're trying to make here.
I have tried their the demo systems at several occasions, (they have been developong them in 20y) but not comma.ai's.
For example they calculate the opening speed of your eyelid with high precision, the gaze direction output is within a few degrees of error. You can almost cover your complete face and it will still track your head pose with extreme precision. The list of outputs are long. Pupils, glasses, faceid, blinks (velocity, duration), drowsiness /, perclose, the 3d geometry of the head, facemasks, gender, and a lotbof aggregatet values.
But comma.ai maybr has this too?
If the general public goes against your preference then your preference will no longer be an option. For cars this likely means that the only way to get a car that isn't spyware/ad tech will be buying an old car before this happened. That option eventually becomes more and more difficult until you give up and accept whatever the corporations are pushing.
It’s a good thing indefatigable contrarians like you don’t get to drive product decisions.
The AirPods might be really nice and not nearly as problematic as the initial reactions predicted but they are still massively more expensive than wired headphones and made a huge collection of existing working headphones obsolete.
I'm personally not giving in easily, and certainly wouldn't buy a car with a camera I don't control pointed at my face. That is absurd to me.
However, most people just see this only as a safety issue. They're willing to compromise a lot of privacy for a little increase in safety.
That's not objectively wrong, but I disagree with it.
If I could audit my records, store everything locally, and be ensured there's no way to access this data without my consent, then I'd be more into the idea. But right now... I'm just going to keep my old Prius going for as long as I can.
Relevant: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=uighurs&iar=news&ia=news
This really seems like the right way to go about it. If all Tesla sees are those pre-defined flags (EYES_OPEN, HEAD_DOWN, etc.) then I would consider the tradeoff worthwhile.
With an unrestricted video stream, car manufacturers can & will use that data to determine your insurance rate, whether your are using the car for personal vs. rideshare purposes, etc.
People have, on the whole, emphatically demonstrated their complete inability to drive responsibly. ~40k deaths, hundreds of thousands of serious injuries, and nearly a trillion dollars in costs every year. Overwhelmingly due to driver error and negligence.
- Why use it? If you have the car driving autonomous and you want the driver to take over, you need to know if they are able to take over or not (sleeping)
- Placement The placement of the camera needs to be well below the head, otherwise you will not be able to fully see the eyes and also not be able to tell if a person has it's eyes open or not. This is more true for Asian people.
The placement of this camera shows a lot of the inside of the car compared with other OEMs. This is an interesting feat and could for example be used if you see the temp in the car incrase during parking you might want to turn on the AC if a child or animal is left in the car.
In fact I don't want to be driving at all. Bring on the full-on self-driving car.
I don't have a car though as I live in a city where I don't really need one (or could even park it if I wanted to). But in some countries you can't do without one sadly.
> https://www.autoevolution.com/news/how-cadillac-super-cruise...
> It also keeps track of whether the driver is paying attention to the road. Unique to Super Cruise is that it does this not by requiring the driver to keep his hands or touch the steering wheel, but by tracking the driver’s eyes and head position.
> Despite being capable of handling the car on its own, Super Cruise will not work unless it detects the driver is paying attention to the road. In Cadillac’s case, that doesn’t mean necessarily having the hands on the steering wheel, but keeping the eyes looking forward.
But you can't even buy Cadillac here in Europe.
They need this data for regulatory reasons, anyway. At some point they need confidence to say how people are really (ab)using their self-driving tech.
"holy shit, look how much time our drivers are spending not paying attention at all, we need to do something about this."
Well, that was a poorly-timed quip.
... for now
This is what I envied about other lane keeping cars, I think Cruise uses eye tracking, or maybe it was something else.
the car certainly should warn you at lower danger threshold if it thinks you'll need more time to return to full attention
(even in a zero-shame case, like for example you're checking your mirror but the car thinks there's a hazard in front)
separate question of 4th / 5th amendment consequences of using this for crash liability
Those grayboxes probably already take more lives than they save on airplanes, and will be orders of magnitude worse on cars.
All evidence so far point in the opposite direction. Airplanes are different, you have a highly trained pilot that has strict requirements for flight. Outperforming your avg human is far easier.
What your evidence that these system cause more harm then good?
I have stopped following the accident investigations a few years ago, but that was the (very evident) trend. Most accidents tend to happen at the hand-over from the machine to the pilots when some problem appears. Among those it's very common that the both the machines and the manual procedures deal correctly with the problem, but the pilots have no chance of selecting the correct procedures. (The MAX-8 may have changed that picture all by itself, as I said, I stopped following them.)
And, yes, airplanes are different. You have pilots that are trained on getting hand-over in a bad situation, and usually have minutes to decide what to do. Car problems must be solved in a second or two, and the drivers never see a bad situation before it happens on real life.
Isn’t the biggest weakest all the edge cases that the AI has troubles making decisions on?
Elon was to bullish on self-driving and believed this 'transition' technology was not necessary. I hope they role this out soon.
And its not just safety, it just makes sense to not having to torque the wheel.
The external cameras have excellent low light sensitivity. If the internal camera is anything like those, I think it'll work fine at night.
Isn't it unsafe to drive with a ton of light from the giant LCD, etc.? I would have though they would dim that and/or have a night mode with inverted UI colors.
The LCD changes its brightness automatically. It also changes from light to dark mode (inverted UI colors) based on the time of day. Still an LCD showing black will leak some light, and as I said those cameras are pretty damn sensitive.
Edit: why downvote? This is a pretty clickbait story. Feel free to comment if you have another perspective.
Heh.
