6 ms·

While I in general agree with the article, counterpoint is that there have not been any Tesla accidents recently while in autopilot mode I believe? Edit: I gue

While I in general agree with the article, counterpoint is that there have not been any Tesla accidents recently while in autopilot mode I believe? Edit: I guess I was wrong, the accidents are now so common we don’t care anymore. In the beginning they were hyped up a lot.

yawaworht1978 6y ago
I have to object here, yesterday into a parked police car with blue lights on.
xvector 6y ago
It’s because we are scared as fuck with autopilot on and are hyper attentive. My car drives like a drunk teenager and routinely tries to murder me in autopilot.
- cbozeman 6y ago
  This is awful, but it did make me laugh out loud. That said, I have a lot of faith in Papa Musk and his team. I think this nut will be cracked eventually, but its just going to take a lot of time to do so - far more than the timeline he initially proposed, as detailed in your excellent post earlier.
  - hobs 6y ago
    Why would any of this faith be created given the continuous line of bullshit you've been fed?
    - justanotherhn 6y ago
      Because most of his promises came through (eventually)
    - cbozeman 6y ago
      Peter Thiel once said, "Never bet against Elon Musk." Elon said he was going to build a private space launch company. He did. Elon said he was going to build an electric car company. He did. Elon said he was going to build a $35,000 electric car for the masses. He did. Elon said he was going to build a worldwide satellite constellation for Internet access. He is. Rapidly. Everything Elon has said he was going to do, he has. He hasn't always done it at the speed at which he said he would, but he does always get it done. He (meaning his team / company) will eventually develop a fully self-driving car. No, it may not occur at the pace at which he proclaimed, but I have confidence it'll occur.
      - computerex 6y ago
        You know there are many promises he made that haven't come to fruition? Remember Hyperloop? Interplanetary travel? Neuralink? His achievements are remarkable but that doesn't mean that he should be treated like an infallible demi-god. Yes he's done some really cool stuff but that doesn't mean he should not be the subject of scrutiny.
        cbozeman 6y ago
        Neuralink's being actively developed right now. Hyperloop was an idea and nothing more. He never said he was personally committed to developing that, hence third-parties working on it. Interplanetary travel? Starship is actively going through testing and looks like it should be ready for moon launches around 2023, which is in two more years. I don't consider him infallible, or a demi-god, but its hard not to admire the sheer work ethic of this man. He's legitimately trying, and by all accounts of people who know him, he's actively working on all these projects and also making considerable stride towards these goals. These are not easily achieved tasks.
        computerex 6y ago
        I admire the work he does. But he oversells. FSD is one example. He has been promising it for half a decade and people have paid him substantial amount of money for a feature that he'll likely never deliver as he describes and certainly not on the time-line he promised. At the same time he is putting dangerously incomplete software out on public roads and marketing it as FSD when it's clearly not. It's endangering not only his own customers but also everyone around a Tesla on the public roads. If that's not unethical, I don't know what is. He promised Earth point to point travel, which would require rocket safety to improve by a factor of a million. He has been promising ridiculous things from Neuralink but with literally nothing to show for it. Look at this tweet: https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/888053175155949572?lang=en https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/88805317515594957... Does that really indicate no personal commitment? He touts that he's received government permission to build a Hyperloop, NY to DC in 29 mins.
coolspot 6y ago
https://www.tesladeaths.com/ https://www.tesladeaths.com/
- rjmunro 6y ago
  That site presents figures for other manufacturers at the bottom, but those are driver deaths per million registered vehicle years. The comparable Tesla figure is 47 deaths (from their own site) / about 1.5 million registered vehicle years, so around 30-31 deaths per million registered vehicle years, which puts it about average.
  - 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
    But for comparable cars with comparable demographics, isn't it super high?
barney54 6y ago
There was one this week in Michigan: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/the-federal-government-is-investigating-yet-another-tesla-autopilot-crash/ar-BB1eJb7r https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/the-federal-government...
throw7 6y ago
It's impossible, legally, for there to be a "tesla accident". It is the driver's responsibility. Wake me up when Tesla can be legally held responsible is when I buy one.
- tiahura 6y ago
  I’m not sure your statement that it’s impossible to hold Tesla responsible is an accurate statement of the law. There is no law that says that Tesla can’t be held responsible. Any car manufacturer can be held responsible for damages caused by a product defect.
