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Comment by galoisscobi | Hacker News Reader

That’s cool. I wonder if they’ve stopped disengaging autopilot milliseconds before crashing to evade legal liability.

Context: “On average in these crashes, Autopilot aborted vehicle control less than one second prior to the first impact. The way NHTSA describes this, Autopilot may have been designed to disengage whenever it senses an imminent impact risk. That would be a way for the system always to present flawless numbers and never to be blamed for anything.“

Source: https://www.autoevolution.com/news/nhtsa-upgrades-autopilot-...

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Jumping over to Tesla's actual page, https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport,

> To ensure our statistics are conservative, we count any crash in which Autopilot was deactivated within 5 seconds before impact, and we count all crashes in which the incident alert indicated an airbag or other active restraint deployed.

Five seconds is not enough time for a human to regain situational awareness. Also, airbag crashes are quite rare compared to non-airbag crashes.

Why would the driver have lost situational awareness?

Because people all over the world have shown, when they don't feel like they have to pay attention to the road, they won't. Distracted drivers crash into other cars all the time because they're fucking with their phones, or the radio, or whatever their kid just spilled in the back seat. These are people actively engaged in driving the car who "momentarily" lose their focus and crash because they can't orient themselves to the situation in time to avert a crash.

I'd expect that the illusion that the car is paying attention for you would make the situation worse.

I agree. Enhanced autopilot and FSD are big mistakes and it’s a shame they are allowed. Judging by articles and by comments I read on forums, though, autopilot is a significant attraction to many owners (I own a model Y and I drive in LA with a kid in the back, and I’ve never used autopilot and have no interest). And tech blogs will give a Tesla a poor review entirely because the autopilot is wanting.

If such enhanced autopilot systems are inevitable, what is the solution here? I’d assume more intense monitoring and nagging of the drivers.

Because they haven't been driving the car.

Five seconds is an eternity when driving.

Eternity when driving and paying attention. Blink of an eye when letting the car drive itself as advertised.

But it sounds tons of alarms and lights

That's great! Thanks for linking this.

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