I don't want autopilot so I can actually sleep at the wheel, I want it in case I do. I'd vastly prefer if the car noticed I was inattentive that it notified me. My feeling is for long drives this would be a safety feature, but I'm concerned that the way it's built it will my worst driving behaviors instead of helping compensate for them.
In my opinion, these two features are very related. In order to have a reasonably low false positive, the sleep detection must be reasonably lenient. In turn, this means the vehicle must be able to (most of the time) tolerate a few seconds of inattentive driving.
Have you tried to address this issue? This seems like a huge safety concern and you're actively choosing to put others in harms way by continuing to drive.
When I used to pull 18 hour days, I would also notice myself getting tired behind the wheel, but never fully falling asleep. My low-tech solution to this was to set an alarm for 10 minutes after I started driving and setting the alarm volume to max. Then, the alarm would go off in the middle of my drive, usually surprising me and jolting me awake since I'm obviously not paying attention to the time. Then, snoozing the alarm would make it go away for another 10 minutes, and so on until I made it home. This is probably not the perfect solution but it worked for me. Obviously the better long term solution is to a) not do 18 hour days and b) address what is making you so sleepy and stop it from happening.
This is fairly similar to what would trigger it with me. My solution was to ensure I have passengers or let someone else drive.
Avoiding highways was what saved me I think; a mistake at 20mph is far less expensive than a mistake at 80mph. But certainly you're right; the obvious answer is to avoid driving or as another commenter said, carpool!
Oddly, it was a bigger issue when I was younger. It hasn't happened to me in quite a few years, but the awareness of it has lingered, thus my desire to take extra precautions.
There's almost nothing a person in another seat can do if you are asleep, even if they realize that in time (and that's a huge assumption). Speaking as someone who has unhealthy interest at failures, disasters, and their root causes, this type of attitude is super common, and always leads to disasters. Please seek medical attention before you killed somebody and yourself. You can't rely on self-control.
You should probably stay off the roads if you’re having these issues and/or seek help to resolve them.
It seems like some cars will actually try to kill you - they'll beep a bit and try to alert you, then if you don't respond the autopilot will simply disengage. And drive off the road or into whatever.
The better ones (such as the new Polestar) go to great efforts to try and alert you (noise, flashing lights, tugging on seatbelt tensioner) then will finally activate hazard lights, slow down gradually, and pull over safely.
The system usally have an EXTENDED_EYE_CLOSURE signal that is triggered after a certain time (together with a quality value of this signal). So not directly, but yes, close too.
But it is still tricky. What happens if you start blinking and then the camera get covered. Should it warn? It can not always warn if it loses tracking.
How should it warn? Disturbing the driver can actually cause accidents.
You need to talk to a doctor immediately because you're an active risk to other people on the road.
Mostly just doing something physically tiring and having a full stomach, plus being in a monotonous 1-2 hour drive is a recipe for sleep.
What you are describing still suggests an underlying medical condition or extreme indifference to the safety of others. I was being generous and assuming you were not deliberately being indifferent to the well-being other drivers.
It's not normal to fall asleep driving after only a few hours of strenuous activity followed by food.
You made a bunch of assumptions based on a small comment. I didn't say I have narcolepsy or regularly fall asleep at the wheel.
> What you are describing still suggests an underlying medical condition or extreme indifference to the safety of others.
I find it fascinating that people feel they are capable of coming up with a medical diagnosis for a random person over the internet based on a few vague comments.
To Ogre_... you cannot self diagnose by saying "I know when I'm feeling tired so I nap." Go To A Doctor NOW.
Do you hypothesize the doctor will be able to cure him?
You need you driver license for your job, without you will lose everything.
You already know that this is not something the doctor can easily help you with (e.g. caused by overwork or because you already visited the doctor).
Sure it's kinda wrong, but most people would just continue driving, especially in countries with no good social net where permanently losing your job can easily lead to it really messing up your live (no health insurance, losing you home, not being able to care for your kids properly, maybe even starvation).
This is why they provide ID cards that do not grant driving privileges.
And why public transportation exists.
Our society puts so many people in impossible binds. This discussion needs a great deal more empathy for them.
Uber didn’t come to the St Louis “surrounding area” for some time, and even when they did, it was hard to find a driver.
But in many places it doesn't. Or is basically unusable for all kinds of reasons (e.g. you having night shift, being a woman and no security at all in public transport).
Furthermore public transport doesn't fix the problem of losing the job for all people.
There are enough jobs where you normally will never drive but you need a driver license for "emergencies" (whatever that means is job dependent).
FWIW - I normally have some kind of insomnia and take long time to fall asleep; but if I'm that tired, I can pull up into gas station or Tim Horton's (it's a Canadian thing:) and have a 30min power nap immediately. It's the only time I CAN have a power nap, but it works wonders.
I fully 100% support the general notion expressed here that if we find outselves in a risky position as a driver, we should do something to mitigate that risk. I don't think "don't drive" is always in every circumstance a achievable recourse though, so a power nap can mitigate risk significantly.
I think it’s true that every driver should take responsibility for their own internal state, and do whatever they can to ensure they don’t drive in an impaired state, whether that’s just getting enough sleep, avoiding alcohol or certain meds, or being prepared to pull off the road and nap.
You might just doze off for a second or two and hit a tree or worse, someone... ( best depiction: https://youtu.be/ya3_EwQdJrk?t=30 )
This is pretty selfish. If you're falling asleep at the wheel enough that you want Tesla's Autopilot to save you, you have a problem.
I've seen Tesla cars do absolutely insane maneuvers on the freeway that no sober driver would ever consider doing, only to find out that the person behind the wheel is asleep or doing another task other than driving.
I think it's more realistic to settle for that kind of features than to wait for a real 100% complete autopilot.
