Tesla Autopilot V8.0 — What Happens When You Ignore Warnings?
As we reported previously, Tesla’s software v8.0 update has brought with it some major changes, amongst which is a new, more aggressive warning system intended to catch Autopilot users/drivers who become inattentive.
The new warning system will actually disable Autopilot for the duration of the trip in question if the driver ignores several warnings in a row, apparently. The intent is obviously to prevent the sorts of situations that led to the fatal accident earlier this year in Florida.
Autoblog summarizes what’s in the video above: “First, when you engaging Autopilot, as you can see in the video demonstration above, it offers the following message: ‘Please Keep Your Hands on the Wheel. Be Prepared to Take Over at Any Time.’ After a while (about four and a half minutes in the video above) of driving no-handed, the display starts to flash around the edges, urging the driver to ‘Hold Steering Wheel.’ Then, after a series of three audio warnings, the message appears: ‘Autosteer Unavailable for the Rest of this Drive. Hold Steering Wheel to Drive Manually.’ There’s no further shaming, and once you stop and place the vehicle into park mode, your Autopilot privileges return when you begin to drive again. Hopefully, by then, you’ve learned your lesson.”
While that’s certainly an improvement over the pre-8.0 situation, which some have claimed encourages bad decisionmaking (you’ve probably seen some of the YouTube videos), it won’t completely do away with negligence in Autopilot’s use. Some people will likely continue to abuse the system.
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