Well that didn't take long. Yesterday was the first day Tesla Model S owners could download the Autopilot software upgrade to make their cars semiautonomous, and already we have one example of an owner almost running off the road because they didn't understand the system's limitations.

In the video, a man and what sounds like two passengers are driving along U.S. Highway 26 outside of Portland, Oregon as the driver shows off Autopilot on the crowded freeway. Most of the clip is uneventful, with the car maintaining its position in the lane and applying the throttle and brakes when necessary. But at the very end, when the driver keeps Autopilot enabled on an exit ramp, the situation gets hairy. From what it looks like, the car doesn't follow the ramp left and continues going straight, causing the driver to panic and yank the wheel.

It appears one of two things happened: Either the turn was slightly too sharp for the system to handle, or, more likely, because the lines on the left side of the exit lane ended and the right ones were about to, the on-board camera that depends on these lines to keep the car centered in the lane simply got confused. Tesla's co-founder Elon Musk has made a point of noting that clearly defined lines are extremely important for Autopilot to operate, and that the Autopilot function was really made with highway situations in mind. Exit ramps don't count.

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Another thing Musk said and Tesla's website explicitly states is that this version of Autopilot is a beta and really isn't meant for complete hands-off use. Now, this is presumably largely to relieve itself of any liability issues and not tick off regulators, but Tesla's knows it also can't oversell this current version of Autopilot to consumers. The only problem is that Tesla held a bunch of test drives with journalists this week (of which one of our editors attended) where drivers were allowed to fully remove their hands from the wheel for lengthy periods of time. You've surely seen one of the videos by now. They're everywhere.

This is an issue. It's an issue because it's a case of do as I say not as I do, and it encourages Model S owners to perhaps put a little too much faith in their car without really understanding how Autopilot works and when it doesn't. With this launch, the company—and to be fair, plenty of press—made a spectacle of a technology that is very, very serious. Make no mistake: There are many benefits to semiautonomous and autonomous cars, and they are coming. But while everyone is holding their hands up in the air and laughing and talking about how creepy Autopilot is, what gets lost is the gravity of the technology and the fact that lives are still ultimately at stake. It's not a parlor trick.

If this all seems overblown, it's not. Having closely followed the development of autonomous technologies for the past four years, one thing I can tell you is that everyone—carmakers, the insurance industry, the government, and so on—is holding their breath, just waiting for the first time there is an accident caused by a production car driving itself. Chris Urmson, the head of Google's driverless car program, once told me he believed that if a manufacturer tells owners the car can do something, then the company should be held accountable. Can Tesla really claim it's not liable in the case of an accident when it says one thing on its website but encourages another in videos all over Internet?

The open-ended questions we still have about liability and even insurance are only two of the concerns here. There's also the possibility that accidents caused by cars with autonomous technologies early on in their adoption—especially accidents that involve injuries or even death—could put a freeze on development similar to what has happened with A.I. winters in the past. In other words, people might freak out.

As autonomous technologies get rolled out, there will be accidents. That's something we're just going to have to accept if we continue in this direction. And it's commendable that Tesla was willing to be the first carmaker to market with functionality that allows for hands-off use. Someone had to take the jump. But with that also comes a duty to make sure it's introduced in the most responsible way possible.

Luckily, this driver was keeping his hands close to the wheel and avoided an accident, but if we're already seeing owners not understanding how the technology works on the first day, then that's more than a little worrisome. And, more to the point, I don't think we're going to have to wait very long to see what does happen when things go truly wrong.

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