If you're falling asleep often at the wheel I would recommend you tell your primary. He'll likely refer you to a sleep doctor. I didn't have major symptoms, but after a recommendation from my primary I discovered I have a bad case of sleep apnea.
If you're falling asleep at the wheel often (and btw, you're doing the right thing by pulling over and napping) you should go to a sleep doctor. You might not be getting a proper amount of sleep, for whatever reason, and they might be able to help.
Hence for me the system is insurance for the time where I am truly distracted. When I use my 3's driving feature on local roads I find I am more attentive as I am constantly looking for situations I think should confuse it but then I realize I am overthinking the situation far more often than not.
While I love to drive I do look forward to the day anyone can just hop in and ask to be taken somewhere and safely
I don't even mean "well I think I know now how to tell when it's coming on and if I should pull over." I mean get it diagnosed, whatever.
I'm not sure how someone who knows they have this issue feels the least bit okay with going out on a road in a 1+ ton car.
Microsleeps while driving are extremely dangerous. You should take this seriously.
You should never get behind the wheel if there's a chance you'll fall asleep! You shouldn't be driving. Period. This is incredibly dangerous and puts innocent people at risk.
No technology should compensate for this. We don't design technology to help drivers under the influence feel better about their driving.
Please don't get behind the wheel if you're drowsy.
We never had people deliberately sleeping in cars (with pillows!) before autopilot was a thing. If the kinds of people prone to make these types of decisions come to trust technology to save them, we're going to wind up in a worse spot than before the technology existed.
People will rely on the tech to save them when it was never meant for that.
Not just "this" technology -- technology in general. There are always risk adjustments; airbags and seat belts had similar riskier-driving effects.
Imagine if the parent poster falls asleep at the wheel and does injure or kill someone. They could point to the fact that it's never happened before, but if the court can subpoena Tesla to get data that indicates this guy dozes off with some regularity (and can see indications that he knew about it), then he's going to face a harsher sentence, possibly even bumping it up from involuntary manslaughter to second degree murder if they can argue that it was extremely reckless disregard.
Like, there should already be a lot of this kind of data out there to nail drivers to the wall post-crash, and you just don't really see it happening. Even when someone is killed, everyone involved basically shrugs, says it was a fluke, and tells the family they should get over it and move on (watch for the phrase "came out of nowhere" as a sign that everyone involved has checked out of a particular case).
And how much will consumers accept a car that tattles on them about their bad behaviour? People already lose their minds over provably-effective external automated enforcement measures which rely on plate reading like red light cams and average speed cams.
If we have a particular medical condition / issue then that is a different story.
But folks don't randomly fall asleep (I think?) if they're getting sufficient rest and they're not already tired.
But there are also measures one can take to mitigate tiredness while driving: winding the window down or turning the AC down, putting energising music on, stopping mid-journey and taking a break, etc.
There are also medical conditions one can have where they can fall asleep even when not tired. However I believe you’re denied a licence if you do suffer from any of them so this might well be a moot point.
Wouldn't you want to turn it up? You're less likely to fall asleep if you're cold.
Monotony can make you drowsy, regardless of how healthy you are or how much sleep you've had. And when this happens, it can catch you unawares even if you're looking for it.
I'd add an occasional glance at the horizon too , if you're on a long trip. You can make it a game if you're driving a new route (guess which mountain is closest to the road you're on) Frequently changing focal distance helps a lot to prevent eye fatigue.
https://www.rms.nsw.gov.au/geared/your_driving_skills/stayin...
It is drilled into us that we should stop every 2 hours regardless of how we feel. You cannot trust yourself to judge as by definition your judgment is impaired when tired, it's best to just stop and grab a free tea/coffee if you find one of their setups or even just pull over to rest your eyes or walk around your car for a couple of minutes to reset.
Don’t do it.
Some people are always somewhat tired (eg sleep apnea or CFS), some people aren't tired when they start driving but become impaired at some point. Some people might have an undiagnosed condition that contributes.
There's no reason to not celebrate a simple advancement that might save people from a disaster.
This is it. I don't understand why this isn't higher up in the discussion.
Do you check whether your brakes work every time before setting off? Do you check whether your wheels are attached properly every time before setting off? There are a million things that could break on your car. They're just very unlikely to happen.
Pilots/maintenance crew for planes checks that kind of stuff for virtually every flight. We accept this small risk with cars. In return we get an enormous increase in efficiency. If everyone had to do a 5 minute check on their car every time before setting off, then that would be a lot of productive time spent on it.
I wouldn't. I'd consider it criminal negligence to get behind the wheel of a car at times when it's impossible to make a suitable effort to drive such equipment.
It's not acceptable to hop into a car drunk, either.
The effects aren't really that much different between the two, response-time wise.
I've driven the family from Northern Califorina to Sourthern California quite a few times, many of them overnight. It took one instance of actually falling asleep at the wheel for a few seconds to realize "oh, that's the difference between tired and falling asleep at the wheel."
I definitely recognize it now and never let it happen now (stopping and sleeping, trading out for someone else to drive, etc), but the point is I didn't think I was close to that level previously. Experience is something that we can't expect all people to have and exhibit the wisdom of, and unfortunately some things learned through experience are much harder (or nearly impossible) to teach without doing, and for dangerous things that's a problem for normal people.
As a much much more extreme example, I've heard that's why Navy Seal training keeps candidates up and physically and mentally exhausted for days at a time. Partly to see who can handle the pressure, and partly so they have experienced that condition before and understand it in themselves and others.
