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Comment by yreg | Hacker News Reader

I don't get the point.

Autopilot is "just" an adaptive cruise control with line assist. It is not self driving. Of course it is going to crash when you are cruising at high speed and a semi suddenly rolls across the street. It also doesn't stop for stop signs or red lights, those are known limitations.

We can proceed into the discussion whether it is okay to call such a system 'autopilot'. One side will say that autopilot (also in airplanes) means driver's assist, not self driving. The other side will say that a common person thinks it means self driving and therefore it is misleading. But I think this terminology was debated to death on hacker news.

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> I don't get the point.

I'm happy to see more reporting like this now that Teslas are increasingly available as short-term rentals (e.g. Hertz's Tesla fleet). Meaning there's now a whole lot of Tesla drivers on the road with only a few days experience driving the machine. Very small chance car rental drivers read the manual or do any research on the car before driving it.

But I agree the issue has been debated to death on HN specifically. That said I think Tesla's PR would vehemently disagree with your description of autopilot being adaptive cruise control with lane assist. (If Tesla actually called it that, everyone would be happy)

Fair, Hertz should explain what's autopilot to their customers if it's their first time. Same goes for Tesla owners lending their vehicles to friends.

If they don't watch the manual video, they aren't going to figure out how to engage autopilot. There isn't a button labeled that. The manual also indicates limitations. If the rental agency isn't disabling the autopilot, and at least forcing the renter to agree to the disclaimer when they re enable it, they are being unwise. They need to clear out phones linked as keys anyway.

> If they don't watch the manual video, they aren't going to figure out how to engage autopilot. There isn't a button labeled that. The manual also indicates limitations.

Wanna guess what the odds are the person has a smart phone and defaults to answering such questions by searching google/youtube for a video clip showing how it's done?

Let's not act like "the manual video" is the only way to find such information...

That is a fair point. Another reason the rental agency would be really wise to disable it after each rental forcing the renter to agree they understand its limitations when they turn it back on.

Autopilot is not advertised or described to consumers as "just" adaptive cruise.

I don't know what meaningless mambo jumbo Tesla uses to describe the features and what BS Elon tweets, but at the very least Tesla is super clear about one thing:

> Current Autopilot features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous.

Elon has said it is better/safer then a human.

Elon claims a lot of crazy stuff, but do you have the original source in context?

Because autopilot is not autonomous and no one claims it to be. It e.g. cannot solve crossroads or react to traffic lights.

So I guess he either said that about FSD (which would still be questionable but at least not nonsense) or he meant that drivers using autopilot assistance have in general less crashes than drivers who don't use it.

Yea he does, which is the problem. People will hear the claims and believe them, go out buy a car, then die or kill someone’s because of it.

So no source?

Again, no Tesla owner thinks autopilot is full autonomy, since it very clearly isn't. I don't know if you have ever used it, but you would find out after driving a few meters.

I’m not digging up something Elon has said many times about Tesla autopilot

Also right here, in this case, we have a Tesla owner who seemed to think it was, and is dead.

I doubt Elon said what you think he said.

And regarding the victim – nah, he knew full well, he was just careless. Many drivers are.

Source(s)?

> Autopilot - Future of Driving - Autopilot enables your car to steer, accelerate and brake automatically within its lane under your active supervision, assisting with the most burdensome parts of driving. [...]

https://www.tesla.com/en_eu/models

Reading this, without any other context or knowledge about their capabilities, it does sound like the car can control itself and pilot itself automatically. The name is disingenuous and misleading, so no wonder people think the car can steer, accelerate and brake by itself even though in cases like this, it did neither.

It can do all of those things though. Usually does. Usually is why you are there. I can't imagine anyone who has even just test driven one doing anything but frantically scanning the roadway while somehow white knuckling with a loose grip. The manual and the somewhat erratic behavior of the 3d model representing what it is aware of are not confidence inspiring. Added since this incident, the driver monitor camera, which uses ir illumination at night, disables autopilot if it decides you aren't looking at the road, has some false positives. The only thing I trust it for is stop and go traffic on a major highway. It does that reliably. I'm still scanning nervously to avoid a low speed collision. I've had it automatically engage brakes once in what it thought was an emergency when cruise control was off. I saw the person cutting me off and was about to brake with plenty of time. My wife agreed with the car...

"The car is literally driving itself" as on-screen text in one of the advertisements

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