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Every incident is obviously tragic, but statistically with the number of Teslas on the road is self-driving roughly on par with the number of expected deadly ac

Every incident is obviously tragic, but statistically with the number of Teslas on the road is self-driving roughly on par with the number of expected deadly accidents with manually driven cars? This is still a nascent technology with a lot of promise and it is naive to expect that there will never be a fatality or issue.

mikepurvis 7y ago
Of course. But there obviously is a real issue with overhanging obstacles, since there have been multiple of these crashes now. Do we really accept a known flaw just because it's still better than the alternative?
- esyir 7y ago
  Honestly? Yes. We take the best option available at current time, and simultaneously work on improvements.
  - jakeogh 7y ago
    So... human drivers.
- cjbprime 7y ago
  .. yes? I mean, it depends on what you mean by "accept", but yes we choose the option that has the least risk of killing people, even if it has "issues", because those issues are already encapsulated in the relative risk estimates. Airline flying is safer than driving even though planes have known issues too. Really struggling to find a logical point in here. Maybe some nuance I'm missing?
  - mikepurvis 7y ago
    Interesting that you would bring up airplanes. Because when the Max 8 is suspected to have a systemic problem which may repeatably cause crashes, the entire worldwide fleet of them gets grounded. No one makes the argument that a Max 8 with a faulty AOA sensor is still safer than driving your car so whatever.
- taneq 7y ago
  > Do we really accept a known flaw just because it's still better than the alternative? Would you really choose an overall-worse alternative because the better option has a single known flaw? If you're that worried about Autopilot, just don't buy or use it. The rest of the car is still best in class. Edit: Be less inflammatory.
- sangnoir 7y ago
  Adding Lidar is an alternative - but Tesla/Musk keep ragging on it as their cars keep slamming into objects
flukus 7y ago
Statistics don't include situations where Tesla went wrong and the driver manually intervened to avoid an accident. One is just human drivers and the other is a team effort between human drivers and AI, if the results are the same then that's quite condemning of the AI.
- solveit 7y ago
  At the moment the relevant choice is between human and human+AI, not human vs only AI. And I believe human+AI outperforms in what rough statistics we do have.
  - ranbumo 7y ago
    We'll have 'full self-driving' in a year, so option 3 is on the table very soon, according to Tesla's marketing. I assume that this is mostly pr in terms of how autonomous the ai will be once again, but many people may buy it and then get blamed for it when accidents happen.
notahacker 7y ago
Statistically, Teslas are much, much more dangerous than other new cars in the same price bracket.[1] To be fair, I suspect the driver demographics skew younger, maler and more urban than most luxury cars and that has at least as much impact as any actual driving characteristics, but the statistics really don't bear out the people killed by glitches or systematic flaws in Tesla's software pale into comparison compared with those saved by it line of defence. I find it truly remarkable how on the one hand HN can rage for days over Boeing introducing software with flaws that killed people and on the other hand when it's Tesla's software flaws killing people in a similarly repeatable manner, the general consensus veers towards deaths from poor software implementation not mattering nearly as much as the potential of the technology... [1]https://medium.com/@MidwesternHedgi/teslas-driver-fatality-rate-is-more-than-triple-that-of-luxury-cars-and-likely-even-higher-433670ddde17 https://medium.com/@MidwesternHedgi/teslas-driver-fatality-r...
- taneq 7y ago
  > Statistically, Teslas are much, much more dangerous than other new cars in the same price bracket.[1] To be fair [...] To be fair, how many of the other new cars in the same price bracket and category class (midsize sedan, large sedan) can be ordered with factory 700+hp and sub-3.3s 0-100km/h times? I haven't seen numbers but I'd suspect that the vast majority of Tesla fatalities are due to the fact that the cars are stupidly much faster than anything new Tesla drivers will have driven before.
  - londons_explore 7y ago
    One of the 4 fatalities investigated did happen after the tesla was trying to outrun a police car... Not exactly Tesla's fault!
  - leetcrew 7y ago
    the model s with the performance characteristics you mention starts around $90k (or $110 with ludicrous mode option). at this level you can start getting into 911s, BMW m4/m5, or the highest trim American muscle cars. these cars have comparable acceleration figures to the performance model s and the sports cars will thrash it in any situation that doesn't involve 0-60 in a straight line. edit: I reread your post and realized you are talking about midsize sedans and larger. Mercedes amg e63 is a better counterexample. most of the cars I mentioned don't have 700hp either, but you don't need it when you start with a 500-1000 lb weight advantage.