Then they can follow the same rule as for overtaking: if in doubt, don't. It's not complicated. There is no way you are tired enough to be actually falling asleep without realising you're far too tired to be driving safely. It's not as if it's a close thing where one minute you're alert and driving responsibly and the next minute you're out. Anyone who can't make that determination reliably is demonstrably unfit to be in charge of a vehicle and should hand in their licence.
The kinds of medical conditions that do make sudden dozing off normal for a few unfortunate people are grounds for refusing to issue a driving licence to those people in most places, for reasons that should hopefully be obvious.
Monotonous activities frequently make people drowsy. This is not some medical condition, it is a common occurrence. Driving is often an acutely monotonous activity.
I know a huge number of people that get drowsy while reading books. Do they all suffer from the same "condition"?
The point is that it isn't "just like that", but not everyone has experience with passing out from being tired while trying to continue doing something they were actively trying trying to concentrate on.
> If you're going to do something like that, you need to plan the journey sensibly, take plenty of breaks, make sure you got extra rest before you leave. Don't they teach this sort of stuff in basic driver training where you are?
Obviously not well enough, or I had forgotten some of it in the almost decade between taking the classes and actually experiencing it for the first time. And to be clear, I thought I was being cautious, it was definitely not my first time making that trip, and I didn't think I was so tired I would lose consciousness, and yet one second I was fine, and the next second (to my consciousness) I noticed I was halfway across the center divider. I didn't feel any more tired than I had on a a prior trip, yet, the conclusion is obvious, that level of tiredness feeling might lead to that outcome, therefore it was no longer acceptable.
So, here's the thing, prior to that situation I thought I was being responsible, and had years of experience to go by that indicated I could drive in that state. All it takes is once occurrence to let you know that what you thought as fine was not.
What exactly was a I supposed to obviously know from that beforehand? It's nice if you've always been able to know the correct level to stop at, or perhaps you stop far earlier than strictly needed, which is fine. You would never know if you stopped with plenty of attentive time left you could drive, but better safe than sorry.
All I see this meaning is that different people have different thresholds for this, and all I was saying originally is that I wish there was a way for us to impart this experience better during driver training, so people knew what the warning signs are better, in case their internal calibration was too far on the dangerous side initially, like mine was.
Except I was, and I did. And now I can recognize the signs that weren't obvious before, so I don't anymore. You're saying there's no way, and I'm giving you a concrete example of an instance.
> It's not as if it's a close thing where one minute you're alert and driving responsibly and the next minute you're out.
There's a huge range between "alert" and "asleep". I'm tired after a long day, yet I can drive responsibly. Even a the point where I could lay down and easily go to sleep if I chose to, I'm fine to drive for quite a while after that (preferred sleep time is not necessarily the same as responsible driving time, there are many factors that go into it).
> Anyone who can't make that determination reliably is demonstrably unfit to be in charge of a vehicle and should hand in their licence.
So, have you been in that situation? Or just always stopped before you got to that point? Or not even driven over a long enough period to be in that situation? You haven't even presented any anecdotal evidence, you've just made assertions that what I said I personally experienced can't be how I described it (and implied I was demonstrably unfit to drive at the point I said this happened to me).
And, in the gentlest possible way, if you were unable to recognise that you were so tired that you were likely to fall asleep while driving and make another choice, you were demonstrably unfit to drive at that time. It might have been understandable, particularly if you were young and inexperienced, but you still shouldn't have driven at that time and your actions were still irresponsible and dangerous.
Anyway, I think I'm done with this discussion. There are several posters here who are literally arguing that it's OK to drive knowing that they are severely impaired and have a much greater risk than any normal person would of injuring or killing someone. I can't argue rationally against such an irresponsible and selfish position, and my blood pressure has probably gone through the roof reading all of these comments and thinking of all the people who would disagree with them but can't because they're dead.
My example (and experience) wasn't about starting to drive. It was about being 4 hours into a 7-8 hour drive. The slow degradation of attention while sitting in a static position while watching static scenery go by for hours at a time.
> And, in the gentlest possible way, if you were unable to recognize that you were so tired that you were likely to fall asleep while driving and make another choice, you were demonstrably unfit to drive at that time.
Part of being unfit is sometimes not easily recognizing you're unfit. If you start in a perfectly fine shape, but degrade slowly over time, it can be hard to note the exact moment when things have gotten to a point where you should stop. And the whole point of my post was that recognizing this point, especially if it's over time and a slow degradation, can be hard if you've never experienced it before.
> I can't argue rationally against such an irresponsible and selfish position
Well, I don't think the people in this little corner of the discussion it are arguing that. People definitely shouldn't drive while impaired. I just think we should also consider, and see if there's a way to help, people that don't have enough experience to know when they're flirting with that state, for whatever reason it may be. Hopefully that at least some people here aren't arguing for allowing impaired people to drive is some consolation and reduces your stress at least a little. :/
I know two people with the issue that GP is talking about, and it's not what you're talking about.
They're perfectly alert when they get behind the wheel. They get drowsy on longer drives like 1hr+, which is why any time we do road trips I drive for them. And all that 'pull over and take a power nap' bullshit doesn't work. It's not grounded in any science to start with. I know both have tried coffee, breaks, stopping and taking a walk, etc. Of all those things, they said taking a nap is actually the worst because when they wake up they feel even more tired.
So their choices are: have someone else drive them, don't drive beyond a 1hr distance range, or deal with the drowsiness. You can imagine how sometimes life just forces them into #3 even though both are keenly aware of their issue and do their best to mitigate it.
Tech to detect when they phase out and save their life is absolutely the correct way to go.
If people think that #3 is acceptable, they should never be allowed to drive a car, for everyone else's protection.
