Honda’s sensing system will read shadows from bridges as obstructions in the road that it needs to brake for. It’s easy enough to accelerate out of the slowdown, but I was surprised to find that there is apparently no radar check to see if the obstruction is real.

My current vehicle doesn’t have that issue, so either the programming has been improved or the vendor for the sensing systems is a different one (different vehicle make, so it’s entirely possible).

i can use the steering wheel just fine, and people have been able to for a hundred years.

People have been bad at it for a hundred years. I'm not saying that people should necessarily be using auto-steering that keeps them in the middle of their lanes, but they should at least be using systems that beep at them when they stray out of their lane.

The bar for self-driving technology isn't some amazing perfect computer that never makes a mistake. It's the average driver. The average driver is bad.

There is a big difference between Autopilot and that hypotethical uncle. If the uncle causes an accident or breaks shit, he or his insurance pays. Autopilot doesn't.

By your analogy, it's like putting a ton of learner drivers on the road with unqualified instructors, and not telling the instructors that they are supposed to be instructors, but that they are actually taking a taxi service. Except it's somehow their responsibility. And of course pocketing both the instruction and taxi fees.

The bar is not incredibly high for self driving cars to be accepted. The only thing is that they should take the blame if they mess up, like all other drivers.

The difference is that Tesla said it was autopilot when it's really not. It's also clearly not ready for primetime. And auto regulators have pretty strict requirements about reliability and safety.

While that's true that autonomous cars kill FAR less people than human drivers, ever human is different. If an autonomous driver is subpar and that AI is rolled out to millions of cars, we've vastly lowered safety of cars. We need autonomous cars to be better than the best driver because, frankly, humans are shit drivers.

I'm 100% for autonomous cars taking over entirely. But Tesla isn't really trying to get there. They are trying to sell cars and lying about their capabilities. And because of that, Tesla should be liable for the deaths. We already have them partially liable: this case caused a recall of this feature.

Except Tesla's uncle had brain damage and doesn't really learn from the situation so will go it again, and had clones of him driving thousands of other cars.