>Same. I love reading opinions about how dangerous or bad the Tesla "autopilot" is, or that it dosen't work, from people who have never owned or driven in a Tesla with autopilot.
Would you say the same after if you happen to get involved in a serious autopilot accident though? That's the question.
It's very easy to be all roses before one sees any issues.
So from what I've seen, there have been a few occasions where an owner has used the autopilot as a scapegoat for their own faults, only to later admit they were at fault or wait for Tesla and third party investigators to conclude that autopilot was not even engaged, etc.
For instance, the one single fatality of autopilot to date in a Tesla, where the guy was coming up to a crest of a hill with a white 18 wheeler crossing perpendicular to the highway. Yes, the autopilot misread the 18-wheeler to be a sign above the road. (This issue is not fixed). However at the same time, the guy completely disregarded Tesla's instructions of keeping your eyes on the road at all times. Turns out, he was watching a show on his phone.
But yes, I would still say the same thing if I was using autopilot properly as intended. i.e., not watching movies while in the drivers seat of a moving car (which is against the law regardless.) I don't think there are any serious accidents to date where the driver was using it properly and following the rules. As Tesla states, autopilot is in beta (and most likely always will be), that's not to say it is unsafe, but that the driver must be aware and follow the rules and know what autopilot is and is not capable of.
I'd say it took me about two weeks of first using autopilot to understand its capabilities.
Also the best part, it keeps improving in my vehicle through updates. It's pretty impressive how good the updates from Tesla are.
>could say the same about people "feeling safer" when driving themselves. which is what all the opposing side clings to
Only people have been driving themselves for a century, and have a pretty good idea of how safe it is, including how safe it is for them and their skills / city / etc, as opposed to some "one size fits all" average.
>(sure isn't statistics)
Well, it can't be statistics because all we've got is the BS "statistics" from the self-driving car companies. Only a sucker for new technology would accept those, as there are tons of differences between regular driving. They take the cars out at optimal conditions (not rain, snow etc), they drive specific routes (not all over the US), they often have supplementary humans on board to check (do they count the times when humans had to take control and saved the day as "self-driving accidents" or not?), and tons of other things besides.
Would you say the same after if you happen to get involved in a serious autopilot accident though? That's the question.
It's very easy to be all roses before one sees any issues.