  - throw7 6y ago
    Ok, yes, "impossible" is a poor choice of word from a legal perspective, but is not tesla covering themselves legally from legal liability of accidents stemming from drivers enabling "full self driving"? No? If not, then I am interested is what I'm saying... I think I am not alone in that line of thinking...
imglorp 6y ago
I think that's the wrong question. The right question is "how much better is it than human drivers?" When you get up to 2x better, there will be _only_ 20,000 fatal Tesla crashes compared to 40,000 human ones a year in the US. It's a very low bar. When Tesla is 2x better, we'd be reckless not to use it immediately.
- mempko 6y ago
  Except Tesla kills 3x more of it's drivers than competitor cars. 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... So depends on your measure. If you mean "on average" then yes. But it seems Tesla has a long way to go in other safety measures first.
- jjav 6y ago
  > "how much better is it than human drivers?" If you watch the videos in the thread, the answer is it is far worse than the worst human driver you've ever seen.
ra7 6y ago
This isn't Autopilot, this is FSD Beta. We don't know if it has had any accidents because it's limited to a handful beta testers. Anyway, "accidents" are not a good measure of safety for FSD Beta because just in this video it would've caused about 4-5 accidents and all of them were averted only because the driver intervened.
toast0 6y ago
A large factor in that is there is a lot less vehicle use recently compared to the norm. To the extent that people who were using the feature on their way to work are working from home, that's a lot less miles driven and less potential collisions. To the extend that many people are working from home, that's a lot less traffic on the road to interact with, and drivers may be more attentive because of the novelty. Statistics would be nice, of course. Tesla doesn't report on total miles driven. Here's a recent Tesla Autopilot into parked emergency vehicle report though. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/17/tesla-in-autopilot-hits-police-car-in-michigan-officials-say.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/17/tesla-in-autopilot-hits-poli...
jillesvangurp 6y ago
That's actually going to be the key argument for Tesla (or any solution) leveling up from driver assist level 2 to full autonomy (level 3 to 6): it will have to be evidence based. The difference is that Tesla is actively accumulating a lot of evidence in the form millions of vehicles actively using this and gathering a lot of telemetry, video footage, etc. in the process. As soon as it's going to be legal somewhere to remove your hands from the wheel, there will be incidents for sure. And then there will be responses to those incidents. At some point, that drops to acceptable levels and more will follow. Tesla will simply be able to pull out the numbers and say: look we're doing it here and it's fine. Solving the chicken egg problem of having the data to say that is key to ever getting to that point. Tesla's strategy is not to lock itself up in an ivory tower for a few decades and to then release the perfect system. Companies following that strategy will fail. Instead, they are releasing imperfect software now and they are improving it rapidly and incrementally. As long as they have hands on the steering wheel (level 2) it does not actually have to be perfect. It will give them a steady stream of issues to fix. Lots of real world video footage to analyze. And a track record of slowly improving safety relative to human drivers in terms of numbers of incidents per million miles. Rolling this out to millions of drivers is going to get them a lot of data to work with very quickly. Data is the key thing to have in this space. Without data you can't make progress. Tesla is setting themselves up to get a lot of that. The reason they are getting cocky is that they already have good metrics. It would be interesting to repeat the same journey with the same car in about a year. I bet it will still have issues but probably less of them. It's going to take more than two years for sure. But ultimately leveling up to 3 and 4 is going to have to be evidence based. And Tesla is building that case by gathering data from real drivers intervening when the software messes up and fixing things as that happens. That's something you can measure. The better that metric gets, the closer they get to their goal. Who else is even close to doing that? I think some of the Chinese manufacturers have shamelessly copied Tesla's strategy. And in some cases the actual software apparently. Regardless, China is the market to watch when it comes to full autonomy. A bit of wild west but they are moving fast there. IMHO if Tesla gets there, those manufacturers won't be very far behind. Unlike some traditional manufacturers who seem to be a bit hands off (bad pun) when it comes to moving forward on this front.
IncRnd 6y ago
> counterpoint is that there have not been any Tesla accidents recently while in autopilot mode I believe? Don't forget about that Tesla on autopilot which crashed into a parked police car __two days ago__ in Michigan...
jfoster 6y ago
Autopilot there has been many, but none in FSD, which is what the article is about.