mikepurvis 7y ago

Of course. But there obviously is a real issue with overhanging obstacles, since there have been multiple of these crashes now. Do we really accept a known flaw just because it's still better than the alternative?

esyir 7y ago
Honestly? Yes. We take the best option available at current time, and simultaneously work on improvements.
- jakeogh 7y ago
  So... human drivers.
cjbprime 7y ago
.. yes? I mean, it depends on what you mean by "accept", but yes we choose the option that has the least risk of killing people, even if it has "issues", because those issues are already encapsulated in the relative risk estimates. Airline flying is safer than driving even though planes have known issues too. Really struggling to find a logical point in here. Maybe some nuance I'm missing?
- mikepurvis 7y ago
  Interesting that you would bring up airplanes. Because when the Max 8 is suspected to have a systemic problem which may repeatably cause crashes, the entire worldwide fleet of them gets grounded. No one makes the argument that a Max 8 with a faulty AOA sensor is still safer than driving your car so whatever.
taneq 7y ago
> Do we really accept a known flaw just because it's still better than the alternative? Would you really choose an overall-worse alternative because the better option has a single known flaw? If you're that worried about Autopilot, just don't buy or use it. The rest of the car is still best in class. Edit: Be less inflammatory.
sangnoir 7y ago
Adding Lidar is an alternative - but Tesla/Musk keep ragging on it as their cars keep slamming into objects

flukus 7y ago

Statistics don't include situations where Tesla went wrong and the driver manually intervened to avoid an accident. One is just human drivers and the other is a team effort between human drivers and AI, if the results are the same then that's quite condemning of the AI.

solveit 7y ago
At the moment the relevant choice is between human and human+AI, not human vs only AI. And I believe human+AI outperforms in what rough statistics we do have.
- ranbumo 7y ago
  We'll have 'full self-driving' in a year, so option 3 is on the table very soon, according to Tesla's marketing. I assume that this is mostly pr in terms of how autonomous the ai will be once again, but many people may buy it and then get blamed for it when accidents happen.

notahacker 7y ago

Statistically, Teslas are much, much more dangerous than other new cars in the same price bracket.[1] To be fair, I suspect the driver demographics skew younger, maler and more urban than most luxury cars and that has at least as much impact as any actual driving characteristics, but the statistics really don't bear out the people killed by glitches or systematic flaws in Tesla's software pale into comparison compared with those saved by it line of defence. I find it truly remarkable how on the one hand HN can rage for days over Boeing introducing software with flaws that killed people and on the other hand when it's Tesla's software flaws killing people in a similarly repeatable manner, the general consensus veers towards deaths from poor software implementation not mattering nearly as much as the potential of the technology... [1]https://medium.com/@MidwesternHedgi/teslas-driver-fatality-rate-is-more-than-triple-that-of-luxury-cars-and-likely-even-higher-433670ddde17 https://medium.com/@MidwesternHedgi/teslas-driver-fatality-r...

taneq 7y ago
> Statistically, Teslas are much, much more dangerous than other new cars in the same price bracket.[1] To be fair [...] To be fair, how many of the other new cars in the same price bracket and category class (midsize sedan, large sedan) can be ordered with factory 700+hp and sub-3.3s 0-100km/h times? I haven't seen numbers but I'd suspect that the vast majority of Tesla fatalities are due to the fact that the cars are stupidly much faster than anything new Tesla drivers will have driven before.
- londons_explore 7y ago
  One of the 4 fatalities investigated did happen after the tesla was trying to outrun a police car... Not exactly Tesla's fault!
- leetcrew 7y ago
  the model s with the performance characteristics you mention starts around $90k (or $110 with ludicrous mode option). at this level you can start getting into 911s, BMW m4/m5, or the highest trim American muscle cars. these cars have comparable acceleration figures to the performance model s and the sports cars will thrash it in any situation that doesn't involve 0-60 in a straight line. edit: I reread your post and realized you are talking about midsize sedans and larger. Mercedes amg e63 is a better counterexample. most of the cars I mentioned don't have 700hp either, but you don't need it when you start with a 500-1000 lb weight advantage.