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This "kind of autonomous driving" is absolutely deadly, by definition. It's never going to work well. Instead of just speculating, the NHTSA did an actual stud

by NickM 8y ago

This "kind of autonomous driving" is absolutely deadly, by definition. It's never going to work well. Instead of just speculating, the NHTSA did an actual study on this, and they reached the opposite conclusion. They investigated crash rates in Tesla vehicles that had the original autopilot hardware installed, both before and after autosteer was enabled via a software update, and found that autosteer reduced accident rates by 40%. When Tesla talks about how much lower their accident rate per mile is compared to other cars, that's kind of statistical bullshit, since there are plenty of other uncontrolled variables that are in play that could affect this besides the cars themselves. But in the case of the NHTSA study, they were looking at the same drivers in the same cars, and the only difference was that one day a software update came out and enabled autosteer, and suddenly accident rates went way down. That's pretty damn convincing if you ask me. https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/inv/2016/INCLA-PE16007-7876.pdf https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/inv/2016/INCLA-PE16007-7876.pdf

jsight 8y ago
As far as I know, they have not released the methodology behind that data. There are a lot of doubts as to whether it is truly showing the benefit of autosteer (in the autopilot sense) and not just the benefits of the other safety systems that were enabled around the same time.
frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago
And if you'd like a critical take on that report: But exactly how NHTSA reached that conclusion has been a mystery. It’s also the subject of an ongoing lawsuit between the agency and a group of researchers aiming to obtain NHTSA’s data so it can try to replicate the findings. That may be an impossible task. On Friday, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed in March by Jalopnik, NHTSA said it was unable to provide most of the materials and data used in the investigation, citing a “confidentiality determination” it granted Tesla in July. (It’s not uncommon for companies to submit requests to NHTSA for certain information to be treated as confidential. From there, NHTSA then chooses whether or not to grant the request.) In particular, the agency said, NHTSA is withholding in full an “excel spreadsheet Tesla submitted that contains production data from disclosure because the spreadsheet contains information related to trade secrets and commercial or financial information.” [...] Autosteer, however, is relatively unique to Tesla. That’s what makes singling out Autosteer as the source of a 40 percent drop so curious. Forward collision warning and automatic emergency braking were introduced just months before the introduction of Autosteer in October 2015. A previous IIHS study shows that both the collision warning and auto emergency braking can deliver a similar reduction in crashes. https://jalopnik.com/feds-cant-say-why-they-claim-teslas-autosteer-cuts-cras-1819229456 https://jalopnik.com/feds-cant-say-why-they-claim-teslas-aut...
- slg 8y ago
  Let's take the most conservative interpretation of that result and say that Tesla's collision warning and automatic emergency braking are responsible for the entire 40% reduction in accidents since that is similar for that feature set in other cars. That means that the introduction of autosteering at worst had no effect on the accident rate. That is a pretty big difference than "This "kind of autonomous driving" is absolutely deadly, by definition." EDIT: So let me add that yes, this report probably isn't as pro-autopilot as some people are claiming, but I would still consider it positive for Tesla considering it is the only publicly available report on the subject and it shows that autopilot is at least no worse than a human driver.
  - kalleboo 8y ago
    What bothers me is that Tesla has this data. Their cars are instrumented out the wazoo and uploading everything to the mothership. It would be trivial for them to discount cars that encountered AEB events, didn't use Autosteer etc from the dataset. The fact that even with that data they still feed us BS statistics about stuff like autopilot highway miles vs overall miles really worries me
  - abalone 8y ago
    > Let's... say that Tesla's collision warning and automatic emergency braking are responsible for the entire 40% reduction in accidents... That means that the introduction of autosteering at worst had no effect on the accident rate. That doesn't follow logically at all. Collision avoidance and autosteer were introduced within months of one another. One could be reducing accidents while the other increases them. The most conservative interpretation is that the study may not have properly isolated these variables and is misattributing the safety gain of collision avoidance to autosteering.
    - slg 8y ago
      You threw an ellipsis over a qualifying phrase in my statement and then responded as if I didn't say it. Your second ellipsis removed "since that is similar for that feature set in other cars". My conclusion rests on the assumption that those features on a Tesla are similar to those features on other cars. The only way for autopilot to be less safe than a human (taking the numbers from that study as true) is for those safety features to be substantially more effective on a Tesla. That is certainly possible, but it seems likes a weird argument to make since it rests on Tesla's technology being simultaneously industry leading and yet not nearly as effective as they claim.
kwhitefoot 8y ago
This agrees with my experience. Anecdota I know, but I feel that I am safer with autosteer on because a moment of inattention will not cause the car to drift out of lane or drive into another vehicle. I have a 2015 S 70D, autopilot 1.5 I suppose.
- abalone 8y ago
  And there's the conundrum. Autosteering can help you in a moment of inattention. But by nature it also encourages moments of inattention. It is far from clear that this is a net safety gain.
- rsync 8y ago
  "I feel that I am safer with autosteer on because a moment of inattention" If one has "moments" of inattention significant enough to drift out of a lane or "drive into another vehicle", one should not be driving. There is a current (Toyota ?) commercial where a young driver with her father is saved from mowing down a crosswalk full of pedestrians by some form of "auto stop" and the father proudly declares "it stopped for you". If you need that to avoid killing people, you should not be driving.
  - sjsjxhhc 8y ago
    I don’t think it’s as black-and-white as you claim. Suppose a driver is inattentive at some moment with probability x, and conditions where inattentiveness would lead to a crash exist with probability y, then a probability of a crash at that moment is xy. Probably, both x and y are > 0 for all drivers, but xy could be low enough that an accident never occurs. The driver has no reliable way of estimating x or y and therefore can’t judge the risk of their lack of attention causing a crash. Maybe they “shouldn’t” be driving according to this formula, but they don’t know that, and autosteer could save them from an accident. Most likely, the presence of autopilot increases x and decreases y. We can’t tell which affect dominates by arguing on the internet. We need data.
- BoorishBears 8y ago
  >a moment of inattention will not cause the car to drift out of lane or drive into another vehicle. Full automatic steer isn’t needed for this. Many many cars, for at least a decade, have had lane keep assist. Now active lane keep assist is even more common, which steers you back into your lane, but doesn’t actively steer until you drift, preventing the main abuses of the feature.
m_mueller 8y ago
IMO the death rate would be much more interesting, but I guess we don’t have enough data. I suspect that autopilot+human fails less often than human alone, but when it does, it does so catastrophically.

