Hmmm... Tesla Tells Sleepy Drivers to Switch to Its Self-Driving Mode That Needs to Be Monitored Constantly So It Doesn’t Cause a Fatal Accident
"Drowsiness detected. Stay focused with FSD."
According to new reporting from Wired, the Musk-led company has started recommending drowsy motorists to switch over to FSD whenever it detects them falling asleep behind the wheel. These recommendations, per the magazine, are delivered as in-car messages that pop up on the infotainment screen, which owners began noticing earlier this month.
“Lane drift detected. Let FSD assist so you can stay focused,” reads one message cited by the magazine.
“Drowsiness detected. Stay focused with FSD,” read another.
Tesla has had lane-departure warnings for years, But now they’re an unashamed advertisement for FSD, encouraging already half-slumbering drivers to hand over the controls to an unreliable piece of software that lulls them into a false sense of security, if not back to sleep. It’s an approach fraught with contradictions, since, as Tesla warns in the fine print — as well as in the conspicuous “(Supervised)” label it tacked onto the mode’s name — FSD requires you to be constantly alert.
“Tesla is basically giving a series of conflicting instructions,” Alexandra Mueller, a senior research scientist at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety who studies driver assistance technologies, told Wired. “When you suspect the driver is becoming drowsy, to remove even more of their physical engagement — that seems extremely counterproductive.”
The fundamental problem with any tech that does most of the work for you is that it makes you complacent. If it functions properly most of the time, you’re less likely to be ready to intervene when it does screw up. There’s a name for this phenomenon in aviation, Wired notes: the “out-of-the-loop performance problem,” in which pilots become so accustomed to a plane’s sophisticated systems taking care of everything that they gradually let their guard down and fail to notice when something goes wrong.
Tesla Tells Sleepy Drivers to Switch to Its Self-Driving Mode That Needs to Be Monitored Constantly So It Doesn't Cause a Fatal Accident
**Well, better to have something less than perfect, than a human fully asleep..I s'pose..
Of course, better to not drive drowsy...ahem...
Although...the law dogs will have a field day with this... |