People do potentially deadly risk reward calculus all the time. And of all potentially deadly things that people regularly do to crack down on, this one would have a pretty huge negative ROI for society. This issue impacts a non-trivial percentage of the population. You can't tell them all to change jobs or move their houses to be within whatever travel time limit. This purist notion of 'they should never be allowed to drive a car, for everyone else's protection' crumbles at the most trivial examination when you consider that you're talking about leaving millions of people jobless or in significantly worse quality of life conditions, while also completely reshuffling the housing markets and zoning. And even then, sometimes events will come up that force them to take that chance regardless, such as family emergencies.
Rather than this purist isolated-logic bullshit that would probably crash the economy if seriously enforced because you have absolutely failed to consider the first and second order effects of what you're suggesting, we actually have a viable tech solution instead.
I'm going to guess that most people who share this viewpoint are either high income earners living in a bubble who don't know what real life is like for most of the population, or are logical purists looking at this issue in isolation and not accounting for what life is like for most of the population. Life for most of the population is working paycheck to paycheck at whatever job you can get in order to make ends meet and keep your kids fed, and living in whatever housing you can get that doesn't make it impossible to get enough sleep to physically keep living due to long commute times. Being prevented from driving would absolutely destroy most affected families. You're going to do a lot more damage to society by preventing all those affected from driving than by doing nothing and letting it contribute to a small percentage of the road toll, which in itself is an insignificant percentage of the total death toll. Which is why every country on the planet has done nothing more drastic than awareness campaigns, despite being aware of this issue.
Really, this is where this entire discussion becomes moot. Fatigue and microsleep as a cause of road fatalities are a well studied issue that every developed nation is aware of and has done the calculus on. And not a single one of them decided to ban those affected from driving, because the calculus of that policy results in a massive net COST, not gain. And that calculus shifts even further now that we have fairly cheap car technology available to mitigate the issue. When you think through all this, the only conclusion is 'ban affected people from driving' is moronic and does significantly more harm than good.
tl;dr: you'll save more lives by replacing a single coal power plant with renewable energy than by implementing your policy. And you won't destroy the lives of millions of people and potentially crash the economy in the process. And there's already a viable solution on market that mitigates it almost entirely anyway. Pick your battles.
You contend that there are millions of people who knowingly drive while tired enough to fall asleep at the wheel and with a history of doing so?
If so, I contend that your argument is contrived and your claim is unrealistic. Most people do not and would not drive while so tired that they knew they were likely to fall asleep while doing so. For a start, such a pattern of behaviour would be suicidal. Statistically, there would be far more nasty accidents due to tiredness than actually happen.
In reality, only a tiny proportion of people drive while so tired that they might actually fall asleep at the wheel. Not only doing that but knowingly doing it when you have a history of dropping off while driving is utterly inexcusable.
In this case, if the person isn't able to get disability b/c of their condition, I can't fault them for doing what they need to survive. I don't like that it puts others at risk, and hope they are taking steps to reduce the risk. Detection technology that alerts them seems like a step in the right direction.
I've had to do all of those things. At some times in my life, I've had the first and last for an extended period. To my knowledge, I have never as a result driven in a condition that made me unsafe behind the wheel, though.
Yours is another comment that talks about people doing what they need to do to survive, which is an ironic characterisation given we're talking about behaviour that is borderline suicidal.
We live with that risk, and some others have to live with more risk because of their circumstances. I'm more reacting to all the posts that no one should ever drive at all with even the slightest risk that they'll fall asleep, which is just an unrealistic ideal for most of us.
You know they let some people drive who have extremely bad eyesight--bad enough that that they can't read road signs? Yet they are allowed to drive, because not driving makes participation in our economy next to impossible.
Comments like this are side-tracking the discussion. The original premise wasn't that sometimes everyone is a bit more alert or tired than others. It was someone who knew very well that they had a history of falling asleep at the wheel and wanted to continue driving apparently knowing it was likely to happen again.
We're human and can't say for certain that falling asleep is impossible (or some other medical event won't happen).
Of course not. But normal people with a healthy lifestyle don't just randomly fall asleep at the wheel in the absence of a serious (but perhaps undiagnosed) medical condition. The way a lot of the comments in this thread are defending driving while tired, you'd think millions of people could all just doze off without any warning or awareness that they were at unusually high risk.
You know they let some people drive who have extremely bad eyesight--bad enough that that they can't read road signs?
In my country, such poor vision would (if not properly corrected) immediately disqualify you from holding a driving licence. This is a policy that I entirely agree with, so we apparently come from very different perspectives here.
It's really not that complicated. Stop making choices for other people that could cause them to wind up injured or killed. Because yes, that is in fact what you're saying to do here.
For most people, the other option is to stop driving to work and then be jobless and eventually homeless, make their kids go hungry, or go bankrupt. You guys seriously seem to be completely disconnected from what reality looks like for 80%+ of the population.
> In reality, only a tiny proportion of people drive while so tired that they might actually fall asleep at the wheel
You have no idea how microsleep works. It does not involve 'knowingly driving while tired enough to fall asleep'. This single statement makes it clear that you're expressing some pretty strong and sure-sounding opinions on a subject that you know nothing about. You (as in specifically you) could be experiencing microsleep on a regular basis and never even know it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsleep
And even when talking about the other cause - fatigued driving, are you suggesting that people come in to work late after every night they had poor sleep? I mean that would actually be a decent policy if not for the fact that a handful of instances of that in a year would get most people fired? Are you suggesting that someone shouldn't drive home after a long shift? (do they like, sleep at their workplace? have you thought through this?). And we're back to my first point - I don't think you understand what life is like for the majority of the population who live paycheck to paycheck and work any job that they can get just to survive and keep their kids fed.