by NickM 8y ago

jsight 8y ago

As far as I know, they have not released the methodology behind that data. There are a lot of doubts as to whether it is truly showing the benefit of autosteer (in the autopilot sense) and not just the benefits of the other safety systems that were enabled around the same time.

frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago

And if you'd like a critical take on that report: But exactly how NHTSA reached that conclusion has been a mystery. It’s also the subject of an ongoing lawsuit between the agency and a group of researchers aiming to obtain NHTSA’s data so it can try to replicate the findings. That may be an impossible task. On Friday, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed in March by Jalopnik, NHTSA said it was unable to provide most of the materials and data used in the investigation, citing a “confidentiality determination” it granted Tesla in July. (It’s not uncommon for companies to submit requests to NHTSA for certain information to be treated as confidential. From there, NHTSA then chooses whether or not to grant the request.) In particular, the agency said, NHTSA is withholding in full an “excel spreadsheet Tesla submitted that contains production data from disclosure because the spreadsheet contains information related to trade secrets and commercial or financial information.” [...] Autosteer, however, is relatively unique to Tesla. That’s what makes singling out Autosteer as the source of a 40 percent drop so curious. Forward collision warning and automatic emergency braking were introduced just months before the introduction of Autosteer in October 2015. A previous IIHS study shows that both the collision warning and auto emergency braking can deliver a similar reduction in crashes. https://jalopnik.com/feds-cant-say-why-they-claim-teslas-autosteer-cuts-cras-1819229456 https://jalopnik.com/feds-cant-say-why-they-claim-teslas-aut...

