
Man says Tesla Autopilot saved his life by driving him to the hospital - sz4kerto
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/05/man-says-tesla-autopilot-saved-his-life-by-driving-him-to-the-hospital.html
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jo909
"saved his life" kind of implies that there was no other viable option to get
to the hospital, like calling an ambulance.

And what a tragic story it would have been if he had become unconscious along
the way, the car stopping somewhere on the side of the road and it takes too
long to find and help him.

~~~
heimatau
I know Tesla is a premium car but...image if the masses had access to an
autopilot like this, or better. Many can't afford the ambulance costs.
Autopilot can change this excessive cost on the market.

~~~
andmarios
Better yet, image if masses had free access to ambulances! Oh wait, this is
the case in most 1st world countries...

~~~
gozur88
Free? No, of course not. You pay for them as part of your taxes. It isn't any
cheaper to pay a bunch of government bureaucrats who use what's left to
provide ambulance service than to just pay the ambulance myself.

~~~
mandeepj
I pay taxes but for ambulance I paid around $750 for a ~8 mile trip. I think
everyone.has to pay for an ambulance. Not sure about senior citizens

~~~
gozur88
So if you paid more taxes and the ambulance was "free", how is that better?

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manicdee
You pay while you are able to earn. The service is free when you are unable to
earn.

This form of socialist self insurance is much more efficient than a bunch of
private ambulance companies selling subscriptions (aka "ambulance insurance").

~~~
gozur88
In most places in the US ambulance service is contracted out by the local
government.

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rdtsc
Is that good PR though? Now impaired people with Teslas are going to be trying
to drive themselves home or to hospitals, with potential disastruous
consequences.

"He's having a heart attack, should we call an ambulance? Nah, shove him in
his Tesla and set a route for the hospital, they'll sort it out there".

~~~
ivanca
Just like we now rely on babies to call 911 for emergencies since we heard
about one successfully doing it once.

Seriously, this is the worst kind of strawman, pretending reading about a
single case of something will change how people behave in an emergency.

~~~
machinelearning
I'd like to hear the rationale of the people who downvote this comment. This
comment looks correct to me.

The main characteristic of established protocols in the event of an emergency
are that they are supposed to be reliable and not require complex computation
on the part of the user.

I doubt any sane person (simple metric: those who would call the ambulance
instead of driving the person to the hospital in current times), would be more
likely to use the autopilot feature instead of calling an ambulance.

Yes there will always be dumb people till posterity, but to claim people are
more likely to abuse the feature than current rates is nonsense.

~~~
rdtsc
I think in general anything slightly negative about Tesla or Elon Musk related
has a good chance of getting downvoted on HN.

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LargeCompanies
Love the PR machine here ... though i'm not saying this didn't happen or isn't
real, but it's a way better story line then Telsa's AutoPilot kills driver, as
happened in Florida.

~~~
tajen
Plus, hospitals are not really drive-in. You get much, much better safety of
you're driven in by an emergency vehicle, who books the doctors upon approach,
gets priority lanes and who can open the gates. Driving in and having to
explain yourself at the reception is another story.

~~~
bhickey
Uh... I don't know what hospitals you've been going to. A few years back I
brought a friend with a perforated ulcer to the ER. They had her under the
care of nursing in about sixty seconds.

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kyriakos
You brought your friend, ie she was escorted. In the tesla case we're assuming
you are in a condition to open the car door and walk in the ER and then
explain your medical emergency...

~~~
gozur88
I'm picturing someone expiring in his car outside the hospital because nobody
was around to get him into the ER. The ambulance crew does more than just
_drive_ \- otherwise you might as well take a taxi.

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brokenmachine
Even a taxi driver could make sure the patient can exit the car.

I'm picturing an unconcious guy arriving in a car and expiring in the car
outside the hospital.

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tedunangst
And then people wonder how the misconception that "autopilot" can drive itself
arises.

~~~
dominotw
> misconception that "autopilot" can drive itself arises.

Probably from autopilots in planes which drive themselves.

~~~
bluecmd
But... they really don't. There is a lot of things that will make the auto
pilot disengage and you will always need to change the programming enroute.

~~~
braythwayt
This! The autopilot on a plane is nothing like a self-driving car. It’s mostly
cruise-control in an environment where a collision with another vehicle is
much, much less likely than an automobile on an undivided highway.

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sz4kerto
Found a better link: [https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/07/autopilot-in-tesla-
model-x...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/07/autopilot-in-tesla-model-x-
helps-driver-get-safely-to-a-hospital/)

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StavrosK
Okay, I'm confused. Is this car's autopilot not just "follow the vehicle in
front of me, possibly steering a bit to stay in the lane"?

Most commenters here are commenting like you give it the destination and it
drives you, but, as far as I know, the car does no such thing. Title should be
changed "Tesla saved man's life by keeping him from crashing when he couldn't
drive well", but that's not as inviting.

~~~
jeffbush
Yeah, in the article he said the hospital was near the freeway exit and he
drove manually the rest of the way, which kinda makes the story a bit less
dramatic.

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exhilaration
What if he had died en route? Would the car have come to a safe stop?

~~~
mikeash
Likely. The car occasionally asks the driver to place their hands on the
steering wheel, based on conditions and the car's evaluation of its own
ability to handle them. If you don't obey after some warnings, then the car
will put on the hazard lights and brake to a stop. Not very safe on a busy
road, but safer than an incapacitated driver heading off into the woods.

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goldmar
I think a more fitting headline would be "man endangers fellow traffic
participants by using a beta 'autopilot' feature while not paying attention to
traffic conditions".

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andys627
Not really

