One survey found that 42% of drivers think their Tesla is fully self-driving. It is possible that system design and marketing are fueling these misconceptions.
A large percentage of people using Tesla’s Autopilot driver-assistance system seem to think the technology makes their cars completely self-driving – even though the software is far from actually being able to do so. that.
According to a new survey from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), 42% of Tesla drivers say they feel “comfortable in treating their vehicle as fully self-driving”. It’s so magical it’s hard to believe – Autopilot can keep your car in the right lane with simple braking and acceleration, but it’s nowhere near a complete self-driving system . In fact, even Tesla’s slightly more advanced Full Self-Driving (FSD) mode, which was not polled in the IIHS study, is still in beta testing.
“The big message here is that early adopters of these systems still have an incomplete understanding of the limits of the technology,” IIHS President David Harkey said in a press release.
To put it bluntly, those limitations are that Autopilot does in fact still require the driver to pay attention and drive – albeit with assistance from the car’s software.
“It’s possible that the system design and marketing are fueling these misconceptions,” Harkey said, alluding to Tesla’s overstatement of the capabilities of Autopilot and FSD technology.
The situation where the self-driving system of Tesla cars has trouble recognizing objects on the road
The IIHS survey also found that 53% of those using Cadillac’s Super Cruise driver-assistance software feel nervous about letting their vehicle drive on its own, while only 12% of those using ProPILOT Assist software Nissan/Infiniti feels the same way.
As Harkey noted, there appears to be “a clear difference between the three groups of owners” in the capabilities of their cars – and the survey’s findings seem to reflect that as well.
Notably, 40% of people using Tesla and Cadillac’s autonomous driving assistance feature said they had “locked” their vehicle, both vehicles have a lock feature to turn off or pause the vehicle if the driver vehicle does not meet safety criteria.
Although the survey noted that “some drivers confuse temporary suspension with locking procedures,” and found that the majority of drivers ignore safety warnings that help them stay focused on the road or repeated violations of safety standards resulted in the locking system activating”.
On the other hand, according to the survey, Nissan / Infiniti self-driving car drivers don’t even use the lock feature, but they do have a warning system. However, the majority of users “assumed they never even received a reminder”.
In other words, there is clearly a problem with Tesla and Cadillac owners, and the situation will become very worrying if this continues.
(By Noor Al-Sibai)
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