Oct 14, 2025 · 23 min · 7 segments
A naval officer and aviator from 1988-1999, Mary "Missy" Cummings was one of the U.S. Navy's first female fighter pilots. She is now the director of George Mason University's Autonomy and Robotics…
Missy CummingsGuestRich JacobsHostIt seems to me that some of the auto manufacturers kind of send two mixed message or a mixed message when they name these driver assist systems like autopilot or give them names like that, that sort of imply that the car will drive itself.
But when you read the owner's manual, it says quite plainly, you know, the driver of the vehicle is the person sitting in the driver's seat and they're responsible for what the car does.
So, They put sensors on the steering wheel in some vehicles to make sure that the driver keeps their hand on the wheel.
Where are we as far as the average driver having features in the vehicle where they can really kind of trust it?
And if you could, then these car manufacturers would have it be self-driving and not driving assist.
The reason that the human is in the loop is to catch the mistakes that the automation makes, which is quite frequent in cars like Tesla's.
But increasingly, we're starting to see similar failure modes and all other manufacturers that are trying to introduce these kinds of modes of operation.
So I think it's just what's particularly bad is humans will stop paying attention when they perceive the technology to be good enough.
And what that means is sometimes it seems like they're really doing a good job.
But then at the last second, the cars will fail in really unexpected and ways that make it very difficult for a human driver to Regain control.
For example, Tesla's love to, it's raining and you're on a highway and then you're going to take a clover leaf off and you're in autopilot.
Right as you get to the turn on the clover leaf, the car will just give up and it's like, ooh, this is too hard for me.
It's raining and I'm just going to turn over control back to the driver right now.
And this is the worst possible time because if you're not paying very close attention, you'll miss the reversion of control back to you and you go flying off the cloverleaf because there's a turn and you just keep going straight.
And so, again, I'd like to point out to everybody, this just isn't a Tesla problem.
Just Tesla has the most cars on the market right now that have these technologies.
It seems to me that some of the auto manufacturers kind of send two mixed message or a mixed message when they name these driver assist systems like autopilot or give them names like that, that sort of imply that the car will drive itself.
But when you read the owner's manual, it says quite plainly, you know, the driver of the vehicle is the person sitting in the driver's seat and they're responsible for what the car does.
So, They put sensors on the steering wheel in some vehicles to make sure that the driver keeps their hand on the wheel.
Where are we as far as the average driver having features in the vehicle where they can really kind of trust it?
And if you could, then these car manufacturers would have it be self-driving and not driving assist.
The reason that the human is in the loop is to catch the mistakes that the automation makes, which is quite frequent in cars like Tesla's.
But increasingly, we're starting to see similar failure modes and all other manufacturers that are trying to introduce these kinds of modes of operation.
So I think it's just what's particularly bad is humans will stop paying attention when they perceive the technology to be good enough.
And what that means is sometimes it seems like they're really doing a good job.
But then at the last second, the cars will fail in really unexpected and ways that make it very difficult for a human driver to Regain control.
For example, Tesla's love to, it's raining and you're on a highway and then you're going to take a clover leaf off and you're in autopilot.
Right as you get to the turn on the clover leaf, the car will just give up and it's like, ooh, this is too hard for me.
It's raining and I'm just going to turn over control back to the driver right now.
And this is the worst possible time because if you're not paying very close attention, you'll miss the reversion of control back to you and you go flying off the cloverleaf because there's a turn and you just keep going straight.
And so, again, I'd like to point out to everybody, this just isn't a Tesla problem.
Just Tesla has the most cars on the market right now that have these technologies.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.