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“We believe in transparency, so an agreement that prevents public release of information for over a year is unacceptable.” As noted in the article, the informa

“We believe in transparency, so an agreement that prevents public release of information for over a year is unacceptable.” As noted in the article, the information being released includes blaming the victim and other PR spin. This doesn't serve the public or further highway safety; it further's Tesla's commercial goals. If Tesla's withdrawal hampers the investigation, let's hope the agency uses its subpoena power to get the info it needs to determine the cause of the accident and what Tesla needs to do to prevent similar incidents from happening in the future.

pooya13 9y ago
They could justify that by saying: Autopilot saves lives. Therefore not setting the record straight as fast as possible could lead to less people using the autopilot and more casualties as the result. (They could also be doing this out of pure financial motives)
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
  Can they actually say "Autopilot saves lives"? It's never been proven that Tesla's system is safer than human driving so I would think they would run afoul of some marketing law if they were to claim that.
  - sabareesh 9y ago
    http://bgr.com/2017/01/19/tesla-autopilot-crash-safety-statistics-report-nhtsa/ http://bgr.com/2017/01/19/tesla-autopilot-crash-safety-stati...
    - frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
      The NHTSA report makes no claims about Tesla's safety relative to human drivers, only that Teslas with TACC + Autosteer are safer than Teslas with TACC alone. The NHTSA never even looks at how often Autosteer is activated so both buckets are filled with tons of human driving miles, from the report: The crash rates are for all miles travelled before and after Autopilot installation and are not limited to actual Autopilot use. Both buckets also have plenty of miles with adaptive cruise control on - the data can't be used for a human vs autopilot comparison. And even taking those considerations into account, there is a lawsuit [1] asking for the data used to come to those findings which NHTSA and Tesla have both resisted. Tesla has never proven that Autopilot is safer than a human driver. [1] https://jalopnik.com/does-teslas-autosteer-really-cut-crashes-by-40-percent-1796548178 https://jalopnik.com/does-teslas-autosteer-really-cut-crashe...
    - mcguire 9y ago
      "The agency found that Teslas without Autosteer crashed an average of 1.3 times per million miles driven, compared with 0.8 per million miles for vehicles equipped with Autosteer. That shows that just having Autosteer available on a car — not necessarily enabled at the time of crash — reduced crash rates by about 40 percent. That’s a truly staggering improvement." That's (a) comparing Teslas to Teslas, not to all vehicles, and (b) not necessarily comparing safety, but crash rates.
      - rohit2412 9y ago
        The report conflated Autosteer and AEB, plus AEB was rolled out at the same time, so you can't compare. however, if you want to compare AutoSteer vs no Autosteer, you need to compare Teslas to teslas, and compare crash rates not fatalities.
    - oarsinsync 9y ago
      The version of code tested doesn't necessarily reflect the current state. Bugs are introduced and things that worked before, stop working properly after an update. One such example of this is at https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/8a0jfh/autopilot_barrier_lust_201812/ https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/8a0jfh/autopil... > Yep, works for 6 months with zero issues. Then one Friday night you get an update. Everything works that weekend, and on your way to work on Monday. Then, 18 minutes into your commute home, it drives straight at a barrier at 60 MPH. > It's important to remember that it's not like you got the update 5 minutes before this happened. Even worse, you may not know you got an update if you are in a multi-driver household and the other driver installed the update.
    - Splines 9y ago
      I think the difference between autopilot and other safety innovations is that the failure state of autopilot is rather spectacular (maybe it's closest to seatbelts/airbags in this regard). When it works, it's great. When it doesn't work and causes harm, it's easy to point to as a reason not to use it. A lot of the other car-safety innovations usually have a failure state where it doesn't put you in a worse off position that you normally would have been in, should that innovation not have existed (e.g., crumple zones, crash-safe interiors, highway design/signage, ABS, etc.). Reducing the absolute # of car deaths is always a good thing, and undoubtedly # of deaths saved by AutoPilot > # of deaths caused by AutoPilot, but looking at that comparison makes people worrisome, especially if you can picture yourself on the RHS of that equation. Personally I'm not sure where I stand. I do find it uncomfortable having ever-increasing levels of software complexity in my car.
annerajb 9y ago
Right as you mention and Tesla did mention in their press release yesterday they will continue to cooperate on technical matters. That part is not optional.
valuearb 9y ago
Is there any indication that the information that Tesla released wasn't true? And Tesla said they'd continue to cooperate with the investigation, so why do you think a subpoena is suddenly needed?
- jstandard 9y ago
  > Is there any indication that the information that Tesla released wasn't true? We don't know and that's exactly the reason why NTSB has their disclosure policy in place. It's to stop biased actors from dominating or setting the narrative early, before impartial actors have had a chance to corroborate what happened. What if the car malfunctioned and the warnings weren't sounding? What if the warnings were sounding even though Huang had his hands on the wheel (as another poster above indicated has happened to them)? I simply can't take what Tesla says at face value given the huge vested interest they have in controlling the story here.