As someone enjoying the 'privilege' of working in tech and having flexible hours and being able to arbitrarily work from home and having enough savings to take a 6 month long sabbatical without any financial strain, I can see where you might be coming from. As someone who spent the first half of their life working blue collar jobs and having a panic attack over an unexpected 300 dollar expense which literally meant I spent 2 weeks eating nothing but pasta, I'm pretty sure you either never knew or have forgotten what life is like for most people out there. Yeah for you and I being banned from driving is just a mild inconvenience and 'sigh, now I have to use Uber for all travel'. For most people, it's a life and family destroying sentence.
The issue is also compounded if you work a blue collar job where it's likely that you aren't even commuting to the same place every day and need to haul tools with you.
It's really easy for people to make blanket statements that you shouldn't drive if you have a history of being tired at the wheel, but the reality is that a large portion of our population doesn't have an option.
You keep writing as if this is a normal problem that everyone faces. If it were, and if everyone or even a moderate proportion of drivers were doing what you seem to be arguing is essential, then population numbers would be falling rapidly due to all the fatal accidents. As far as I can see, however, you haven't actually provided any data to back up your repeated claims about how widespread this problem is and how much damage would be caused if the relevant drivers stopped driving when they were unsafe.
You have no idea how microsleep works.
Susceptibility to microsleep is usually a result of failing to sufficient good quality sleep normally, an underlying medical problem, or both. Common conditions like obstructive sleep apnoea can be tested for. Effective treatments like CPAP machines exist. Given that OSA can have other serious health effects as well as causing the unusual tiredness that becomes a danger if you're doing something like driving or operating heavy machinery, investigation and treatment of potential sleep disorders is definitely recommended.
Of course if you simply don't get enough hours of sleep regularly, if you don't sleep well because you do things like drinking excessive amounts of alcohol in the evening, you can go to bed earlier, cut down on the booze, etc.
You (as in specifically you) could be experiencing microsleep on a regular basis and never even know it.
Given that there are many warning signs of microsleeps, one of which is being very tired all the time, and given that the subject of this thread is people driving when they know they're so tired they might fall asleep and having a history of scares caused by falling asleep at the wheel, I don't see that your attempt to make this personal has any relevance to the debate.
You say that as if there weren't any other options. You have public transport and you can share a car (and expenses) with someone who has your same destination.
> For most people, it's a life and family destroying sentence.
Dying in a car accident is literally a death sentence and has worse implications for your family.
So, how does this work, exactly? So you set up carpooling with a coworker. And then one day you don't sleep well. Luckily enough, they're there to pick you up so you don't have to drive! ...but what happens when it's your turn to drive? You tell them, whoops, I'm tired today, so you're going to have to drive and get your spouse to change their plans so that you have access to a car? Or maybe they're always the one driving... what happens on days that they're tired? They cancel and you both have to find your own way via public transit?
Like what are the specific logistics here, accounting for failure modes? Does it amount to "spend $100 on Uber on days after a mediocre night's sleep"?
I think if you fall asleep while driving regularly there is a serious and systematic problem.
How do all these hopelessly trapped families ever take their kids to things like medical appointments?
93% of American households do - and I expect if you took away a few large dense metros like NYC and Boston, that number would jump up to about 98%
If so, there’s something of a sliding scale. Most of them take their car - their single car, that serves the whole family. When it breaks down, they lean on friends, family, and neighbors for help.
Those without a vehicle in the first place... don’t. I live in a town of <15k people today, and grew up about thirty miles outside of it. I graduated high school in the early 2000s - many of my classmates didn’t see a doctor unless they had a medical emergency.
It seems like there is a large disconnect between your perception and the reality of life for much of America.
Some of the earlier discussion here has apparently been mostly people talking at cross-purposes and didn't turn out to be very enlightening. However, it does seem that at least some people here really are trying to defend something that I think most people would consider unconscionable where I come from. The arguments have essentially been that people there have no realistic choice but to rely on theirs cars, even if driving them is obviously dangerous, or they literally can't live a normal life and support their families properly.
This raised a lot of questions for me that single-car or car-free households face all the time over here, like how you get the kids to school or anyone who isn't the driver to important appointments like medical ones. I was surprised that your response was more-or-less "you don't", but then in the context of medical appointments there is again a very different culture here to yours. It would be similarly unconscionable for most of us in the UK to bring a child into the world and not then make sure they get all of their check-ups and vaccinations at the right times, and you'd have to try very hard to find a situation where a parent without access to a car couldn't still make those provisions for their child in some realistic way. From comments by yourself and others here, I conclude that this is not necessarily the case in the US, or at least in significant parts of it.
No you don't. In 95% of the US "Public transit" is maybe a bus that stops a mile away once every 2 hours. If that.
From: https://www.nsc.org/road-safety/safety-topics/fatigued-drivi...
Those are enormous numbers. I wonder how big the economic hit would be if none of those people drove.
If we're being brutally objective here, road accidents are extremely expensive in purely economic terms. Obviously there could be a loss of productivity for anyone directly involved who was injured. But then you also need to expend considerable resources to clear the accident site and fully reopen the road. While you're doing that, you might be delaying many people due to congestion in the area of the accident. Then there is the cost of caring for anyone wounded, repairing any physical damage done to public infrastructure, and repairing or replacing any other vehicles that were involved and any cargo they were carrying. And of course, in the worst case, you have the profound effects of losing people entirely under such tragic circumstances, which involve not just losing anything they would have contributed for the rest of their lives, but also the consequences for their family and friends, their employers or clients, and anyone else who depended on them economically right down to the place on the corner where they stopped to buy a coffee each morning on the way into the office.
