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this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2024
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I’ve often wondered why the FTC allows it to be marketed as “Full Self-Driving”. That’s blatant false advertising.
As is “autopilot”. There’s no automatic pilot. You’re still expected to keep your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road.
I am so sick and tired of this belief because it's clear people have no idea what Autopilot on a plane actually does. They always seem to assume it flies the plane and the pilot doesn't do anything apparently. Autopilot alone does not fly the damned plane by itself.
"Autopilot" in a plane keeps the wings level at a set heading, altitude, and speed. It's literally the same as cruise control with lane-centering, since there's an altitude issue on a road.
There are more advanced systems available on the market that can be installed on smaller planes and in use on larger jets that can do things like auto takeoff, auto land, following waypoints, etc. without pilot input, but basic plain old autopilot doesn't do any of that.
That expanded capability is similar to how things like "Enhanced Autopilot" on a Tesla can do extra things like change lanes, follow highway exits on a navigated route, etc. Or how "Full Self-Driving" is supposed to follow road signs and lights, etc. but those are additional functions, not part of "Autopilot" and differentiated with their own name.
Autopilot, either on a plane or a Tesla, alone doesn't do any of that extra shit. It is a very basic system.
The average person misunderstanding what a word means doesn't make it an incorrect name or description.
I say let Tesla market it as Autopilot if they pass similar regulatory safety frameworks as aviation autopilot functions.
Flight instructor here.
I've seen autopilot systems that have basically every level of complexity you can imagine. A lot of Cessna 172s were equipped with a single axis autopilot that can only control the ailerons and can only maintain wings level. Others have control of the elevators and can do things like altitude hold, or ascend/descend at a given rate. More modern ones have control of all three axes and integration with the attitude instruments, and can do things like climb to an altitude and level off, turn to a heading and stop, or even something like fly a holding pattern over a fix. They still often don't have any control over the power plant, and small aircraft typically cannot land themselves, but there are autopilots installed in piston singles that can fly an approach to minimums.
And that's what's available on piston singles; airline pilots seldom fly the aircraft by hand anymore.
“But one reason that pilots will opt to turn the system on much sooner after taking off is if it’s stormy out or there is bad weather. During storms and heavy fog, pilots will often turn autopilot on as soon as possible.
This is because the autopilot system can take over much of the flying while allowing the pilot to concentrate on other things, such as avoiding the storms as much as possible. Autopilot can also be extremely helpful when there is heavy fog and it’s difficult to see, since the system does not require eyesight like humans do.”
Does that sound like something Tesla’s autopilot can do?
https://www.skytough.com/post/when-do-pilots-turn-on-autopilot
Flight instructor here. The flying and driving environments are quite different, and what you need an "autodriver" to do is a bit different from an "autopilot."
In a plane, you have to worry a lot more about your attitude, aka which way is up. This is the first thing we practice in flight school with 0-hour students, just flying straight ahead and keeping the airplane upright. This can be a challenge to do in low visibility environments such as in fog or clouds, or even at night in some circumstances, and your inner ears are compulsive liars the second you leave the ground, so you rely on your instruments when you can't see, especially gyroscopic instruments such as an attitude indicator. This is largely what an autopilot takes over for from the human pilot, to relieve him of that constant low-level task to concentrate on other things.
Cars don't have to worry about this so much; for normal highway driving any situation other than "all four wheels in contact with the road" is likely an unrecoverable emergency.
Navigation in a plane means keeping track of your position in 3D space relative to features on the Earth's surface. What airspace are you in, what features on the ground are you flying over, where is the airport, where's that really tall TV tower that's around here? Important for finding your way back to the airport, preventing flight into terrain or obstacles, and keeping out of legal trouble. This can be accomplished with a variety of ways, many of which can integrate with an autopilot. Modern glass cockpit systems with fully integrated avionics can automate the navigation process as well, you can program in a course and the airplane can fly that course by itself, if appropriately equipped.
Navigation for cars is two separate problems; there's the big picture question of "which road am I on? Do I take the next right? Where's my exit?" which is a task that requires varying levels of precision from "you're within this two mile stretch of road" to "you're ten feet from the intersection." And there's the small picture question of "are we centered in the traffic lane?" which can have a required precision of inches. These are two different processes.
Anticollision, aka not crashing into other planes, is largely a procedural thing. We have certain best practices such as "eastbound traffic under IFR rules fly on the odd thousands, westbound traffic flies on the even thousands" so that oncoming traffic should be a thousand feet above or below you, that sort of thing, plus established traffic patterns and other standard or published routes of flight for high traffic areas. Under VFR conditions, pilots are expected to see and avoid each other. Under IFR conditions, that's what air traffic control is for, who use a variety of techniques to sequence traffic to make sure no one is in the same place at the same altitude at the same time, anything from carefully keeping track of who is where to using radar systems, and increasingly a thing called ADS-B. There are also systems such as TCAS which are aircraft carried traffic detection electronics. Airplanes are kept fairly far apart via careful sequencing. There's also not all that much else up there, not many pedestrians or cyclists thousands of feet in the air, wildlife and such can be a hazard but mostly during the departure and arrival phases of flight while relatively low. This is largely a human task; autopilots don't respond to air traffic control and many don't integrate with TCAS or ADS-B, this is the pilot's job.
