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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

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 9y 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 9y 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 9y 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 9y 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.
    - abalone 9y ago
      Nah, I was clear you were characterizing that as the most conservative interpretation of the study. Your assumption is logically flawed. To wit: > 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. You lumped the two types of features together. There's your logical flaw. The most conservative interpretation is that, yes, Tesla collision avoidance could be great while autosteering is "not nearly as effective as they claim."

slg 9y 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 9y 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 9y 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 9y 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.
  - abalone 9y ago
    Nah, I was clear you were characterizing that as the most conservative interpretation of the study. Your assumption is logically flawed. To wit: > 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. You lumped the two types of features together. There's your logical flaw. The most conservative interpretation is that, yes, Tesla collision avoidance could be great while autosteering is "not nearly as effective as they claim."