Tesla's response to this issue is staggering to me. Summon mode is not a remote control. The car is controlling itself, and I don't think it's reasonable to expect the driver to be responsible for it's actions when that is happening.
If you read the linked Verge article at the end you'll see that Tesla's manual instructs that the user of Summon mode must monitor the vehicle and be prepared to stop it at any time. If this is the case, which according to Tesla's manual is the case, then a simple remote control operation would be better overall. If the user must monitor the car the whole time they mine as well just take control. No need for any smarts from the car itself.
There's no indication that the guy was aware he put it in Summon mode. He double tapped something he was trying to single tap and then didn't respond to a modal popup as he was exiting the vehicle.
This is not a UI interaction that should result in the car driving off by itself. Humans are fallible.
Seriously, imagine an episode of Star Trek where the computer hears the captain asking the engineer a question about the self-destruct sequence, and the computer hears the magic words "self-destruct sequence" and pops up a dialog box on a nearby console saying, "Self-destruct sequence activated. Press CANCEL to cancel." Well guess what, nobody expected the computer to activate the self-destruct sequence just because someone happened to mention it, so no one was looking at the console, so no one canceled it, so the ship blew up.
Way to go, Tesla. Great UI design there. I'll be glad to entrust my life to your software on the highway...
I agree. While Tesla might be accurate in describing the actions that occurred, does it make sense for a driver to intentionally damage their expensive car?
I wonder if the way Tesla is delivering software could be problematic. If the way you use your car can change week to week, how are you supposed to know what works and what doesn't? The user may be used to other modes where the car correctly detects when it will collide with something. I don't find it unreasonable for them to expect it to do the same thing here.
This feature is disabled by default, needs to be explicitly enabled and comes with warnings that it's an immature feature and you need to be very careful with it on. And even once you turn it on, it requires you to press a button on the key fob for it to work, but he went and disabled that safety feature. Tesla didn't slip this in without his notice.
