The techosphere is going kinda bugnuts over the revelation that May saw the first fatality in a self-driving car. The Tesla Model S has a feature called “Autopilot” which does some very basic driving for you… keeps you on the road and from banging into other automobiles. But it’s not a true autonomous mode; it’s far more basic. Kinda like the standard autopilot in an airplane in the era before GPS… keeps you on course, speed and altitude, but dumb as a post when  it comes to dealing with the unknown. The Tesla Autopilot model requires that you keep your hands on the wheel; if you take your hands off, the car will begin to slow down. It seems in this case the Tesla whammed into a truck that had turned in front of it because the truck was white and the sky was brightly lit; the simple systems in the Tesla couldn’t distinguish the truck in that case.

So, the driver of the car might have had “Autopilot” engaged, but it was still up to him to maintain situational awareness. The Mark One human eyeball remains the best system to judge what’s actually going on around a car, and while truly autonomous cars have some spiffy radar, lidar and optical systems,. the Tesla Model S *doesn’t.* So, that makes this little detail seem kinda important:

DVD player found in Tesla car in May crash: Florida officials

It *seems* that it wasn’t just a matter of there being a DVD player sitting somewhere in the car. Instead,a  witness who was on the scene right after the accident claims that the DVD player was seen to be playing a Harry Potter movie. Ooops.

The message: until you have a truly autonomous self-driving car… Pay Attention.

Secondary lesson learned: a lot of Social Jusice Warriors are perpetually cheesed off that every new advance is made available to rich people before po foke. Well, guess what: the rich folk are basically being used as guinea pigs during the beta test phase of that new technology. By the time the tech is cheap enough for average people to access, a whole lot of the bugs will be worked out, largely by beating the tar out of bagrillionaires who willingly put themselves at risk.

Tertiary lesson *probably* to be learned: play stupid games, win stupid prizes. If the guy had simply killed himself by being a dumbass… oh well. But not only did he hit another vehicle, he also opened the door to bureaucrats to come in and regulate the bejeezus out of autonomous cars. It is *possible* that this guy might turn out to single-handedly turn the technology from a winner for the American economy into a winner for, say, the Japanese or German economies.