Comment by mft_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mft_ | Hacker News Reader

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I think OP is right with what the ultimate question should be.

Let's agree that a normal driver without autopilot (ND) is mostly attentive, with occasional attention lapses (frequency depending on the individual).

That same normal driver according to MIT, is less attentive when using an autopilot system - let's call this autopilot distraction (AD).

However, the Autopilot system, despite its weaknesses, likely offers some extra safety benefit (ASB) - especially if it can somewhat counteract the attention lapses that a normal driver would have.

So the question becomes, does the autopilot's marginal benefit outweigh the autopilot distraction?

Is: ND > (ND - AD + ASB)?

However, determining this would be difficult without real-world testing. In the real world, the factor which matters most is whether accidents happen (kind of the Overall Survival of this experiment) - which is why testing the real-world accident rate is important - and is ultimately the important question.

Autopilot creates a false sense of safety, as long as the people that payed for it and are eventually using it, are (by their own standards that made them buy it) not good at driving and not interested to get better at it.

But the fallacy stands in the numbers where Autopilot “safety report” is presented by Tesla and compared to average drivers performances.

Why a fallacy? Because the human driver drives everywhere, at any time, in any weather conditions and on all drivable roads. The Autopilot goes on and off based on how drivable the environment is by the Autopilot system detection done by the sensors involved. In addition to that, up to this point, almost all of its errors where caught and corrected by its users, so no one could actually estimate what would happen if Autopilot owners would let the software do the driving for 100%, same thing the humans do.

Also, once disconnected from the driving system (feet off the pedals and hands off the steering wheel) the driver would need up to 20 seconds (or even more) to reconnect and fully understand what the car does and what the traffic around is like. That is a recipe for disaster while every second the situation changes inside and outside the car.

The autopilot system, including the inattentive driver, is the system currently. We don't need to test what happens if ONLY the software drivers, that is not is what happening.

Based on my own observation, Tesla drivers, despite being supposedly inattentive, catch a fair number of errors in autopilot. So they are part of the system.

That factor (human involvement, even if imperfect) coupled with the overall safety of the tesla approach (which includes safety benefits in a whole range of areas) may mean that despite this supposed "expose" of the "inattentive" driver the system is safer overall.

One thing folks "exposing" tesla drivers seem to assume is that non-tesla drivers are very good drivers. They are not. It's takes minutes looking into cars to see this. I was just next to a non-tesla road rager who nearly caused three accidents trying to get at this truck.

If places like MIT did some more actual studies on system effectiveness I'd be REALLY curious at fatality rates etc for folks driving Teslas in a normal way, yes, in driving in ANY kind of weather.

Same thing with emergency vehicle accidents which made the news. How many first responder fatalities were caused by Tesla's vs non Tesla vehicle? It could turn out that many / most are caused by inattentive gas powered no auto-pilot cars that are the ones actually killing first responders.

I was tempted to not reply, as some of what you wrote feels like it's verging into axe-to-grind / genuinely crazy / TSLAQ territory, but here goes...

> Autopilot creates a false sense of safety, as long as the people that payed for it and are eventually using it, are (by their own standards that made them buy it) not good at driving and not interested to get better at it.

Or... there are people that are good attentive drivers who buy it as a driver aid - to minimise tiredness on long journeys?

> But the fallacy stands in the numbers where Autopilot “safety report” is presented by Tesla and compared to average drivers performances.

Yes, the methodology of the safety report is probably flawed, but that's a totally different subject.

> Also, once disconnected from the driving system (feet off the pedals and hands off the steering wheel)

...which isn't how Autopilot currently works - you are asked to maintain contact with the steering wheel and have to prove it by providing torque on the wheel every few seconds. (Yes,

> the driver would need up to 20 seconds (or even more) to reconnect and fully understand what the car does and what the traffic around is like. That is a recipe for disaster while every second the situation changes inside and outside the car.

...really, just... what?

a) where does this (frankly ludicrous) 20 seconds statistic come from? b) you're not accounting for (the many?) people who might not be actively driving when Autopilot is functioning (that's the point, of course) but are still watching the road, mirrors, maintaining situational awareness, etc.

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