Tesla Semi

Perfect!

 

Someone could actually make a Volvo uglier

 

You miss the point entirely.. I have auto assist brakes on my truck just like most new trucks have.. Do you think I dont have to use the brakes?

If I just roll down the highway run into a car because the auto brakes didnt engage, should I blame freightliner for the crash or am I to blame because I wasnt paying attention?

Telsa is tne same thing.. It has auto assit steering it is not self driving. Added to this just like you wouldnt use cruise control on a city street these people shouldn't be using the auto steering assist off of the highway..

Pretty much every one of these Telsa crashes the driver was not paying attention and using the auto assit in a place he wasnt supposed to use it.. Yet instead of blaming the drivers you just want to hate on Telsa..

Do you blame Harey Davison everytime a motorcycle rider is killed on one of their bikes because they make vechile which are not survivable in a serious crash or do you blame the rider/driver of who ever they crash into?

 

Why NASA thinks the Tesla Autopilot is a bad idea

NASA has been studying the pyschological effects of automation for decades, and thus may have something to teach Tesla, notes Scientific American.

"News flash: cars in 2017 equal airplanes in 1983," Stephen Casner—a research psychologist at NASA's Human Systems Integration Division—told the magazine.

For the public at large, the name "Autopilot" seems to imply a similarity to the automated systems that help fly planes, although the capabilities of the Tesla system are much more limited.

Tesla Autopilot is more akin to the bundles of driver-assistance features offered by other carmakers than to a true semi-autonomous system.

Even if Autopilot had greater capability, NASA's Casner highlighted a crucial difference between the operation of cars and airplanes that makes its use much riskier.

An autopilot system temporarily takes the human operator out of the loop of control, and the transition back to human control cannot happen instantaneously.

But because airplanes fly several miles up in the sky, pilots typically have a minute or more to transition from autopilot back to manual control.

That's not the case with cars, where drivers may have 1 second or less to react to an emergency situation.

Humans also have trouble paying attention when automated systems are running, NASA has found.

It is difficult for humans to monitor repetitive processes for a long time, a phenomenon known as the "vigilance decrement."

In other words, the more competent an automated system, the more likely the driver is to zone out.

That may be even more likely in automated cars, as the technology is often pitched to consumers—explicitly or implicitly—as a convenience to let them use time normally spent concentrating on the road for other tasks.

Tesla seems determined to use Autopilot as the foundation for fully-autonomous cars, but a wide gulf remains today between those two technologies.

 

This is why I think something like Cadillac's Super Cruise is a much better system (of course it is easier to be better if you come out later with a technology that addresses your predecessor's deficiencies ). It only works on specific highways that have been scanned to extreme accuracy (2") and it requires the driver to remain attentive (monitored via driver-facing camera).

 

The problem I see with Tesla is one of infrastructure. Sure, these trucks will sell to cities and certain companies that want to virtue signal but to make any real inroads you need actual long haul truckers and companies to buy them. The infrastructure isn't there and building it will take time and money. To a trucking company, a truck is a tool and little more. It's purpose is to make money and keep customers happy. It cannot do that if it cannot be serviced in a timely manner.

The ability to get trucks back on the road now is already severely limited as most of us can attest. There are so few mechanics that can fix a truck with a sensor gremlin problem. Go ahead and take your Freightliner to the Houston dealer, they are so backed up you won't see it for a few weeks.

Telsa could train and set up service centers near big cities to help but even this won't be acceptable to most since breakdowns occur everywhere. The last three places I broke down were Fort Stockton, TX, Ashville N.C and Flagstaff AZ. What are the chances there is a Telsa dealer near any of those cities in the next 10 years?

 

Yeah, something like that is what Telsa should do with theirs. Have it set up so it can only be engaged on actual highways via gps.

 

So now your car moniters you to see if you are paying attention. Tinfoil hat anyone?

 

In every single accident involving a Tesla car in autopilot mode, Tesla blamed the driver for not paying attention. They know this because there are sensors in the steering wheel that tells them when your hands are on it.

 

What the hell is the point of providing an "autonomous mode" if you have to effectively drive it, still? Seems to me like having your hands on the wheel while in autonomous mode might create more of a danger. (Sending "confusing messages" to the car's processing chips)