So even if we're only trying to avoid the most catastrophic cases such as someone actually falling asleep and causing a multi-vehicle pile-up on a major road, and even if we err on the side of caution and take many thousands of drivers off the road who are at significant risk of causing such an accident but in reality would not have done so, it's still not clear cut that the economic hit would be greater than the harm prevented.
For those who like hard data, I can't immediately offer you any, but as a very rough guide, here in the UK (where we already have lower per-capita road deaths than most of the world) I have seen arguments made about local road improvement schemes that suggested a seven-figure cost to save a single life would be economically justified. It's not hard to believe if you consider that a fatal accident can close a road for several hours, leaving thousands of vehicles stranded, and involving dozens of emergency responders and all of the equipment and vehicles they need, in addition to the injury, death and damage caused to anyone directly involved.
> You should never get behind the wheel if there's a chance you'll fall asleep!
I would say anyone that feels drowsy has a change of falling asleep. So 50% of the population should regularly not get behind the wheel, by GC's standard.
One of the reasons I would love to have autopilot is because I have a history of dozing off at the wheel. Never so much where I've had an accident, but bad enough where I've scared myself badly.
This was followed by arguing for the safety feature in case it happened again.
Though it's not really a thread until OC was disagreed with, so thread works too.
Yes? There are even millions of people who drive drunk every year, which is a far more conscious choice to endanger other people than someone driving home after long, late shift.
15 million people work a night shift. If 10% of them drive home drowsy one night per year, you're already at millions.
We've designed a system, however, that is set up such that it's bound to happen sometimes. Not everyone can call in to work and tell their boss "sorry, I slept badly last night, I'm not coming in" or order a $60 Uber to get somewhere on a whim. Moralizing at people is just virtue signaling.
This, and the fact that the HN demographic, mostly being techies, seem to be a bit disconnected from what real life looks like to 80%+ of the population of the world. A few instances per year of not coming in to work due to poor sleep or having to order Uber wouldn't just inconvenicence them - it would completely destroy their lives along with their children/families. People are doing what they need to do to survive and look after their loved ones.
I've only been in the full-time tech industry for about 3.5 years.
Before then I was working hourly jobs to make ends meet, including working half time or more while studying full-time in college, working during high school, etc. This so I could pay rent and tuition with minimal, if any, aid.
I couldn't even afford a car until after graduating from university.
I was walking or taking public transportation everywhere prior to finally getting a car.
I won't disagree that people in SV can be snobby but let's not jump to conclusions here.
He slammed into a pickup truck and killed that truck's occupant.
I had to be called in as a witness of the incident by the victim and trucking company's attorneys.
I think there's a strong difference between (rightfully so) blaming the companies that force this environment and the people who are just trying to make a living safely.
There has been enough indirect evidence to suggest advanced driver assist without a significant driver monitoring is dangerous (Google's report of their employees doing other things, the fatal accident of Uber's self-driving vehicle, various fatal and non-fatal accidents of Tesla autopilot due to misuse), but there's been no systematic study and we don't have enough public data to suggest it's one way or another.
I grew up in Southern California where one time my car broke down and my 20 minute commute (mostly highway) turned into a 2hr bus ride while my car was in the shop. Once I was an hour late to work because the bus came and went before it was scheduled for that stop. I've lived in a rural town in the south where no public transportation even existed. There wasn't even a way for most people to walk into town because there weren't even sidewalks. A few people biked, but it was pretty well known that if you weren't on a $5k bike riding in the nice area of town you had a DUI and were riding your kid's bike to get to work. I would have had to walk along a highway (a 30 minute walk) just to get to the store (I saw people doing this too). I've been in the Bay and NYC where busses have to wait at stops and there is light rail. Now I live in a city where I rarely drive my car and using my bike is easier to get around. These situations are very different and frankly I don't think people understand this.
The problem is that most of the US doesn't have infrastructure to relieve people of the choice between driving and being safe because they have to maintain their job. In many places there aren't even enough population density to make this economically feasible (aka profitable or net even). Someone was mentioning that technology can't solve this problem, but frankly this seems like the exact problem autonomous vehicles solve. Light rail is great, but it isn't a practical technology for most of the country.
You've never lived in the States, have you? The absolute vast majority of anything in the States is inaccessible without a car. If you live in a city, sure, you might get by with public transport (almost universally very bad in the States). Anywhere outside the city center? Good luck getting anywhere without a car.
If you can't stay awake for an hour that must be very challenging but I don't think you should be driving at all for longer distances. At least not on a road you share with other people!
Before then I walked if I had to, sometimes over a mile depending on the destination, or took public transportation.
And will it be easier to make those ends meet when you are dead, or paralysed, or locked up because you left someone else dead or paralysed?
The arguments that a few people are making here, as if not driving while so tired you might fall asleep would cause some devastating loss to society and herald the end of life as we know it, are just silly. Only a very small number of drivers would be affected, because fortunately most people aren't so irresponsible in the first place. And given the extremely high likelihood of those few drivers getting themselves and, worse, possibly many other people injured or dead, with all the negative consequences that will imply, it still doesn't make sense from a greater good perspective.
Oftentimes for people forced to work 2, 3, 4 or more jobs just to survive, these are also acceptable "solutions" to the problem. The risk analysis comes down to [low chance of dying now driving impaired] versus [medium chance of dying later, homeless/starving after losing job(s)].
I once arrived at work with blood all over my face, neck, and hands from biting my lips to stay awake.
Autopilot is so far, far, far out of reach for most people working multiple jobs that it's really a non-issue not worth debating for a long time, but the technology behind it would be a literal lifesaver if it were more widely available to the unfortunately large population of people that are forced to drive regardless of mental state in order to survive and/or provide for their families and/or other circumstances "out of their control".
