If the person operating the vehicle doesn't need to be aware of the difference, then the general public shouldn't need to either when analyzing an accident.
It seems baffling to me that we could imagine a scenario where it's less important for the driver of a vehicle to be aware of the difference, than it is for the public when reacting to a news article.
I don't think you get to have your cake and eat it. Either there is no relevant distinction, in which case the "well actually" response that "it's not FSD" seems unnecessary, or the distinction is important, in which case it seems problematic that drivers would be confused about it.
I guess I just didn't take that away from this article at all.
It seemed like a more general complaint about Level 2 automation using this instance of a crash with FSD/Autopilot as an example. The distinction seems, to me, relatively irrelevant to the main point of the article. A key paragraph for me was this one:
> While, yes, Tesla’s system was the particular one that appears to have failed here, and yes, the system is deceptively named in a way that encourages this idiotic behavior, this is not a problem unique to Tesla. It’s not a technical problem. You can’t program your way out of the problem with Level 2; in fact, the better the Level 2 system seems to be, the worse the problem gets. That problem is that human beings are simply no good at monitoring systems that do most of the work of a task and remaining ready to take over that task with minimal to no warning.
So, I guess I don't see the point in distinguishing between FSD/Autopilot when the thesis of the article isn't specific to Tesla, but rather applies to Level 2 systems across all cars.
Technically it does have cruise control, but I've never worked out what kind of road conditions it would be useful for and until I replace a 25-year-old dry-rotted vacuum hose under the bonnet it's not going to control a damn thing.
