According to Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk, the Autopilot now comes with quite a few changes. The additional constraints were done to prevent the drivers from doing crazy things with (and inside) their cars – things that the Autopilot was never designed for.

In the last couple of months we've witnessed plenty of rather reckless and more or less rational adventures, posted on YouTube by new Tesla S Autopilot users. One of them was shaving during the drive, another one got freaked out by the system autonomously changing lanes and breaking on its own; an Uber driver was actually saved from crash thanks to Autopilot, and the crazy New Yorker Alex Roy, a serial Gumballer, made the distance between the Atlantic coast and the Pacific Ocean coast almost entirely on Autopilot. There was also a driver who used Autopilot to drive on a road that was not included in Autopilot's repertoire and almost caused an accident.

"There have been some fairly crazy videos on YouTube. This is not good. And we will be putting some additional constraints on when Autopilot can be activated to minimize the possibility of people doing crazy things," Elon Musk said. And rightfully so.

Musk didn't specify what kind of constraints exactly Tesla has in mind, but they will most likely include a much larger input from the driver. Autopilot is, after all, still in its beta phase, still gathering data, learning and becoming more and more intelligent, however some drivers took it for granted too quickly, unwisely trusting it with their lives.

Nov. 8, 2015 Driving photo: Newspress

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