‘Boycott Tesla’ ads to air during Super Bowl — “Tesla dances away from liability in Autopilot crashes by pointing to a note buried deep in the owner’s manual, that says Autopilot is only safe on fr…::undefined
‘Boycott Tesla’ ads to air during Super Bowl — “Tesla dances away from liability in Autopilot crashes by pointing to a note buried deep in the owner’s manual, that says Autopilot is only safe on fr…::undefined
When I was looking to buy a new car back in early 2019, I walked into a showroom for a final test drive before I threw some money down for a Model 3.
It started to rain pretty hard on the return drive back. When executing an auto lane change, the sensors freaked out because of the water interference and they violently yanked the car back into the origin lane halfway through the lane change. It hydroplaned a hair and scared this shit out of my wife and I. The Telsa employee assured us “it’s ok, this is normal.” Hearing that was normal was not comforting.
Upon returning to the showroom, a different model 3 in the parking lot started backing toward a small child. My wife saw what was happening, threw herself in front of the car, and that caused it to halt.
I’m sure the software has progressed in the past 5 years, but suffice to say, we changed our minds on the car at that time. Those two incidents within 15 minutes really made us question how that shit was legal.
If the car was backing out, that was a human driver in control, not autopilot. Autopilot can only be enabled while driving on a well-marked roadway. The first part is plausible however. Likely the software at the time could not handle rain appropriately and you are absolutely right to question this if they tell you it was normal.
The car was being summoned from a parking space. Summon / Smart Summon will absolutely back out of a space fully autonomously.
These instances of errors are obviously alarming, but all the evidence we have is that they’re still safer than human drivers. They will make mistakes - and sometimes those mistakes will cost lives - but they will make fewer mistakes than humans. Given this, as visceral as it feels when we hear of these stories, I think our ire is misplaced. Automated driving will never be perfect. If that’s the bar we’re aiming for we should just give up and go home. The goal is better than humans, and in many conditions, it’s already there.