You're transposing airplane terminology with automobile terminology. In a car, the co-pilot is typically someone that sits in the passenger seat and functions only as an additional set of eyes. They can't take complete control over the vehicle from that spot. Cars, unlike airplanes, don't have two sets of full controls.
> You're transposing airplane terminology with automobile terminology.
Well yeah... transposing terminology is how an analogy is supposed to work. And I didn't pick the analogies - Tesla did and then you proposed another flying analogy!
> In a car, the co-pilot is typically someone that sits in the passenger seat and functions only as an additional set of eyes.
Do you mean a co-driver? Like in a rally car? I've never seen that called a 'co-pilot' before.
If you don't want to confuse with aeroplanes, why didn't you suggest 'co-driver'?
This comment seems to pretty much ignore the lingua franca of American drivers. Transposing terminology only works to the extent that the public actually understands how an airplane autopilot functions, which they don't. Plenty of people refer to their front seat passenger as a co-pilot or navigator, but I've never heard anyone call their passenger "co-driver".
The word literally everyone uses in that scenario is "navigate". Aside from rally drivers, nobody in the history of ever has used co-pilot in that scenario..
C'mon... you know that's not true. Maybe it's a regional thing or a geographic thing but I've lived in multiple US cities on both coasts and in the north and south and have had people use the term on many occasions. I even had a friend when I was growing up whose parents designated the role of "co-pilot" to the eldest when they were old enough to sit in the front seat.
"I need you to be my co-pilot and watch out for cops."
In my experience, you're correct. "Shotgun", "copilot" and "navigator" are all terms used interchangeably in my family. And urban dictionary has entry for 'co-pilot' from 2005 referring to the shotgun passenger.
