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Tesla Autopilot Accidents: 1 out of 4,5M Miles; US Average: 1 out of 479,000
- senojretep356 6y agoIt's an interesting comparison but I'd also like to see how safety systems in other cars compare - i.e. Subaru Eyesight system. Anyway less accidents is always good news.
- asplake 6y agoWhat’s the average accident rate in the kind of conditions in which autopilot is used?
- nahumfarchi 6y agoFurthermore, how do the severity of the accidents compare?
- Valgrim 6y agoFurthermore, how many times an accident was averted by a driver taking control of the vehicle at the last moment?
- smnrchrds 6y agoFurthermore, how many times Autopilot fucked up so much that the accident could not be avoided when the driver took control, but since the driver had disengaged Autopilot at the last second, it is technically no longer an "Autopilot Accident"?
- newen 6y agoAssuming the US average includes drunk drivers, sleepy drivers, inexperienced drivers, speeding drivers, etc, etc. and under hugely varying environmental conditions.
- anonuser123456 6y agoIf the rate generalizes, one could imagine Tesla being able to offer their insurance rate at 1/10th the price of comparable vehicles. That would make Tesla ownership that much more appealing from the TCO perspective.
- gridlockd 6y agoIt doesn't. Like it says in the article, you only activate Autopilot in those situations where an accident is less likely anyway. Also, accidents in Teslas without Autopilot but with safety features enabled are 1 in 2.2 million.
- graton 6y agoInsurance also covers your car being stolen, vandalized, and other things unrelated to being in an accident.
- bradlys 6y agoOnly if you have comprehensive insurance. I know that well because my car was stolen and I only had liability. Still came out ahead though - comprehensive on that car was horrendously expensive.
- glofish 6y agoThe study needs to stratify the results by the typical driver that buys a Tesla and conditions/situations when Teslas are driven. Already, using their numbers, just having a Tesla with no safety features enabled drops the accidents rate to 1 in 1.4 million. Is it hard to believe that much fewer Teslas are used to drive home at 2 am, with five distracting passangers, after a night of partying?
- m463 6y agoI'm always surprised at the backlash against this stuff. Is it the boldness of the claims or the name they gave it? Because autopilot is really quite nice. It helps. I wonder if people complained about antilock brakes or cruise control when they first came out? Anti-lock brakes don't work well on snow. Cruise control has to be monitored. But they both are helpful and I have paid to have them on my vehicle.
- nojito 6y agoBecause you can only use it during prime driving conditions and yet people compare it to overall incidents when driving.
- smnrchrds 6y agoAnd Teslas are new cars with modern safety features yet they compare them with all cars, many of them are old cars and lack many of those safety features.
- p49k 6y agoNot sure why you’re being downvoted because IMO this is touching on the reason why there is a backlash: Tesla constantly overstates and overpromises on their technology and then acts aggressively toward journalists and others who provide criticism and more accurate data. When it comes to safety this behavior is seen as even more egregious than it normally would.
- filoleg 6y agoI dont know what you mean by “prime driving conditions”, but it seems to work great both in sunny clear weather and in severe rain and thunderstorm, as well as with varying levels of traffic (from none to heavy). I have been using it for almost a year on my daily commute to work (~13 miles one way), and only once it didn’t let me engage autopilot due to severe weather (but it was so bad, even i couldnt see much, so i had to pull over at the nearest exit and wait until weather conditions cleared up; and no, i wasnt going to let autopilot drive in such poor conditions, i just wanted to check if it would let me engage it). Every other time, even in thunderstorms and rain, it worked flawlessly (and we get plenty of rainy days here in PNW, though mostly not waterfall-tier of rain like you would get on east coast). I can imagine, it would probably not work well with significant snow on the roads, but i didnt get a chance or reason to test it, because when it snows enough here to be an issue, everything pretty much gets closed.
- addicted 6y agoHeadline rewritten: Accidents are less common in situations where accidents are less common.
- mmmBacon 6y agoNot sure that this is an apples to apples comparison. The US average includes many driving scenarios that Tesla’s autopilot cannot navigate. ~52% of accidents happen within 5 miles of home. At least where I live, Tesla’s autopilot couldn’t navigate the 5 miles around my house on city streets. A better comparison may be to compare accident rates for same/similar driving scenarios as the Tesla autopilot. While we all know that humans are bad drivers, perhaps it would would be better to compare accident rates for freeway driving.
- Retric 6y agoI suspect that number 52% has a lot to do with how many miles are driven within a 5 mile radius the home. A 5 mile radius is ~78.54 square miles where Manhattan for example is only 33.58 sq mi.
- casefields 6y agoNot only that, but you're at your most tired as well. Early morning and late at night after a long day. Driving tired is like driving drunk.
- anaisbetts 6y agoYep, this is a pretty meaningless statistic
- Barrin92 6y ago>Not sure that this is an apples to apples comparison. Not only is it a bad comparison, the causality works the exact other way around. If the accident rate was higher than some acceptable standard X, then autopilot would be turned off because that's literally the definition under which automation isn't tolerated.
- vannevar 6y agoYes, the article admits as much, noting that Autopilot is much more likely to be used on the highway where the accident rate per mile is much lower.
- 6y ago
- olliej 6y agoIs this another selective comparisons article? Autopilot is primarily a highway tool, but the vast vast majority of accidents happen on normal streets, and is generally unavailable in many of the cases where accidents are common. A comparison of crash rates is only relevant when comparing similarly situated crashes. So what is the average American crash rate on highways in clear weather, without construction, etc? I suspect that crash rate is far better than at night, during a blizzard, on an ordinary poorly lit suburban road. Yet AP wouldn't run then.
- ID1452319 6y agoFor me, these are the two most interesting statistics: 1 accident every 1.56 million miles without Autopilot and without active safety features 1 accident every 479,000 miles — US average Does this mean Tesla drivers are three times "better" than the US average?
- ac29 6y agoNo, it just means Tesla drivers are less likely to drive on the most dangerous types of roads, such as rural highways.
- AtlasBarfed 6y agoI know that two lane highways can be dangerous, but are those really among the most dangerous?
- ergocoder 6y agoI always wonder if they can slice the data where they compare with decent human driver. I drove for 15 years and never have a single accident. All of my friends never have major accidents (e.g. breaking bones). Sure, we are privileged. We don't drink and drive. We aren't deprived of sleep and overworked and etc. We never have to go out when the road condition is bad. We don't really drive over a speed limit. I'm worried that this "US average" stats is skewed by some bad drivers.
- heavenlyblue 6y agoHowever Tesla was prohibited from marketing it as a self-driving mechanism. So they can’t be directly compared.
- Tepix 6y agoI wonder what the numbers are for comparable vehicles with comparable drivers in comparable situations.
- pengaru 6y agoIn other news, roads without intersections have fewer accidents.
- Traster 6y agoI'll just add this to the long list of reasons I won't buy a Tesla. Don't put out misleading statistics about safety. It's unforgivable.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- vannevar 6y agoThe article acknowledges what the title does not: "First of all, Autopilot is more commonly used on longer freeway trips than in city driving, and accidents are much more common in urban driving than on the freeway, especially per mile. Additionally, in general, Autopilot would be engaged in safer driving situations in which an accident is less likely in the first place. Lastly, the figure for the US average is based on annual data, and accidents are more common in winter. (Naturally, Tesla’s Q2 data doesn’t cover the winter. Although, its record-breaking result in Q1 does.)"