Your attempt to paint anyone who uses autopilot as a reckless, careless individual is failing.

You don't turn it on then hop on the back seat then take a nap. You sit there wjrh your hands in the wheel watching.

Taking your logic to the extreme, anyone who uses old school cruise control is a danger to society. I mean, they might forget to take over control when traffic slows and ram into the back of someone. Or there could be a bug and it could accelerate uncontrollably. How do you know it won't? Did you review the programming with your own eyes?

Have you ever had a beverage while driving? You could have killed someone when looking down for it and then driving one handed. Have you ever driven while tired? Or maybe too many hours straight without a break? Picked up your phone to answer it? Checked a text even though you know you shouldn't?

There are a lot of ways to kill someone while driving. I don't believe that using autopilot is anywhere near the top of the list of dangerous things I've done while driving. It's silly to even discuss it in that category.

If you put on autopilot then read a book? Yeah that's reckless. But I've seen people reading books while driving cars that *don't* have auto pilot as well. It's the book, not auto pilot.

https://media0.giphy.com/media/3o6Mb...BT8I/giphy.gif

Why don't you believe that? Why do you believe that it's safe enough to use? I get that it's fun. I don't dispute that. Again, I'm not even suggesting that it's unsafe.

I am just completely unaware of any reasonable reasons to believe that it is safe (or at least using it is roughly as safe as a regular person driving manually) and asking all of you what makes you believe that it's safe to use.

Do you see the disconnect between my question and your answer?

Musk and Tesla have been deceptive and misleading about capabilities and safety in hawking Autpilot and then hidden behind the word "beta" when caught. This also doesn't mean that it's not safe, but it doesn't give any reason to believe that it is. Given the man and the company's repeated difficulties in being truthful about...damn near everything, why on earth would you risk your lives and the lives of those around you based on their claims without any kind of independent verification? Because it's fun? :rolleyes:

sigh

https://www.thedrive.com/tech/26455/...study-unmasked

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...dog-groups-say

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/tesl...ry?id=61312214

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...outing-model-3

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohn.../#63417b5a675a

https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors...cing_crap_has/

https://bgr.com/2018/07/11/tesla-mod...safe-to-drive/

https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughMuskS...into_stanford/

Why do you believe cruise control is safe to use?

Because you're still "driving" and you can override it any time you don't like what it is doing. What about this isn't clear and/or convincing?

It's really not anywhere near as complicated as you're trying to make it.

Nope.

Was shooting down your implication that anything that could theoretically reduce safety a small amount (or an amount that you cant quantify precisely) is somehow reckless.

Why do you risk the lives of everyone around you by using cruise control? Who told you it was safe?
Please answer seriously so I can copy paste the answer back to you regarding autopilot.

I asked a question. You don't answer and then demand I answer your counter questions? Nice.

I don't understand what's so "complicated" about telling me what makes you believe it's safe enough to use. I really don't. :dunno:

Me too.

https://static.carsdn.co/cldstatic/w...4763869969.jpg

I mean that guy isn’t driving because his engine is off.

The question Clyde is posing reflects a pretty fundamental issue at the heart of various legal systems.

There are basically two ways of dealing with new things. Either you prohibit them until people can show they are safe, or you let people do them until they are shown to be dangerous, and require compensation be paid to anyone that is injured.

The American legal system (generally) works on the second principle. Other, code-based systems are (generally) closer to the first. The problem with the first is that it’s hard to prove a negative, so innovation can be harder in a system like that.

Even in America, there are exceptions, of course, for things where we feel like innovation and experimentation are just too risky to proceed without approval. Airplane type approval and drugs are two big ones.

But cars have generally not fallen into that category. The govt sets a minimum safety standard for some things, but beyond that you’re free to innovate. If you fuck up and kill people, they can sue you.

I don’t wholly trust autopilot. I don’t like it and I don’t use it. But the answer to Clyde’s question about how we as a society let people use it lies in the tort system. If it’s defective, if it causes crashes, people will sue and the problem will get fixed. The threat of that (hopefully) means that Tesla has done its due diligence to make sure the system works.

Would you ride in Elon's robotaxi
 

Well said. There was a recent article in the times about this too (about the 737 max but more broadly about how the US differs in its approach to regulation from Europe:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/o...on-boeing.html

Autonomous vehicles (and AI in general) is definitely leading us into uncharted territory.

Humans are also really bad at judging risk.

Yes, that's an interesting article, though I think the point sits somewhat awkwardly in the 737 Max discussion, since aircraft type approval is one of the best examples of "ask questions, shoot later" that exists in the American legal system.

The precautionary principle is one reason why the EU has been so aggressive in banning the use of GMOs, despite the complete lack of any evidence of harm. The problem with it is precisely the one the NYT identifies--without data, if you have to prove a negative you're really vulnerable to magical thinking. "What if" becomes a roadblock that you can't get around.

Would you ride in Elon's robotaxi
 

For sure. Defining strong regulations upfront sounds good in theory but is very difficult in practice when it comes to new technology.

The 737 max issue is an interesting example, though, in that the problem involved software and it sounds like the FAA feels increasingly out of their depth when it comes to evaluating the safety of new software features (leading to the “self certification”). Unintended consequences arising from software are going to be an increasing problem in general. That being said, I do wonder wtf Boeing was thinking when it implemented that software with no sanity check/ redundancy. That’s a basic principle that’s been part of aerospace engineering for a long time.

I believe there are already regulations in the US that require redundancy when it comes to autonomous vehicles atkeast.