Telsa has been forced to lock down the autopilot feature in its latest Model S cars after drivers have been found to be doing really strange things with it. The feature is still in beta, but this seems to have escaped the minds of Model S owners.
Tesla has insisted that drivers keep their hands on the steering wheel at all times when using the autopilot feature, but some have apparently decided to ignore such warnings.
During an earning call Q&A, CEO Elon Musk reckoned that several videos surfaced on YouTube lately, showing the autopilot feature doing some scary things that might one day cause fatal accidents. Musk stated that Tesla will make changes to the current setup to help minimize the possibility of drivers doing crazy things on the road.
Musk did not go into detail on what those changes might be, but it is possible that Tesla could decide to make it a rule of thumb that hands must always be on the wheel at all times. He also talked about the learning process the autopilot system is going through right now, noting that in the future it should be more refined for a better user experience.
Recently, Google released a report on why it has decided to go with an entirely autonomous car instead of one where drivers can take control after it disengages its autonomous functionality. Google believes that drivers are not very good at this, and as such, cannot be trusted with it.
At the moment, several Tesla Model S owners are proving the point Google is making, but we can expect the automaker to come up with a workaround quickly enough to fix the issue.
Tesla noted that data from its cars on the roads were being uploaded to its servers on a regular basis to help the company better understand what to do in order to refine the algorithms.
Kārlis Dambrāns | Flickr
