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Comment by saberience | Hacker News Reader

Stop what lunacy? You realize thousands upon thousands of Americans are driving drunk every day? Or drive watching TikTok videos on their phone. How many car accidents do you think happen every week because humans are drunk or distracted?

Elon had his hands on the steering wheel ready to make any intervention, this is hardly some crazy and dangerous testing going on. I would be far more worried about the average American driver than Elon testing the latest version of FSD.

I’ve had an incident where a crazy guy fully stopped his car on the I5 fast-lane to LA trying to brake test me before getting out of his car to threaten me. I’m far more scared of people than I am of software.

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What? Elon was literally filming with the phone he was holding. He did not have his “hands on steering wheel ready to make any intervention”.

It won’t let you drive without both hands on the wheel.

1. False. https://youtu.be/Pb8b08TR760?si=1vmQAVCFxf6UuBSg

2. Elon mode. https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/20/23767041/tesla-hacker-elo...

3. https://twitter.com/RealDanODowd/status/1687106791715573761

4. The video clearly shows no hands are on the wheel at various points when Elon lowers the camera in his hands or when making 90 degree turns so the side of the yoke is pointed up and visible with no hand on it. The video is literally direct video evidence that your claim is untrue and you have no idea what you are talking about.

Wait, these videos don't prove shit.

In the "RealDanODowd" videos he has fitted an aftermarket accessory to the steering wheel to fake having someone touching and the other video "Elon Mode" had someone literally hack the car. Having Elon himself make a publicity video isn't a reflection on how all the cars work.

Anyway, Ford lets you use their system without hands on the wheel, as do the majority of other manufacturers. People just want to hate on Elon because of the "anti woke" crap but there's nothing demonstrably different to any other auto maker.

Way back in 2019 I rode in a Honda Civic that had lane keeping functionality (auto steering and braking) which let you take your hands of the wheel for short periods of time. I imagine the tech was about 1000 times less sophisticated, and in fact, I remember it leaving the lane and needing correcting often, where were the scary and inflammatory articles then?

Let's get real, there's one rule for any news about Tesla, and another rule for other car makers.

What are you talking about?

I said that Elon does not have his hands on the wheel. You then retorted saying that it will not let you drive without both hands on the wheel, implying that what I said is impossible.

I then provided 3 independent techniques available to Elon Musk that would allow him to drive without his hands on the wheel and pointed at direct video evidence proving your baseless assertion and implication are false.

As to your second point, Ford’s system is explicitly designed, advertised, and declared to be safe to operate hands free with attention being determined through a camera driver monitoring system (DMS). Tesla explicitly declares in the legal fine print that their system should only be used by a attentive driver with their hands on the wheel.

If you think it is unfair to hold Tesla to their own standards for what is safe usage then take that up with Tesla. If they just take liability for hands-free operation like Ford then Tesla can remove that requirement and there would be nothing to complain about if Tesla shows hands-free operation because that would be a legally supported mode. Until they do so they are absolutely guilty of demonstrating unsafe and unsupported operation in official, sanctioned, advertising.

This is why I'm just so disenfranchised with this site anymore. Just another echo chamber of people repeating whatever they think or want to be true to align with their cults of personality.

I don't ride a Telsa or an Elon and I know that's not true. SMH.

Lots of excuses in this thread for the average humans (which is objectively low quality), but not the software that is actively improving. This is why we can’t have nice things.

(have lost friends to both drunk and distracted drivers)

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