- rohit2412 9y ago
  Have you looked at that information. Here, I'll get it for you from https://www.tesla.com/blog/update-last-week%E2%80%99s-accident https://www.tesla.com/blog/update-last-week%E2%80%99s-accide... > Over a year ago, our first iteration of Autopilot was found by the U.S. government to reduce crash rates by as much as 40%. Why don't they talk only about Autosteer instead of Autosteer+AEB (and other features combined). Why not discuss how many accidents could have been caused by Autopilot if the driver did not correct it. Why is there no commentary on if whether their active driving system would be better run as a passive driver error correction system, as other manufacturers do. > In the US, there is one automotive fatality every 86 million miles across all vehicles from all manufacturers. For Tesla, there is one fatality, including known pedestrian fatalities, every 320 million miles in vehicles equipped with Autopilot hardware. If you are driving a Tesla equipped with Autopilot hardware, you are 3.7 times less likely to be involved in a fatal accident. Ahh, so a Tesla is safer than a 10 year old beaten down car with no airbags driven on country roads, I never expected that. Tesla is safer than even a motorbike, what a surprise. And just having Autopilot in your car (even disabled), makes you 3.7 times less likely to die. Does that say anything about Autopilot, or are they just touting non-Autopilot premium safety features? > There are about 1.25 million automotive deaths worldwide. If the current safety level of a Tesla vehicle were to be applied, it would mean about 900,000 lives saved per year. So, motorbikes driving in Himalyas are more deadly than a Tesla on California highways, who would have guessed. What does this say about Autopilot again? > We expect the safety level of autonomous cars to be 10 times safer than non-autonomous cars. Elon musk also expected driverless cars to be everywhere in 2017. And autonomous doesn't need to mean hands off driverless cars, they keep conflating assistive feature benefits with their hands-off technology.
danso 9y ago
Ironic that Tesla touts the value of being transparent. It freely cites the NHTSA report that Autopilot seems to reduce crashes by 40%. But the NHTSA is currently being sued because it won't release the data behind that finding: http://www.safetyresearch.net/blog/articles/quality-control-systems-corp-sues-dot-tesla-data http://www.safetyresearch.net/blog/articles/quality-control-...
- unityByFreedom 9y ago
  Right. NHTSA/DOT are being sued over Tesla's refusal to provide data from an existing FOIA. So Tesla files an FOIA and claims they are the transparent ones. This is a bad attempt at PR.
lafar6502 9y ago
Maybe they are on some corporate autopilot, why would they steer themselves into a wall otherwise?
- stephengillie 9y ago
  Their CEO has many responsibilities. He might be involved with setting up 4000 rocket launches for another company.
Robotbeat 9y ago
> As noted in the article, the information being released includes blaming the victim and other PR spin. This doesn't serve the public or further highway safety; it further's Tesla's commercial goals. I disagree. People need to know that autopilot doesn't eliminate their responsibility for safely driving the vehicle and paying attention. People need to know they HAVE to respect the autopilot warnings. If that is happening too much in an area and so is too cumbersome, then don't use autopilot. And to wait a year for that to be released would not be in the public interest. Neither would a year of unanswered BS from short interests and competitors, considering that Tesla's vehicles overall are incredibly safe. I think NTSB's action to remove Tesla is fine. Tesla felt they had to release such information (and there's a good argument for that, IMHO), but that is against NTSB's policy as it could compromise the investigation. So be it. Removing them may be best for all.
- slg 9y ago
  It is strange seeing people claim Tesla is just doing PR spin here. They aren't saying this is the drivers fault because the driver decided to drive into the median. They are saying it is the driver's fault because he put too much faith into the autopilot system. Tesla's entire argument is that their autopilot is not as capable as some people believe. That is a weird stance to take if their only goal is to sell more cars.
  - buvanshak 9y ago
    >That is a weird stance to take if their only goal is to sell more cars. That is only to weasel out of the legal issues. They are doing marketing stuff that pushes the feature as vastly more capable on the side..For ex Elon Musk tweeting videos that shows cars traveling by itself on unmarked roads..And having declarations such as "The human behind the wheel is only for legal reasons, the car is driving all be itself" and such.. So the actual marketing is based on this unrealistic projection, and only these "statements", which the public will soon forget, is based on its true capability..
    - slg 9y ago
jsight 9y ago
>As noted in the article, the information being released includes blaming the victim and other PR spin. This doesn't serve the public or further highway safety; it further's Tesla's commercial goals. Saying clearly that abdicating your responsibility to drive the car can (and has) resulted in deaths does serve public safety. Its critically important that people driving this section of road (and others like it) know about this as soon as possible. Call it victim blaming if you want, and certainly there was some spin, but it is unfair to say that this has no safety element.

