Are Driverless Cars Safe? Elon Musk's Tesla 'Autopilot' Eyed By Concerned European Safety Regulators

Days after German regulators asked Tesla Motors to stop branding their vehicles as having "Autopilot" driver assistance systems, Dutch officials are concerned with the labeling, Reuters reported Monday. However, it is unclear whether they will also ask the automaker to rename the service. German officials raised their concerns with the naming over the weekend, saying in a letter to the automaker that, in "order to prevent misunderstanding and incorrect customers' expectations, we demand that the misleading term'autopilot' is no longer used in advertising the system." The German transport ministry also wrote a letter to Tesla owners to remind them to remain vigilant and attentive even while using the autopilot feature. "Tesla's autopilot operates in conjunction with the human driver to make driving safer and less stressful. This is how the term has been used for decades in aerospace: to denote a support system that operates under the direct supervision of a human pilot," a Tesla spokesperson later told Ars Technica.