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I find it easier to pay attention when autopilot is on, for a few reasons. The first reason will fade eventually: it's fascinating to see it in action, and to o

by natch 6y ago

I find it easier to pay attention when autopilot is on, for a few reasons. The first reason will fade eventually: it's fascinating to see it in action, and to observe how it reacts to situations. Another reason is I am a bit more free to vary my attention safely, checking mirrors more often, seeing more of the scenery (don't worry, with fleeting glances, not long stares that would lead me to miss a truck crossing the road). Finally it eases the cognitive load of keeping safe follow distance and makes bumper to bumper traffic dreamy easy to the point where I no longer dread it, which is amazing! So I would not call it a design flaw. Checking the mirrors more often is good for safety too btw. >the fraudulent advertising purported / alleged. The claims of this have been debunked.

MereInterest 6y ago
> purported / alleged. The claims of this have been debunked. Isn't this entire article about how the courts in Germany determined that it is, in fact, false advertising?
- natch 6y ago
  That’s your interpretation of the article’s interpretation of the court’s interpretation I guess. Making all the foregoing my interpretation of your interpretation. Having read the Tesla website myself and understood its claims, they are not false. I believe the court was concerned that it was theoretically possible that some people might get confused. Or to put it in a harsh (to Tesla) way, the court feared some consumers could be misled (I would add, misled only due to the consumer’s own failure to read and listen to the information offered by Tesla with several different opportunities in varied and timely settings). So with this in mind, the court took action based on those fears. Conclusions beyond that are not warranted.
  - FireBeyond 6y ago
    > Having read the Tesla website myself and understood its claims, they are not false. "The driver is only present for legal reasons". Really? That's a direct quote from Tesla, a claim. I don't think it at all stands on itself.
emn13 6y ago
The numbers are hard to trivially analyze, because there is no source that tracks "deaths caused by tesla cars" - NHTSA tracks deaths in cars and pedestrians, but e.g. not in other cars involved in the accident, even if potentially there car without the fatality was a contributing factor (fault is kind of irrelevant). But the numbers we do have make Tesla's look pretty dangerous. Tesla's overall fatality rate may be low, but that's true in general of luxury cars (perhaps because they're driven in safer areas, by safer drivers, have fewer safety related faults, or protect their occupants better). Compared to similarly priced cars, tesla does poorly (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...). https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=no&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dn.no%2Fmotor%2Ffremtind-forsikring%2Fbilforsikring%2Fforsikring%2Felbiler-krasjer-mer-enn-andre-biler%2F2-1-558339 https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=no&tl=en&u=htt... - norwegian safety authority also concluding Tesla's are more dangerous. Finally, specifically the autopilot is often compared incorrectly - autopilot isn't used on busy city streets or chaotic traffic situations (it's not capable of that yet) - but those are where most traffic fatalities occur. On the highway, fatalities are comparitively rare, even in "normal" cars. On interstates, in 2012 (I can't find more recent numbers), the fatality rate was 3.38 per billion miles travelled (source: http://www.bast.de/EN/Publications/Media/Unfallkarten-international-englisch.pdf?__blob=publicationFile http://www.bast.de/EN/Publications/Media/Unfallkarten-intern...) - and in some countries, much lower even than that (e.g. 0.72 in denmark). Since that includes old & cheap cars, you'd expect luxury cars to do better than that - that's the baseline autopilot should be compared against. Comparing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_self-driving_car_fatalities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_self-driving_car_fatal... with https://cleantechnica.com/2019/10/14/lex-fridmans-tesla-autopilot-mileage-statistics-charts/ https://cleantechnica.com/2019/10/14/lex-fridmans-tesla-auto... I'd say a lower bound on autopilot's record is around 2 per billion miles - that's OK, but not very good. We may be missing autopilot related fatalities; if we missed even a single one, that would make these numbers look outright poor. That's a very rough estimate; but if we want any kind of reliable estimate on autopilot safety, you'd need much more data that we have (also more data on competitors!) Of course the very fact that we can't tell because data is so sparse is good! It means there are few deaths in this category; while driving in general may be dangerous, driving a luxury sedan on an interstate is fairly safe - exactly how safe doesn't really matter. ---- All in all - Tesla's safety record looks good compared to the average car, but not very convincing compared to similarly aged similarly priced cars - i.e. Tesla's competition. If you were to base your buying choice on safety, you probably should not buy a Tesla; but definitely should not buy the marketing nonsense. On the upside; it simply doesn't matter much, driving on autopilot-enabled roads is fairly safe anyhow, regardless of whether autopilot helps or harms safety.

