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17 fatalities, 736 crashes: The shocking toll of Tesla’s Autopilot (web.archive.org)

submitted 1 year ago by 0x815@feddit.de to c/news@beehaw.org

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said that cars operating in Tesla’s Autopilot mode are safer than those piloted solely by human drivers, citing crash rates when the modes of driving are compared. He has pushed the carmaker to develop and deploy features programmed to maneuver the roads, arguing that the technology will usher in a safer, virtually accident-free future. While it’s impossible to say how many crashes may have been averted, the data shows clear flaws in the technology being tested in real time on America’s highways.

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[–] BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I dislike elon, and I'm never buying a Tesla (I own a different EV already). However, until someone shows me the equivalent human caused rates (for the same type of roads and distance) these numbers just simply don't look out of line with what I would expect for any car.

IMO Self driving doesn't need to be perfectly safe, it just needs to be equivalent or safer than the average human driver.

[–] cosmic_skillet@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, the article reads like a hit piece. Why didn't they even try to do an apples to apples comparison? Same thing when they compared Tesla to Subaru, just raw total numbers. Not normalized to cars sold or miles driven or anything. The raw data is pretty meaningless.

[–] 0x815@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

@comic_skillset

Why didn't they even try to do an apples to apples comparison?

Maybe because the data released by Tesla is incomplete and biased as it appears to serve its sales rather than safety?

It's the company and Elon Musk himself that are frequently making bold statements while it seems that not even the authorities have the data to verify the claims. As the article says:

In a March presentation, Tesla claimed Full Self-Driving crashes at a rate at least five times lower than vehicles in normal driving, in a comparison of miles driven per collision. That claim, and Musk’s characterization of Autopilot as “unequivocally safer,” is impossible to test without access to the detailed data that Tesla possesses.

[–] freshhotbiscuits@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, this article is ridiculous. Self-driving cars are FAR safer than human drivers. The number of accidents is minuscule compared to what would be expected if the automated features were absent.

We run the real risk of screwing this up if people insist on an automated car never causing a crash, or never hurting anyone. Even if they hurt someone, the point is that it harmed maybe 0.1% of the people that would have been hurt in traditional vehicles.

”Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good”

[–] 0x815@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

@freshhotbiscuits

Even if they hurt someone, the point is that it harmed maybe 0.1% of the people that would have been hurt in traditional vehicles.

Where have you got this number from?

This is exactly what I meant in my comment before. Anyone throws out a number and claims it is true. I don't think we should let perfect be the enemy of good, but here are people's lives on the line. We need independent and reliable data.

[–] freshhotbiscuits@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh, I wasn’t stating that as fact, or ever intending to. The fact of the matter though is that more than 90% of car accidents are caused by human error. If we can eliminate the human error, then we’ll have far fewer people hurt on the roads, even though that means that self-driving cars are going to hurt people. This is merely my point, that we can’t expect self-driving cars to have 0 accidents, but once the tech is good enough (and I acknowledge that it’s not even close yet), we need to be ok with that hard truth.

[–] 0x815@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago

but once the tech is good enough

What makes you think that the tech is already good enough for being tested in the public? The fact is that the incidents revealed by the investigation is much higher than what Tesla has published, Tesla is holding back a lot of relevant data, no one (except Tesla) can say how safe this tech is and whether or not it should be allowed to be tested on the streets.

The fact that many or most car accidents are caused by human error and a lot of other critical points here simply don't matter here as they have nothing to do with the issue. This is not some application on your smartphone that you can test at your own risk while it is still in beta. This is a car. It kills people, and Tesla is obviously unwilling to disclose the data even to the authorities. As long as this is the case, this tech should not be allowed to be tested in the public space.