slg 8y ago
Let's take the most conservative interpretation of that result and say that Tesla's collision warning and automatic emergency braking are responsible for the entire 40% reduction in accidents since that is similar for that feature set in other cars. That means that the introduction of autosteering at worst had no effect on the accident rate. That is a pretty big difference than "This "kind of autonomous driving" is absolutely deadly, by definition." EDIT: So let me add that yes, this report probably isn't as pro-autopilot as some people are claiming, but I would still consider it positive for Tesla considering it is the only publicly available report on the subject and it shows that autopilot is at least no worse than a human driver.
- kalleboo 8y ago
  What bothers me is that Tesla has this data. Their cars are instrumented out the wazoo and uploading everything to the mothership. It would be trivial for them to discount cars that encountered AEB events, didn't use Autosteer etc from the dataset. The fact that even with that data they still feed us BS statistics about stuff like autopilot highway miles vs overall miles really worries me
- abalone 8y ago
  > Let's... say that Tesla's collision warning and automatic emergency braking are responsible for the entire 40% reduction in accidents... That means that the introduction of autosteering at worst had no effect on the accident rate. That doesn't follow logically at all. Collision avoidance and autosteer were introduced within months of one another. One could be reducing accidents while the other increases them. The most conservative interpretation is that the study may not have properly isolated these variables and is misattributing the safety gain of collision avoidance to autosteering.
  - slg 8y ago
    You threw an ellipsis over a qualifying phrase in my statement and then responded as if I didn't say it. Your second ellipsis removed "since that is similar for that feature set in other cars". My conclusion rests on the assumption that those features on a Tesla are similar to those features on other cars. The only way for autopilot to be less safe than a human (taking the numbers from that study as true) is for those safety features to be substantially more effective on a Tesla. That is certainly possible, but it seems likes a weird argument to make since it rests on Tesla's technology being simultaneously industry leading and yet not nearly as effective as they claim.

kwhitefoot 8y ago

This agrees with my experience. Anecdota I know, but I feel that I am safer with autosteer on because a moment of inattention will not cause the car to drift out of lane or drive into another vehicle. I have a 2015 S 70D, autopilot 1.5 I suppose.

abalone 8y ago
And there's the conundrum. Autosteering can help you in a moment of inattention. But by nature it also encourages moments of inattention. It is far from clear that this is a net safety gain.
rsync 8y ago
"I feel that I am safer with autosteer on because a moment of inattention" If one has "moments" of inattention significant enough to drift out of a lane or "drive into another vehicle", one should not be driving. There is a current (Toyota ?) commercial where a young driver with her father is saved from mowing down a crosswalk full of pedestrians by some form of "auto stop" and the father proudly declares "it stopped for you". If you need that to avoid killing people, you should not be driving.
- sjsjxhhc 8y ago
  I don’t think it’s as black-and-white as you claim. Suppose a driver is inattentive at some moment with probability x, and conditions where inattentiveness would lead to a crash exist with probability y, then a probability of a crash at that moment is xy. Probably, both x and y are > 0 for all drivers, but xy could be low enough that an accident never occurs. The driver has no reliable way of estimating x or y and therefore can’t judge the risk of their lack of attention causing a crash. Maybe they “shouldn’t” be driving according to this formula, but they don’t know that, and autosteer could save them from an accident. Most likely, the presence of autopilot increases x and decreases y. We can’t tell which affect dominates by arguing on the internet. We need data.
BoorishBears 8y ago
>a moment of inattention will not cause the car to drift out of lane or drive into another vehicle. Full automatic steer isn’t needed for this. Many many cars, for at least a decade, have had lane keep assist. Now active lane keep assist is even more common, which steers you back into your lane, but doesn’t actively steer until you drift, preventing the main abuses of the feature.

m_mueller 8y ago

IMO the death rate would be much more interesting, but I guess we don’t have enough data. I suspect that autopilot+human fails less often than human alone, but when it does, it does so catastrophically.