by natch 6y ago

MereInterest 6y ago

> purported / alleged. The claims of this have been debunked. Isn't this entire article about how the courts in Germany determined that it is, in fact, false advertising?

natch 6y ago
That’s your interpretation of the article’s interpretation of the court’s interpretation I guess. Making all the foregoing my interpretation of your interpretation. Having read the Tesla website myself and understood its claims, they are not false. I believe the court was concerned that it was theoretically possible that some people might get confused. Or to put it in a harsh (to Tesla) way, the court feared some consumers could be misled (I would add, misled only due to the consumer’s own failure to read and listen to the information offered by Tesla with several different opportunities in varied and timely settings). So with this in mind, the court took action based on those fears. Conclusions beyond that are not warranted.
- FireBeyond 6y ago
  > Having read the Tesla website myself and understood its claims, they are not false. "The driver is only present for legal reasons". Really? That's a direct quote from Tesla, a claim. I don't think it at all stands on itself.

emn13 6y ago

The numbers are hard to trivially analyze, because there is no source that tracks "deaths caused by tesla cars" - NHTSA tracks deaths in cars and pedestrians, but e.g. not in other cars involved in the accident, even if potentially there car without the fatality was a contributing factor (fault is kind of irrelevant). But the numbers we do have make Tesla's look pretty dangerous. Tesla's overall fatality rate may be low, but that's true in general of luxury cars (perhaps because they're driven in safer areas, by safer drivers, have fewer safety related faults, or protect their occupants better). Compared to similarly priced cars, tesla does poorly (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...). https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=no&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dn.no%2Fmotor%2Ffremtind-forsikring%2Fbilforsikring%2Fforsikring%2Felbiler-krasjer-mer-enn-andre-biler%2F2-1-558339 https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=no&tl=en&u=htt... - norwegian safety authority also concluding Tesla's are more dangerous. Finally, specifically the autopilot is often compared incorrectly - autopilot isn't used on busy city streets or chaotic traffic situations (it's not capable of that yet) - but those are where most traffic fatalities occur. On the highway, fatalities are comparitively rare, even in "normal" cars. On interstates, in 2012 (I can't find more recent numbers), the fatality rate was 3.38 per billion miles travelled (source: http://www.bast.de/EN/Publications/Media/Unfallkarten-international-englisch.pdf?__blob=publicationFile http://www.bast.de/EN/Publications/Media/Unfallkarten-intern...) - and in some countries, much lower even than that (e.g. 0.72 in denmark). Since that includes old & cheap cars, you'd expect luxury cars to do better than that - that's the baseline autopilot should be compared against. Comparing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_self-driving_car_fatalities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_self-driving_car_fatal... with https://cleantechnica.com/2019/10/14/lex-fridmans-tesla-autopilot-mileage-statistics-charts/ https://cleantechnica.com/2019/10/14/lex-fridmans-tesla-auto... I'd say a lower bound on autopilot's record is around 2 per billion miles - that's OK, but not very good. We may be missing autopilot related fatalities; if we missed even a single one, that would make these numbers look outright poor. That's a very rough estimate; but if we want any kind of reliable estimate on autopilot safety, you'd need much more data that we have (also more data on competitors!) Of course the very fact that we can't tell because data is so sparse is good! It means there are few deaths in this category; while driving in general may be dangerous, driving a luxury sedan on an interstate is fairly safe - exactly how safe doesn't really matter. ---- All in all - Tesla's safety record looks good compared to the average car, but not very convincing compared to similarly aged similarly priced cars - i.e. Tesla's competition. If you were to base your buying choice on safety, you probably should not buy a Tesla; but definitely should not buy the marketing nonsense. On the upside; it simply doesn't matter much, driving on autopilot-enabled roads is fairly safe anyhow, regardless of whether autopilot helps or harms safety.