Measures like opening windows in the middle of winter, playing loud music, pinching, etc. stop working eventually and a nap really is the only way out.
I do agree, power-naps are amazing to help you regain focus. One time I was driving and it was almost dawn, and I was desperately trying to force myself to reach the next town so I could get a room. I realized I probably wouldn't even make it that far and pulled over at the next rest stop and slept for 30 minutes. I woke up feeling more well-rested than I had any right to be.
When you start having micro-sleep episodes (your attention/memory has inexplicable gaps), or start experiencing sensory hallucinations, it's well past the time for you to rest.
Good news is I would only have killed myself. But honestly there is a reason young people have more car accidents, they make bad fucking choices. I was nothing but lucky!
Maybe you have a newborn at home, and... Got a bad sleep. Or were woken up by a fire alarm. Or maybe you're just drowsy in the mornings, like me!
I used to have a real easy 35 minute drive to work, on a single, straight road with a few sets of lights.
I probably nodded off a bit while driving at least once a month, if not more. Especially at a set of lights.
I'm not a morning person!
It's hard to say if there will be more or fewer accidents as this becomes prevalent. I'm wary of it by default given the already prevalent incidence of DUI and sleepy driving. Those individuals seem likely to use this as an excuse or crutch. I'd be happy to be surprised.
Computers are always getting better.
My money is on the computers.
There's a few places where one can live daily life without cars: a subset of really huge cities, some downtown areas of mid size cities. But usually we highly restrict housing from existing in such places, and we strict zoning prevents mixing of residential and commercial in areas that did not have it before these restrictions became prevalent in the last century.
So, I should never drive? Not OP, but I experience the same thing. Driving just makes me tired. I've tried running A/C at full cold, caffeine, loud music, audiobooks, etc. Nothing helps. The strange thing is, outside of driving I don't get tired or want to fall asleep except at bedtime. I don't drive when I'm drowsy. Driving make me drowsy. The bad thing about it is I usually don't realize that I'm getting sleepy until after I've dozed off once. Then I've got to keep myself awake long enough to get to the next rest stop. 20 minute nap and I'm good to go for another few hours.
> The bad thing about it is I usually don't realize that I'm getting sleepy until after I've dozed off once.
I'm not trying to be rude, but this sounds reckless. You absolutely should not be driving while you have this issue. Also, consider that you may have a sleep disorder.
As other people have said.. yes, you should never drive until you get this issue taken care of.
I appreciate that this sucks if you live in an environment that requires you to drive, but you are way too blasé about something that runs a decent risk of killing someone, and is absolutely not normal.
> The bad thing about it is I usually don't realize that I'm getting sleepy until after I've dozed off once
In England this knowledge potentially tips your actions from accidental death into manslaughter.
You need to fix this.
> The bad thing about it is I usually don't realize that I'm getting sleepy until after I've dozed off once.
This sounds pretty dangerous
not surprisingly that the "holier-than-thou" purists' arguments in this thread sound the same as the typical conservative argument against contraception - "by decreasing the weight of consequences it will encourage vice behaviour", and not surprisingly that these style arguments just outright fail in real life.
I don't know about the upthread commenter or how common a thing it is for him/her. But this isn't feasible advice. It is never possible to drive perfectly safely, it's just not. Everyone makes mistakes in cars, and preventing them needs to be a defense in depth treatment and not an impossible prohibition like this.
Saying "people sometimes drive tired" (goodness knows I have) leads to "maybe a driver-facing camera might save lives".
Saying "You should never drive tired!" is just a recipe for blaming the driver and fixing nothing.
You're shouting at a wall.
People think "drowsy" isn't a problem, the same way they think that texting and driving isn't a problem because they saw someone jump backwards in slow motion in The Matrix.
Drowsy driving is no better than buzzed driving, which legally is drunk driving.
If you know you can't drive in a safe manner, you shouldn't drive at all.
You might also be able to get a prescription for modafinil, which might be even more effective.
The car will know when you changed driver last time etc.
What it should do is continue to aggressively lane keep, switch on emergency flashers, and sound progressively louder alarms until you wake up, but NEVER stop lane keeping, even as the car slows down below 40mph. It should lane keep all the way down to 0 and keep sounding the alarms.
What does Tesla do if you actually fall asleep and ignore the warnings?
And if it happens say 3 times in a short amount of time, it should just ull you over.
It is great for medical emergencies (stroke/seizure) but of course you should not rely on it and drive without paying attention to the road.
Getting into the bay area, it was dark, and I was damn tired. Had this been a long trip of some kind, I'd have at least pulled over and done a power nap, but I foolishly decided to press on, since we were less than 30 minutes from home and bed.
I'd been using autopilot for most of the trip, closely supervising it of course.
Suddenly I was awakened by the frantic, loud beeping that you get when you don't keep some minor torque on the steering wheel for a while.
It scared the hell out of me and my family in the car.
With their help, we were able to make it home safely.
Your specific use case is valid, but the other commenters are also correct. Autopilot still needs to be supervised, and one should NOT be driving while extremely drowsy.
In my many decades of driving, and countless long trips, this is the first time I've fallen asleep, and I've always done the right thing and (at a minimum) taken power naps as needed.
But circumstances conspired and I did the wrong thing.
I'm not claiming that Autopilot saved our lives or anything; I would almost certainly have been woken up by the rumble strips when the car drifted out of the lane.
To those who might argue that using Tesla Autopilot might tend to cause people to take bigger relevant risks: that's possible, but it's been a godsend for us. Using it doesn't make me, personally, any less attentive of a driver. Indeed, I'm quite a bit more alert to the important things than without it.