Ralph Nader, an attorney and political activist who ran for President of the United States several times, has been working on consumer rights, environmental protection, and human rights causes for decades. His most famous book, Unsafe at Any Speed, was published in 1965. The book led to the enforcement of pertinent road-safety laws and the mandatory installation of seat belts. Now the 88-year-old consumer advocate has comments on Tesla's FSD self-driving system… "Now over 100,000 Tesla owners are currently using technology that research shows malfunction once every eight minutes… one of the most dangerous and irresponsible actions by a car company in decades." Nader is calling on federal regulators and the NHTSA to act immediately to have Tesla remove FSD from all its vehicles, and he even uses "Tesla manslaughtering crashes with this technology" to describe Tesla's FSD. Several years after the NHTSA initiated an investigation into Tesla's safety-related driver assistance features, will the development have a critical negative impact on the automotive industry's subsequent development of driver assistance or full self-driving systems? I try to analyze it from several perspectives…
- Whether it is the basic Autopilot or the upgraded FSD (an option with additional cost), the word "assist" or "assistance" is nowhere to be found in the name, so consumers are very likely to be misled into recognizing it as autonomous driving. In fact, the function is only L2 or commonly known as L2.5. FSD features Navigate-on-Autopilot, which allows for destination setting on the highway, Auto Lane Change, and Smart Summon, but it is still quite away from the standards of L4+ full self-driving technology.
- At present, Tesla is still the leader in EV technology, but not in self-driving technology. Tech giants Waymo, Baidu, and Cruise rank first in self-driving technology worldwide, followed by Argo AI, Motional, AutoX, and Mobileye. The self-driving technology marathon might not even have a winner until 2030, not to mention letting consumers use vehicles purchased from the showroom as self-driving cars NOW.
- Nader is a well-known personage in the United States who has made significant contributions to the history of automotive safety development. Since 1965, the universal value regarding automotive products has no doubt placed much greater importance on protecting the safety of motorists and pedestrians than on developing technologies. It is also the original intention of the development of ADAS (advanced driver-assistance systems) and other vehicle safety assistance systems to minimize the potential instability in vehicles operated by humans. Today's technology development seeks to replace the hands of a human driver with a carputer. In the process of technology upgrade and transformation, it is evident that market competition prompted the auto industry to introduce immature technology to consumers in such haste that communication ambiguity resulted in misinterpretation. Nader's words have always carried considerable weight, and the NHTSA will soon decide how to address his comments on Tesla's FSD without a doubt.
- Some major automakers are moving towards implementing L3 autonomous driving technology, which I have said is the "most dangerous" level of automation. It is L3 that is the most difficult level of automation technology for automakers to communicate clearly to consumers… There are situations to deal with and decisions to make, such as when the driver lets the carputer take over, when the driver takes control of the car, whether the driver can immediately resume normal operation upon the short takeover, and the attribution of responsibility for accidents during the takeover (attributed to the automaker or the driver). I'm sure these are not easy tasks for ordinary drivers (let alone older drivers or beginners who are not skilled in driving) to master. Therefore, the NHTSA's decision will definitively have a critical impact on the future full commercialization of L3 automation technology.
Any revolutionary technology or invention in history that changes the way people live is bound to cause positive and negative repercussions but should still be encouraged as long as it is well-intentioned and can improve the quality of life despite a slight technical error. However, before the full self-driving technology can be certified to pass various road tests, the decision to switch between the driver and the carputer for control of the vehicle should never be left to the driver because a system designed to give more responsibility to the driver goes against the original intention of improving road safety. I think the L2 ADAS is useful, and I also think L4/L5 full self-driving technology is worth the wait, but these two products, which are of completely different levels of driving automation, should never be mixed. Furthermore, automakers should not be allowed to promote L3 products because wrongly relying on the technology would cause more accidents that could have been avoided.