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> 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 i

> 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
    These features are all interconnected and work together. At the most basic level they are about identifying obstacles and avoiding them. For an accident to happen, you usually need a failure of more than one of these systems. For example the most recent fatality was directly caused by an autosteering error directing the car towards a median. However the accident could have been prevented if the automatic emergency breaking triggered before the collision. Considering it didn't, I have a hard time imagining that the automatic breaking has surpassed the rest of the industry to a large enough extent that could make up for the autosteering being as dangerous as you are suggesting. It is certainly possible, it just seems unlikely that Tesla threads the needle to be extremely competent at one feature while also being incompetent enough to bungle a very related feature. That scenario relies on a lot more assumptions than the scenario I proposed which is why I described my original scenario as being the most conservative.
    - abalone 9y ago
      You're just doubling down on very poor reasoning. Collision avoidance can fail 50% of the time and still result in a massive 50% reduction in accidents. Whereas if autosteer fails 50% of the time while seducing drivers into paying less attention, it's going to increase the accident rate. It is not the underlying technologies that matters here, it's the fundamentally different use cases and compares. > I have a hard time imagining that the automatic breaking has surpassed the rest of the industry to a large enough extent that could make up for the autosteering being as dangerous as you are suggesting. This is another comprehension error. You claim was "autosteering at worst had no effect on the accident rate." Thus any increase in the accident rate caused by autosteering, not merely a "large" one, would invalidate your claim.

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
  These features are all interconnected and work together. At the most basic level they are about identifying obstacles and avoiding them. For an accident to happen, you usually need a failure of more than one of these systems. For example the most recent fatality was directly caused by an autosteering error directing the car towards a median. However the accident could have been prevented if the automatic emergency breaking triggered before the collision. Considering it didn't, I have a hard time imagining that the automatic breaking has surpassed the rest of the industry to a large enough extent that could make up for the autosteering being as dangerous as you are suggesting. It is certainly possible, it just seems unlikely that Tesla threads the needle to be extremely competent at one feature while also being incompetent enough to bungle a very related feature. That scenario relies on a lot more assumptions than the scenario I proposed which is why I described my original scenario as being the most conservative.
  - abalone 9y ago
    You're just doubling down on very poor reasoning. Collision avoidance can fail 50% of the time and still result in a massive 50% reduction in accidents. Whereas if autosteer fails 50% of the time while seducing drivers into paying less attention, it's going to increase the accident rate. It is not the underlying technologies that matters here, it's the fundamentally different use cases and compares. > I have a hard time imagining that the automatic breaking has surpassed the rest of the industry to a large enough extent that could make up for the autosteering being as dangerous as you are suggesting. This is another comprehension error. You claim was "autosteering at worst had no effect on the accident rate." Thus any increase in the accident rate caused by autosteering, not merely a "large" one, would invalidate your claim.