Cars are expected to whiz along mere inches apart via see and avoid. There is no equivalent to ATC on the roads, cars aren't generally equipped with communication equipment beyond a couple blinking lights, and any kind of automated beacon for electronic detection absolutely is not the standard. Where roads cross at the same level some traffic control method such as traffic lights are used for some semblance of sequencing but in all conditions it requires visual see-and-avoid. Pedestrians, cyclists, wildlife and debris are constant collision threats during all phases of driving; deer bound across interstates all the time. This is very much a visual job, hell I'm not sure it could be done entirely with radar, it likely requires optical sensors/cameras. It's also a lot more of the second-to-second workload of the driver. I honestly don't see this task being fully automated with roads the way they are.
This is GPT.
After that intro I don't trust a single word of what that site has to say.
If the writer didn't bother to write the text, i hope they don't expect me to bother to read it.
Why in the world would you think that’s gpt? That’s not the normal style of gpt and it’s definitely the style of normal corporate sites.
I'd wager most people, when talking about a plane's autopilot mean the follow waypoints or Autoland capability.
Also, it's hard to argue "full self driving" means anything but the car is able to drive fully autonomously. If they were to market it as "advanced driver assist" I'd have no issue with it.
Many people are also pretty stupid when it comes to any sort of technology more complicated than a calculator. That doesn't mean the world revolves around a complete lack of knowledge.
My issue is just with people expecting basic Autopilot to do more than it's designed or intended to do, and refusing to acknowledge their expectation might actually be wrong.
Definitely won't get an argument from me there. FSD certainly isn't in a state to really be called that yet. Although, to be fair, when signing up for it, and when activating it there are a lot of notices that it is in testing and will not operate as expected.
At what point do we start actually expecting and enforcing that people be responsible with potentially dangerous things in daily life, instead of just blaming a company for not putting enough warnings or barriers to entry?
Volvo seeks to have zero human deaths in their cars. Some places seek zero fatality driving environments. These are cultures where safety is front and center. Most FSD enthusiasts (see comments in the other threads below) cite safety as the main impetus for these systems. Hopefully we would see similar cultural values in Tesla.
Unfortunately, Musk tweets out jokes when responding to a video of people having sex on autopilot. That is Tesla culture. Musk is responsible for putting these dangerous things in consumers hands and has created a culture where irresponsible and possibly fatal abuse of those things is something funny for everyone to laugh at. Of course, punish the individual users who go against the rules and abuse the systems. You also have to punish the company, and the idiot at the top, who holds those same rules in contempt.
Then the issue is simply what we perceive as the predominant marketing message. I know that in all legally binding material Tesla states what exactly the system is capable of and how alert the driver needs to be. But in my opinion that is vastly overshadowed by the advertising Tesla runs for their FSD capability. They show a 5 second message about how they are required by law to warn you about being alert at all times, before showing the car driving itself for 3 minutes, with the demo driver having the hands completely off the wheel.
Please, most people don't know how to use a scientific calculator at all.
I never said it was a scientific calculator.
Fair enough
Factually incorrect. There are autopilot systems on planes now that can takeoff, fly, and land the flight on their own. So yes, "autopilot" is EXACTLY what people are assuming it to mean in many cases. Especially on planes that they would typically be accustom to... which is the big airliners.
Now where you're missing the point... There are varying degrees of autopilot. And that would be fine and dandy for Tesla's case if you wish to invoke it. But considering the company has touted it to be the "most advanced" and "Full self driving" and "will be able to drive you from california to new york on it's own". They've set the expectation in that it is the most advanced autopilot. Akin to the plane that doesn't actually need a pilot (although one is always present) for all three major parts of the flight. No tesla product comes even close to that claim, and I'm willing to bet they never do in their lifetime.
It’s not even the closest thing to self driving on the market, Mercedes has started selling a car that doesn’t require you to look at the road.
Only works under 40 mph. Only available in 2 states. Not available until the end of this year.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a42672470/2024-mercedes-benz-eqs-s-class-drive-pilot-autonomous-us-debut/
But it works and it's hands off. Tesla can't even legally do that under any condition.
And fuck you if you ask Tesla to pay for any mistakes their software might make. It is ALWAYS your fault.
So, greater than any speed on a Tesla and available in more states?
Because they're doing shit responsibly.
For the target audience they chose that thing is a fucking bargain. Do you know how many people making damn good money sit in hours of 4 lane bumper to bumper traffic every day? "You don't have to drive and we assume liability if our system fucks up" is a massive value add.
(Not enough that I'd ever consider dealing with that kind of commute no matter what you paid me. But still.)
Level 3 in the S-Class and EQS has been available since may 2022. And the speed limit is there because that is part of a UN regulation that the Mercedes is certified for. The regulation has been updated since the release of Mercedes Drive Pilot to allow speeds up to 140km/h but Mercedes needs to recertify for that.
Still the most advanced system that is legal to use on public roads, worldwide. Tesla’s most advanced system is many leagues below that, so not sure why it’s so hard to believe for some people that Tesla is nothing but an also-ran.