yawaworht1978 6y ago

I have to object here, yesterday into a parked police car with blue lights on.

xvector 6y ago

It’s because we are scared as fuck with autopilot on and are hyper attentive. My car drives like a drunk teenager and routinely tries to murder me in autopilot.

cbozeman 6y ago
This is awful, but it did make me laugh out loud. That said, I have a lot of faith in Papa Musk and his team. I think this nut will be cracked eventually, but its just going to take a lot of time to do so - far more than the timeline he initially proposed, as detailed in your excellent post earlier.
- hobs 6y ago
  Why would any of this faith be created given the continuous line of bullshit you've been fed?
  - justanotherhn 6y ago
    Because most of his promises came through (eventually)
  - cbozeman 6y ago
    Peter Thiel once said, "Never bet against Elon Musk." Elon said he was going to build a private space launch company. He did. Elon said he was going to build an electric car company. He did. Elon said he was going to build a $35,000 electric car for the masses. He did. Elon said he was going to build a worldwide satellite constellation for Internet access. He is. Rapidly. Everything Elon has said he was going to do, he has. He hasn't always done it at the speed at which he said he would, but he does always get it done. He (meaning his team / company) will eventually develop a fully self-driving car. No, it may not occur at the pace at which he proclaimed, but I have confidence it'll occur.
    - computerex 6y ago
      You know there are many promises he made that haven't come to fruition? Remember Hyperloop? Interplanetary travel? Neuralink? His achievements are remarkable but that doesn't mean that he should be treated like an infallible demi-god. Yes he's done some really cool stuff but that doesn't mean he should not be the subject of scrutiny.
      - cbozeman 6y ago
        Neuralink's being actively developed right now. Hyperloop was an idea and nothing more. He never said he was personally committed to developing that, hence third-parties working on it. Interplanetary travel? Starship is actively going through testing and looks like it should be ready for moon launches around 2023, which is in two more years. I don't consider him infallible, or a demi-god, but its hard not to admire the sheer work ethic of this man. He's legitimately trying, and by all accounts of people who know him, he's actively working on all these projects and also making considerable stride towards these goals. These are not easily achieved tasks.
        computerex 6y ago
        I admire the work he does. But he oversells. FSD is one example. He has been promising it for half a decade and people have paid him substantial amount of money for a feature that he'll likely never deliver as he describes and certainly not on the time-line he promised. At the same time he is putting dangerously incomplete software out on public roads and marketing it as FSD when it's clearly not. It's endangering not only his own customers but also everyone around a Tesla on the public roads. If that's not unethical, I don't know what is. He promised Earth point to point travel, which would require rocket safety to improve by a factor of a million. He has been promising ridiculous things from Neuralink but with literally nothing to show for it. Look at this tweet: https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/888053175155949572?lang=en https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/88805317515594957... Does that really indicate no personal commitment? He touts that he's received government permission to build a Hyperloop, NY to DC in 29 mins.

coolspot 6y ago

https://www.tesladeaths.com/ https://www.tesladeaths.com/

rjmunro 6y ago
That site presents figures for other manufacturers at the bottom, but those are driver deaths per million registered vehicle years. The comparable Tesla figure is 47 deaths (from their own site) / about 1.5 million registered vehicle years, so around 30-31 deaths per million registered vehicle years, which puts it about average.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
  But for comparable cars with comparable demographics, isn't it super high?

barney54 6y ago

There was one this week in Michigan: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/the-federal-government-is-investigating-yet-another-tesla-autopilot-crash/ar-BB1eJb7r https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/the-federal-government...

throw7 6y ago

It's impossible, legally, for there to be a "tesla accident". It is the driver's responsibility. Wake me up when Tesla can be legally held responsible is when I buy one.

