When I let someone else drive my car then apart from the evident things (it'a drive assist, so keep a hand on the wheel and your eyes on the road, it doesn't read stop signs or red lights, it's not meant for secondary roads etc.), I mention (in descending order of dangerousness):
-
stopped vehicles: if a vehicle/obstacle in your lane is not moving at all (traffic jam, red light, road works etc.), AP may not recognise it timely as a vehicle/obstacle. I think that's the first and foremost cause of severe AP accidents.
-
roundabouts: AP would really often like to fly straight over those, sometimes;
-
hill crests: AP can't easily see a possible curve behind (as mentioned above - thanks to
@dhcp);
-
sharp turns: even on e.g. highway ramps with perfect lane markings etc., sharp turns are still an issue (though this is getting better each month);
-
lane change: don't trust AP to help you in any way to look behind or even sideways when you do a lane change with AP engaged. AP will do the lane change quite perfectly, but you're the only one responsible for the looking.
In general I think the most surprising thing, when you are new to AP, is that AP is a cowboy: when it knows or should know it cannot manage a situation, you would imagine it would err on the safe side and freak out early enough for you to take over in time, but instead it often still wants to try to manage more or less any situation by itself That, too, has improved recently, but AP remains surprisingly full of hubris. Of course that's fun (because you can take AP to its limits, and really try out how it gets better every month) but it's a bit of a culture shock when you're new to this driving assist feature.
(that being said: Tesla's AP is, to me, the best invention in the automobile world ever since I've been driving cars!).
My experience is only on AP1, BTW.
EDIT: I also posted
this advice a year ago. Please don't take it seriously!