Quote:
Originally Posted by sendler
The rumor has it that the Tesla driver was watching a movie on a portable player.
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I also wonder about the amount of time that the driver would have had to react even if he was paying attention. It seems like the truck turned across right in front of him. Which comes down to driver intuition which a computer will never have. As a motorcyclist I have learned to predict the behavior of other motorist actions before they make them based on subtle "body language" cues of their vehicle.
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I'm always watching for cars leaning left/right within their lane, a lot of the time its all I get before someone cuts in next to me. I really wish everyone drove with the level of awareness that the average motorcycle does. If you aren't guessing what traffic is doing, then you're forced to react and make split second decisions instead of anticipating and planning your reaction. Race car drivers react almost before things happen because they anticipate and plan before things get sideways. If you get your thinking out of the way beforehand, your reaction times shrink dramatically.
Autopilot really shouldn't be marketed as such. There's too much nuance and intuition to driving that most people don't pick up on, let alone a computer program. I'd expect the trucker signaled a long time before making that move, and even if he hadn't, it takes seconds for a tractor tailer to completely block the roadway like that, which is an eternity if you're watching the road. If you can avoid smashing into braking traffic during rush hour, then an 80ft trailer should be much more predictable.
He either wasn't paying attention, and would've made similar mistakes in another car, or was leaning heavily on autopilot watching a dvd, and let the car make the mistake for him