Tesla driver dies after his Model 3 stops on highway, gets hit by two other
The whole premise of "almost working" autopilot is the logical thing to do from Tesla's business perspective but deeply flawed from a safety one.<p>The allure of having a car that drives itself is to relax the mind from paying attention to the road, handling 99% of the situations correctly through the software. But the 1% that require human input are made much more dangerous because the driver not only needs to handle the situation, they need to instantly catch up and familiarize themselves with the situation they've found themselves in. What was the car trying to do? Why is it suddenly stopping? What do my blind spots look like? Is there anybody behind me? Was anybody in the process of passing me?<p>Unfortunately the time it takes to refamiliarize with the situation could exceed the total time budget to respond.<p>It's similar to not paying attention to the road and being in the passenger seat when a junior driver is driving instead. But there are 2 exceptions:<p>- Most people <i>increase</i> the attention they pay to the road when a learner is behind the wheel. Preparing to respond and offer guidance to correct.<p>- Self-driving software is a lot more indeterministic than a new driver. And software updates can easily change the behavior in non trivial ways. As if the driving student had Multiple Personality Disorder, one day being over cautious in certain situation and other days over-confident. Though I contend that MPD is actually <i>more predictable</i> than an opaque algorithm, as there are other human clues about the behavior mode of the moment that could help guide the response of the trainer.