Supposedly, he was watching Harry Potter when he crashed. I would never trust a machine driving me around.
“I would never trust a machine driving me around.” is a bit of a strong statement and most likely inaccurate. Have you ever been on an automated tram or even an airliner? If so, you have already done just that. Autopilot flight is near universal on airliners especially in cruise but even autolands are fairly common and even required in some conditions.
No technology is perfect under all unusual conditions so I don’t think a fatal accident or two is a show-stopper. If that was the case, we wouldn’t have any technology at all because almost any of it can and does kill (usually at a much lower rate than the human processes it replaces however).
I don’t have a problem with the concept except that I actually like driving. The only thing that bothers me is that Tesla claims that drivers should keep their hands on the wheel and their eyes on the road at all time even in autopilot mode. That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. I am not putting a car in autopilot mode if I still have to do the same things I would have to do anyway if I drive it manually. Either it is “make yourself a sandwich and kick back and relax” mode or it isn’t worth it at least right now. I will not pay extra to be a test driver for a new system that is still in development.
It ain’t called bleeding edge technology for nothing. I’m just happy that others do the bleeding.
There is an existing thread here.
I recently read an article in the NYTimes about this. The article mentioned first that the Tesla does not have an autopilot; it has assisted driving and they warn you not to use it without remaining aware. More interesting was that the article went on to say that Google had experimented with having employees using this kind of assisted driving. And discovered that it was essentially impossible for a driver who was doing essentially nothing to maintain full awareness of the conditions. Some even fell asleep. So Google ended that experiment as is going (slowly) towards fully automated driving. The reason I say slowly is that their current of automated cars are restricted to carefully surveyed routes with no surprises. I don’t really expect to see really automated driving for maybe ten years, if then.
You missed my point. I’m sticking to my statement. I hate flying (have a fear of it), and of course I rode in an automated vehicle before, but my feeling is still there: I don’t TRUST machines driving me around. I drive and have complete control of my car and I would never TRUST a car or any other automated vehicle to drive me around.
As Dewey Finn points out there is a thread already in IMHO about this topic and the OP belongs in that forum anyway. Since there hasn’t been much discussion in this thread I chose to close it rather than disrupt the other thread with some confusing out of context posts.
ERON at this point it is only a strong suggestion, when opening a new thread please try to have more substance.