Another Tesla on autopilot steers towards a barrier
This kind of video makes me wonder: what is the &quot;autopilot&quot; feature actually for? Do people generally like it? (I don&#x27;t own a Tesla and I&#x27;ve never driven one.)<p>If you&#x27;re supposed to keep your hands on the wheel, and given videos like this that show you really <i>need</i> to keep your hands on the wheel and pay attention, is automatic steering really that big of a deal?<p>Cruise control, now, that really is useful because it automates a trivial chore (maintaining a steady speed) and will do it well enough to improve your gas mileage. The main failure condition is &quot;car keeps driving at full speed towards an obstacle&quot; but an automatic emergency brake feature (again, reasonably straightforward, and standard in many new cars) can mitigate that pretty well.<p>It seems to me that autopilot falls into an uncanny valley, where it&#x27;s not simple enough to be a reliable automation or a useful safety improvement, but it also isn&#x27;t smart enough to reduce the need for an alert human driver. So what&#x27;s the point?<p>If you&#x27;re excited about self-driving cars because they&#x27;ll reduce accidents, as many people here claim, what you should really be excited about is the more mundane incremental improvements like pedestrian airbags. Those will actually save lives right now.