I spotted the crimson Tesla Model 3 immediately as it began merging onto the 101 highway; years of riding motorcycles in Los Angeles has made my peripheral vision razor-sharp. With my infant daughter sitting in the back, singing along with my wife and brother to some kid tune, time slowed as the Model 3 failed to heed our presence in the right lane and aimed straight for our passenger doors. With inches to spare, I swerved into the unoccupied left lane and narrowly avoided an accident. Concurrently, in that split second, I saw the Model 3’s driver’s hands jump from his lap to the wheel and yank it to the right. The car was on Autopilot. It’s time to regulate this technology. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has scoffed whenever the intrinsic danger of using the public as a mass beta test is brought up. The company's communications team states that Tesla drivers have safely logged more than 1 billion miles using Autopilot. That preponderance of data supposedly demonstrates that the advanced driver-assistance system (ADAS) is perfectly safe for consumer use—despite an increasing number of Autopilot-related crashes of late. Yet, even if we were to take Tesla at its word, it doesn’t discount the fact that we’re being used to test the company’s software and hardware for limitations and bugs.

Jonathon Klein

Tesla

Roy ended his editorial with an ultimatum; either automated systems like Tesla’s Autopilot are regulated, “Or we can do nothing and suffer through the same clickbait and hand-wringing over and over until the next crash.” As of this writing, regulatory oversight on automated systems is largely left to those building and testing these technologies. And any sort of regulation is viewed by the decision-makers as limiting technological progress. Elaine Chao, the United States’ Secretary of Transportation, sees these laws as a burden, telling a group of reporters last year that her office is working with autonomous tech companies to target regulations that are hindering progress. In some states, governing agencies have decreased regulation and increased incentives so as to attract members of this nascent and well-funded industry. As for the manufacturers themselves, Ford, Toyota, and General Motors have recently joined forces with SAE International to create a set of standards that’d give the public something more concrete with which to measure automated systems and their respective success and implementation. However potentially beneficial, this push—as well as those cases above—is still a matter of the patients running the asylum, as each of these organizations have a vested or financial interest in proving to the increasingly wary public the technology is safe and should be purchased. What we need are people who understand the technology, its current limitations, capabilities, and potential, and come up with common-sense regulations to ensure the public’s safety is goal number one. We’re not even close to anything of that sort.

Tesla