> Sitting in the driver's seat, Consumer Reports' Jake Fisher enabled Autopilot and then used the speed dial on the steering wheel to bring the car to a stop. He then placed a weighted chain on the steering wheel (to simulate pressure from a driver's hands) and hopped into the passenger seat. From there, he could reach over and increase the speed using the speed dial.
> Autopilot won't function unless the driver's seatbelt is buckled, but it was also easy to defeat this check by threading the seatbelt behind the driver.
At some point personal responsibility and liability should be taken into account. Every single safety system can be defeated with enough effort, and the system should always balance convenience & reliability with safety (a "too good" driver attention monitor would often have false positives making the entire system a pain to use, or introduce risks of its own by disengaging the autopilot or reducing speed at the wrong time).
There's nothing preventing someone from doing the same in a normal car without driver assist but we don't have a problem with that because both survival instincts and the resulting liability deters people from making stupid actions. Same with drink driving - while there are definitely accidents (that are then dealt with by the law), in aggregate, most people behave sensibly.
> Autopilot won't function unless the driver's seatbelt is buckled, but it was also easy to defeat this check by threading the seatbelt behind the driver.
At some point personal responsibility and liability should be taken into account. Every single safety system can be defeated with enough effort, and the system should always balance convenience & reliability with safety (a "too good" driver attention monitor would often have false positives making the entire system a pain to use, or introduce risks of its own by disengaging the autopilot or reducing speed at the wrong time).
There's nothing preventing someone from doing the same in a normal car without driver assist but we don't have a problem with that because both survival instincts and the resulting liability deters people from making stupid actions. Same with drink driving - while there are definitely accidents (that are then dealt with by the law), in aggregate, most people behave sensibly.