<story><title>Tesla’s Autopilot found partly to blame for 2018 crash on the 405</title><url>https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-09-04/tesla-autopilot-is-found-partly-to-blame-for-2018-freeway-crash</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>chrisseaton</author><text>&amp;gt; There&amp;#x27;s virtually no way of being both attentive and passive for long periods of time.&lt;p&gt;How do aircraft pilots manage it?</text></item><item><author>c3534l</author><text>The best way to stay attentive behind the wheel is to actually be the one driving. There&amp;#x27;s virtually no way of being both attentive and passive for long periods of time. If a driver can&amp;#x27;t check their email or whatever on their phone while autopilot is on, then autopilot is not safe to put in cars. And while I&amp;#x27;m okay with not-exactly-safe for most things people willingly consume or use, driving is not an area where it&amp;#x27;s okay to roll out a feature that may cause people to stop paying attention to the road.</text></item><item><author>Confusedcius</author><text>The driver was found using his phone, over-relied on the autopilot system, and lied about what he was doing when being questioned. Sadly, we can&amp;#x27;t 100% trust these automated driving systems yet so folks need to stay attentive behind the wheel. The more accidents like this will cause lawmakers to create laws that can potentially slow down automated driving development.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>userbinator</author><text>Unlike a car, a plane at cruising altitude doesn&amp;#x27;t immediately crash into the one in front if the pilot doesn&amp;#x27;t pay attention for half a second, and despite their far higher &lt;i&gt;absolute&lt;/i&gt; speed, actions performed when flying have a much lower &lt;i&gt;relative&lt;/i&gt; speed.&lt;p&gt;For example, in a car, several seconds of following distance is normal and following another car that closely is common. In a plane, which can move in 3 dimensions, horizontal separation is measured in &lt;i&gt;minutes&lt;/i&gt; and it&amp;#x27;s not that common to be following immediately behind another plane at the same speed: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Separation_(aeronautics)#Horizontal_separation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Separation_(aeronautics)#Horiz...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Tesla’s Autopilot found partly to blame for 2018 crash on the 405</title><url>https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-09-04/tesla-autopilot-is-found-partly-to-blame-for-2018-freeway-crash</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>chrisseaton</author><text>&amp;gt; There&amp;#x27;s virtually no way of being both attentive and passive for long periods of time.&lt;p&gt;How do aircraft pilots manage it?</text></item><item><author>c3534l</author><text>The best way to stay attentive behind the wheel is to actually be the one driving. There&amp;#x27;s virtually no way of being both attentive and passive for long periods of time. If a driver can&amp;#x27;t check their email or whatever on their phone while autopilot is on, then autopilot is not safe to put in cars. And while I&amp;#x27;m okay with not-exactly-safe for most things people willingly consume or use, driving is not an area where it&amp;#x27;s okay to roll out a feature that may cause people to stop paying attention to the road.</text></item><item><author>Confusedcius</author><text>The driver was found using his phone, over-relied on the autopilot system, and lied about what he was doing when being questioned. Sadly, we can&amp;#x27;t 100% trust these automated driving systems yet so folks need to stay attentive behind the wheel. The more accidents like this will cause lawmakers to create laws that can potentially slow down automated driving development.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>slavik81</author><text>There are lots of differences, but one is that situations requiring aircraft pilot intervention often have a timeline measured in minutes. The recommended procedure for handling an emergency situation is to pull the checklist for that situation before starting to ensure you don&amp;#x27;t miss anything. Even urgent situations, like a TCAS alert, will often give 30 seconds warning. By contrast, this driver had roughly 2 seconds to notice that the autopilot was silently failing to handle the situation and to apply the brakes to prevent a collision.</text></comment>