
A difficult experience with Autopilot in the mountains of Canada - driverlessnick
https://driverlessratings.com/news/trouble-with-autopilot-in-canada
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vanjoe
Note, this was not some winding two-lane so typical of BC interior (Though
this is getting better). This is a good road that was recently upgraded for
the 2010 Olympics.

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scoot
One again though, people are forgetting that "Autopilot" is just a marketing
name for adavanced lane assist and adaptive cruise control (albeit of a
relatively sophisticated variety). Expecting it to be able to cope with
anything outside routine road conditions is a fools errand.

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masklinn
> people are forgetting that "Autopilot" is just a marketing name for
> adavanced lane assist and adaptive cruise control

That, though, is due to intentionally deceitful branding.

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pps43
Tesla autopilot is not that different from its namesake in airplanes.
Autopilot does not fly the plane from JFK to LAX, it only maintains speed,
altitude and heading. If anything unusual happens, autopilot disengages and
drops controls back to the pilot.

So Tesla is not deceiving anyone.

~~~
masklinn
> Tesla autopilot is not that different from its namesake in airplanes.

Which is not at all how popular culture shows it, and thus not what people
assume when they hear "autopilot".

> Autopilot does not fly the plane from JFK to LAX, it only maintains speed,
> altitude and heading.

There are autopilots which can do everything but taxiing and takeoff[0].

> So Tesla is not deceiving anyone.

Tesla is not deceiving actual pilots of airplanes large enough to have an
autopilot old enough to only support stable flight maintenance. I'm sure
that's great for all 10 of them.

Meanwhile, in the actual world there have been examples too numerous to count
of people who pretty much expect the car to drive itself. Which I expect is
exactly what the people who picked the term wanted: make it seem magic for the
sales, but be technically correct enough that it covers your ass (and you can
blame the driver) when it invariably fucks up.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoland)

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sandworm101
Lol. That is the famous "sea to sky" highway. You should have seen it before
the 2010 olympic upgrades. It is a runway compared to what it once was. It
isnt really a mountain highway but a coastal route. It follows a train track
most of the way. You all know it. Something like half of north america's car
commercials are filmed in vancouver, and many of those use the s2s.

I used to ride it several times a week on my vfr. The real rollercoaster
starts north of whistler: the dirty dusty duffy lake road.

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creator_lol
I love it in the dark at 2am with bears running across the road, love those
single lane bridges also. Wonder how automation deals with single lane
bridges.

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sandworm101
On the duffy, but there are no one-lane bridges on the s2s.

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everdev
I can't wait for autopilot in mainstream vehicles but I'm not sure if I'd want
to discover an "edge case" (pun intended) on a narrow mountain pass with no
guardrails.

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dmix
Nor do most people want to deal with "edge case" bugs in any software.
Fortunately there has always been an endless supply of people who love trying
out new cutting-edge technology who are willing to take this risk... even when
it means driverless cars on potentially dangerous roads.

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digi_owl
And all to often people get shanghaied into being guinea pigs by some "push to
prod" dev...

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toomanybeersies
How badly do you get motion sickness when using autopilot?

I find (like most people), that I don't get carsick when driving a car myself,
but tend to get it as a passenger. With autopilot you're not really driving,
but if you have your hands on the wheel, you sort of are driving.

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Theodores
...motion sickness is not always what it seems, how do you not know that you
have low level carbon monoxide poisoning from breathing in car fumes?

As a driver you may be that bit more alert with a road to concentrate on, as a
passenger you might just be not able to fence off the symptoms - feeling sick,
failing vision etc.

The reason I say this is that a Tesla has the best air-con, the auto-pilot and
no emissions, so 'sickness' could be nothing to do with 'motion sickness'.

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tylerhou
Unless your exhaust feeds directly into your car or are driving inside, it's
unlikely that you can get low level carbon monoxide poisoning in a modern car.

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masklinn
It's not merely unlikely it's completely nonsensical. You don't get motion
sickness in nose-to-tail traffic jams where gas poisoning could actually be an
issue. Furthermore the average passenger car produces 20 times more CO2 (by
weight) than CO (the ratio is even more skewed for diesel cars).

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shane999
What’s interesting is there is a local company that sells a package where you
pay a fee to drive super cars on this road. That includes a Model S and they
get you to enable auto pilot to experience it.

My buddy tried it and said it worked just fine - on the winding road before
you get to Squamish.

I guess my anecdote is just as invalid/valid as the author’s.

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sunstone
So it turns out that autopilot's capabilities are quite similar to drivers
from Alberta :)

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staunch
Autopilot, like most software during development, is not ready for real use.

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himom
Sounds like a special remote video collab for YouTuber Bjørn in Norway to don
racecar protective gear and try to break an X using Autopilot.

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hluska
In the Tesla's defence, I am from the prairie provinces and find the Vancouver
-> Whistler road a little too much to handle....:)

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Animats
Who's "Nicholas Cronin", the guy behind this web site?

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driverlessnick
I'm Nick. Nice to connect. Just a guy interested in the transition from manual
vehicles to autonomous ones.

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arbie
The idea behind this site is great. Will you have a reference section to
discover car models and their SAE autonomy level? Manufacturers make this hard
to compare today with their marketing terms, and I see this becoming a key
differentiator for tech-savvy buyers.

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driverlessnick
Thanks for the feedback! We will be breaking it down by OEM and model to add
to the usefulness. I think we will leave the classifying of the SAE autonomy
level to the OEM though. But by sharing real world experiences, buyers will
have something else to make a decision on other than the marketing terms like
you mentioned. Thanks again for taking a look!