pooya13 9y ago

They could justify that by saying: Autopilot saves lives. Therefore not setting the record straight as fast as possible could lead to less people using the autopilot and more casualties as the result. (They could also be doing this out of pure financial motives)

frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
Can they actually say "Autopilot saves lives"? It's never been proven that Tesla's system is safer than human driving so I would think they would run afoul of some marketing law if they were to claim that.
- sabareesh 9y ago
  http://bgr.com/2017/01/19/tesla-autopilot-crash-safety-statistics-report-nhtsa/ http://bgr.com/2017/01/19/tesla-autopilot-crash-safety-stati...
  - frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
    The NHTSA report makes no claims about Tesla's safety relative to human drivers, only that Teslas with TACC + Autosteer are safer than Teslas with TACC alone. The NHTSA never even looks at how often Autosteer is activated so both buckets are filled with tons of human driving miles, from the report: The crash rates are for all miles travelled before and after Autopilot installation and are not limited to actual Autopilot use. Both buckets also have plenty of miles with adaptive cruise control on - the data can't be used for a human vs autopilot comparison. And even taking those considerations into account, there is a lawsuit [1] asking for the data used to come to those findings which NHTSA and Tesla have both resisted. Tesla has never proven that Autopilot is safer than a human driver. [1] https://jalopnik.com/does-teslas-autosteer-really-cut-crashes-by-40-percent-1796548178 https://jalopnik.com/does-teslas-autosteer-really-cut-crashe...
  - mcguire 9y ago
    "The agency found that Teslas without Autosteer crashed an average of 1.3 times per million miles driven, compared with 0.8 per million miles for vehicles equipped with Autosteer. That shows that just having Autosteer available on a car — not necessarily enabled at the time of crash — reduced crash rates by about 40 percent. That’s a truly staggering improvement." That's (a) comparing Teslas to Teslas, not to all vehicles, and (b) not necessarily comparing safety, but crash rates.
    - rohit2412 9y ago
      The report conflated Autosteer and AEB, plus AEB was rolled out at the same time, so you can't compare. however, if you want to compare AutoSteer vs no Autosteer, you need to compare Teslas to teslas, and compare crash rates not fatalities.
  - oarsinsync 9y ago
    The version of code tested doesn't necessarily reflect the current state. Bugs are introduced and things that worked before, stop working properly after an update. One such example of this is at https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/8a0jfh/autopilot_barrier_lust_201812/ https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/8a0jfh/autopil... > Yep, works for 6 months with zero issues. Then one Friday night you get an update. Everything works that weekend, and on your way to work on Monday. Then, 18 minutes into your commute home, it drives straight at a barrier at 60 MPH. > It's important to remember that it's not like you got the update 5 minutes before this happened. Even worse, you may not know you got an update if you are in a multi-driver household and the other driver installed the update.
  - Splines 9y ago
    I think the difference between autopilot and other safety innovations is that the failure state of autopilot is rather spectacular (maybe it's closest to seatbelts/airbags in this regard). When it works, it's great. When it doesn't work and causes harm, it's easy to point to as a reason not to use it. A lot of the other car-safety innovations usually have a failure state where it doesn't put you in a worse off position that you normally would have been in, should that innovation not have existed (e.g., crumple zones, crash-safe interiors, highway design/signage, ABS, etc.). Reducing the absolute # of car deaths is always a good thing, and undoubtedly # of deaths saved by AutoPilot > # of deaths caused by AutoPilot, but looking at that comparison makes people worrisome, especially if you can picture yourself on the RHS of that equation. Personally I'm not sure where I stand. I do find it uncomfortable having ever-increasing levels of software complexity in my car.

annerajb 9y ago

Right as you mention and Tesla did mention in their press release yesterday they will continue to cooperate on technical matters. That part is not optional.

valuearb 9y ago

Is there any indication that the information that Tesla released wasn't true? And Tesla said they'd continue to cooperate with the investigation, so why do you think a subpoena is suddenly needed?

