Comment on Tesla drivers run Autopilot where it’s not intended — with deadly consequences
Nurse_Robot@lemmy.world 11 months agoA Tesla driving on Autopilot crashed through a T intersection at about 70 mph and flung the young couple into the air, killing Benavides Leon and gravely injuring Angulo. In police body-camera footage obtained by The Washington Post, the shaken driver says he was “driving on cruise” and took his eyes off the road when he dropped his phone.
But the 2019 crash reveals a problem deeper than driver inattention. It occurred on a rural road where Tesla’s Autopilot technology was not designed to be used. Dash-cam footage captured by the Tesla and obtained exclusively by The Post shows the car blowing through a stop sign, a blinking light and five yellow signs warning that the road ends and drivers must turn left or right.
CmdrShepard@lemmy.one 11 months ago
It’s insane that people are blaming this on Autopilot when there is a driver sitting behind the wheel who also missed a stop sign, blinking light, and five yellow warning signs while driving at 70MPH. You could physically do this with any other car that has cruise control and nobody would be blaming the car.
Nurse_Robot@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I haven’t seen anyone blaming the autopilot for situations like this
CmdrShepard@lemmy.one 11 months ago
Your above comment was blaming it. Why even bring Autopilot up otherwise?
XeroxCool@lemmy.world 11 months ago
The above comment, which was a summary of the article, doesn’t blame autopilot. It brings up autopilot as being used by an inattentive driver outside autopilot’s intended use conditions. Acting like autopilot, it’s marketing, and it’s general population perception is an innocent bystander in this situation is, however, disingenuous. You don’t give a car to someone and say “it has airbags, it’s safe” and trust that they’ll actually be ok on the road with no further info, right? So why would you think releasing untested software in a product with overhyped marketing using unfamiliar terms^1 would just be ok?