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Driver Gets In Trouble For Setting His Tesla To Autopilot Then Sitting In The Passenger Seat

Washington Post- A man appeared to want to test the limits of Tesla’s autopilot feature, and a U.K. court has made an example out of him. The St. Albans Crown Court recently banned Bhavesh Patel, 39, from driving for 18 months for climbing into the passenger seat of his Model S after turning on its semiautonomous feature. Tesla instructs customers to keep their hands on the steering wheel while the autopilot is turned on. The police, citing witness accounts, said Patel’s Model S was traveling about 40 mph in heavy traffic last year. According to a video taken by a witness, no one was sitting in the driver’s seat, and Patel appeared to have his hands behind his head. Patel was later interviewed by officers at a police station, law enforcement officials said, where he admitted that he knew his actions were “silly” but the car was capable of something “amazing.” He told police he was just the “unlucky one who got caught.” Patel pleaded guilty to dangerous driving, law enforcement officials said Friday.

Uhhhhh wait what? Am I living in an alternate universe? That doesn’t make any sense. You’re never gonna believe this but I blame Elon Musk. This is for sure his fault. You wanna know how you don’t have people turn on the autopilot setting in their Tesla and ride in the passenger seat? DON’T CALL IT AN AUTOPILOT SETTING. Fucking idiots over at Tesla (mostly Musk). Everybody in the world hears the word “autopilot” and thinks, “Oh cool! A setting where the car drives itself! That’s awesome!” Cause that’s what autopilot means! Anybody who has ever heard the word autopilot thinks that’s what it means cause that is what it means.

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The “without intervention of the pilot” part is very important. Given that definition (the only definition) the guy in the video did nothing wrong.This is yet another example of Elon Musk promising something without delivering. There’s a function in his cars called autopilot yet the car can’t actually drive itself. That’s an unfulfilled promise. Maybe call it the Car Kinda Drives Itself But You Still Have To Be Behind The Wheel setting. At least that explains what the setting is. Throwing an autopilot setting all willy nilly is incredibly dangerous. Because you’re gonna have situations like this one. Figure it out, Musk.