Thousands of Teslas are now being equipped with a feature that prompts the car to break common traffic laws — and the revelation is prompting some advocates to question the safety benefits of automated vehicle technology when unsafe human drivers are allowed to program it to do things that endanger other road users.
In an October 2021 update its deceptively named “Full Self Driving Mode” beta software, the controversial Texas automaker introduced a new feature that allows drivers to pick one of three custom driving “profiles” — “chill,” “average,” and “assertive” — which moderates how aggressively the vehicle applies many of its automated safety features on U.S. roads.
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2022/01/12/ ... fety-laws/The rollout went largely unnoticed by street safety advocates until a Jan. 9 article in The Verge, when journalist Emma Roth revealed that putting a Tesla in “assertive” mode will effectively direct the car to tailgate other motorists, perform unsafe passing maneuvers, and roll through certain stops (“average” mode isn’t much safer). All those behaviors are illegal in most U.S. states, and experts say there’s no reason why Tesla shouldn’t be required to program its vehicles to follow the local rules of the road, even when drivers travel between jurisdictions with varying safety standards.
I had thought that cars programmed to obey the law and drive safely would not behave like human drivers do, and that might not be acceptable to owners (and perhaps to other drivers) Here is the solution!