jstandard 9y ago
> Is there any indication that the information that Tesla released wasn't true? We don't know and that's exactly the reason why NTSB has their disclosure policy in place. It's to stop biased actors from dominating or setting the narrative early, before impartial actors have had a chance to corroborate what happened. What if the car malfunctioned and the warnings weren't sounding? What if the warnings were sounding even though Huang had his hands on the wheel (as another poster above indicated has happened to them)? I simply can't take what Tesla says at face value given the huge vested interest they have in controlling the story here.
rohit2412 9y ago
Have you looked at that information. Here, I'll get it for you from https://www.tesla.com/blog/update-last-week%E2%80%99s-accident https://www.tesla.com/blog/update-last-week%E2%80%99s-accide... > Over a year ago, our first iteration of Autopilot was found by the U.S. government to reduce crash rates by as much as 40%. Why don't they talk only about Autosteer instead of Autosteer+AEB (and other features combined). Why not discuss how many accidents could have been caused by Autopilot if the driver did not correct it. Why is there no commentary on if whether their active driving system would be better run as a passive driver error correction system, as other manufacturers do. > In the US, there is one automotive fatality every 86 million miles across all vehicles from all manufacturers. For Tesla, there is one fatality, including known pedestrian fatalities, every 320 million miles in vehicles equipped with Autopilot hardware. If you are driving a Tesla equipped with Autopilot hardware, you are 3.7 times less likely to be involved in a fatal accident. Ahh, so a Tesla is safer than a 10 year old beaten down car with no airbags driven on country roads, I never expected that. Tesla is safer than even a motorbike, what a surprise. And just having Autopilot in your car (even disabled), makes you 3.7 times less likely to die. Does that say anything about Autopilot, or are they just touting non-Autopilot premium safety features? > There are about 1.25 million automotive deaths worldwide. If the current safety level of a Tesla vehicle were to be applied, it would mean about 900,000 lives saved per year. So, motorbikes driving in Himalyas are more deadly than a Tesla on California highways, who would have guessed. What does this say about Autopilot again? > We expect the safety level of autonomous cars to be 10 times safer than non-autonomous cars. Elon musk also expected driverless cars to be everywhere in 2017. And autonomous doesn't need to mean hands off driverless cars, they keep conflating assistive feature benefits with their hands-off technology.

danso 9y ago

Ironic that Tesla touts the value of being transparent. It freely cites the NHTSA report that Autopilot seems to reduce crashes by 40%. But the NHTSA is currently being sued because it won't release the data behind that finding: http://www.safetyresearch.net/blog/articles/quality-control-systems-corp-sues-dot-tesla-data http://www.safetyresearch.net/blog/articles/quality-control-...

unityByFreedom 9y ago
Right. NHTSA/DOT are being sued over Tesla's refusal to provide data from an existing FOIA. So Tesla files an FOIA and claims they are the transparent ones. This is a bad attempt at PR.

lafar6502 9y ago

Maybe they are on some corporate autopilot, why would they steer themselves into a wall otherwise?

stephengillie 9y ago
Their CEO has many responsibilities. He might be involved with setting up 4000 rocket launches for another company.

Robotbeat 9y ago

> As noted in the article, the information being released includes blaming the victim and other PR spin. This doesn't serve the public or further highway safety; it further's Tesla's commercial goals. I disagree. People need to know that autopilot doesn't eliminate their responsibility for safely driving the vehicle and paying attention. People need to know they HAVE to respect the autopilot warnings. If that is happening too much in an area and so is too cumbersome, then don't use autopilot. And to wait a year for that to be released would not be in the public interest. Neither would a year of unanswered BS from short interests and competitors, considering that Tesla's vehicles overall are incredibly safe. I think NTSB's action to remove Tesla is fine. Tesla felt they had to release such information (and there's a good argument for that, IMHO), but that is against NTSB's policy as it could compromise the investigation. So be it. Removing them may be best for all.

slg 9y ago
It is strange seeing people claim Tesla is just doing PR spin here. They aren't saying this is the drivers fault because the driver decided to drive into the median. They are saying it is the driver's fault because he put too much faith into the autopilot system. Tesla's entire argument is that their autopilot is not as capable as some people believe. That is a weird stance to take if their only goal is to sell more cars.
- buvanshak 9y ago
  >That is a weird stance to take if their only goal is to sell more cars. That is only to weasel out of the legal issues. They are doing marketing stuff that pushes the feature as vastly more capable on the side..For ex Elon Musk tweeting videos that shows cars traveling by itself on unmarked roads..And having declarations such as "The human behind the wheel is only for legal reasons, the car is driving all be itself" and such.. So the actual marketing is based on this unrealistic projection, and only these "statements", which the public will soon forget, is based on its true capability..
  - slg 9y ago

jsight 9y ago

>As noted in the article, the information being released includes blaming the victim and other PR spin. This doesn't serve the public or further highway safety; it further's Tesla's commercial goals. Saying clearly that abdicating your responsibility to drive the car can (and has) resulted in deaths does serve public safety. Its critically important that people driving this section of road (and others like it) know about this as soon as possible. Call it victim blaming if you want, and certainly there was some spin, but it is unfair to say that this has no safety element.