tiahura 6y ago
I’m not sure your statement that it’s impossible to hold Tesla responsible is an accurate statement of the law. There is no law that says that Tesla can’t be held responsible. Any car manufacturer can be held responsible for damages caused by a product defect.
- throw7 6y ago
  Ok, yes, "impossible" is a poor choice of word from a legal perspective, but is not tesla covering themselves legally from legal liability of accidents stemming from drivers enabling "full self driving"? No? If not, then I am interested is what I'm saying... I think I am not alone in that line of thinking...

imglorp 6y ago

I think that's the wrong question. The right question is "how much better is it than human drivers?" When you get up to 2x better, there will be _only_ 20,000 fatal Tesla crashes compared to 40,000 human ones a year in the US. It's a very low bar. When Tesla is 2x better, we'd be reckless not to use it immediately.

mempko 6y ago
Except Tesla kills 3x more of it's drivers than competitor cars. 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... So depends on your measure. If you mean "on average" then yes. But it seems Tesla has a long way to go in other safety measures first.
jjav 6y ago
> "how much better is it than human drivers?" If you watch the videos in the thread, the answer is it is far worse than the worst human driver you've ever seen.

ra7 6y ago

This isn't Autopilot, this is FSD Beta. We don't know if it has had any accidents because it's limited to a handful beta testers. Anyway, "accidents" are not a good measure of safety for FSD Beta because just in this video it would've caused about 4-5 accidents and all of them were averted only because the driver intervened.

toast0 6y ago

A large factor in that is there is a lot less vehicle use recently compared to the norm. To the extent that people who were using the feature on their way to work are working from home, that's a lot less miles driven and less potential collisions. To the extend that many people are working from home, that's a lot less traffic on the road to interact with, and drivers may be more attentive because of the novelty. Statistics would be nice, of course. Tesla doesn't report on total miles driven. Here's a recent Tesla Autopilot into parked emergency vehicle report though. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/17/tesla-in-autopilot-hits-police-car-in-michigan-officials-say.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/17/tesla-in-autopilot-hits-poli...

jillesvangurp 6y ago

That's actually going to be the key argument for Tesla (or any solution) leveling up from driver assist level 2 to full autonomy (level 3 to 6): it will have to be evidence based. The difference is that Tesla is actively accumulating a lot of evidence in the form millions of vehicles actively using this and gathering a lot of telemetry, video footage, etc. in the process. As soon as it's going to be legal somewhere to remove your hands from the wheel, there will be incidents for sure. And then there will be responses to those incidents. At some point, that drops to acceptable levels and more will follow. Tesla will simply be able to pull out the numbers and say: look we're doing it here and it's fine. Solving the chicken egg problem of having the data to say that is key to ever getting to that point. Tesla's strategy is not to lock itself up in an ivory tower for a few decades and to then release the perfect system. Companies following that strategy will fail. Instead, they are releasing imperfect software now and they are improving it rapidly and incrementally. As long as they have hands on the steering wheel (level 2) it does not actually have to be perfect. It will give them a steady stream of issues to fix. Lots of real world video footage to analyze. And a track record of slowly improving safety relative to human drivers in terms of numbers of incidents per million miles. Rolling this out to millions of drivers is going to get them a lot of data to work with very quickly. Data is the key thing to have in this space. Without data you can't make progress. Tesla is setting themselves up to get a lot of that. The reason they are getting cocky is that they already have good metrics. It would be interesting to repeat the same journey with the same car in about a year. I bet it will still have issues but probably less of them. It's going to take more than two years for sure. But ultimately leveling up to 3 and 4 is going to have to be evidence based. And Tesla is building that case by gathering data from real drivers intervening when the software messes up and fixing things as that happens. That's something you can measure. The better that metric gets, the closer they get to their goal. Who else is even close to doing that? I think some of the Chinese manufacturers have shamelessly copied Tesla's strategy. And in some cases the actual software apparently. Regardless, China is the market to watch when it comes to full autonomy. A bit of wild west but they are moving fast there. IMHO if Tesla gets there, those manufacturers won't be very far behind. Unlike some traditional manufacturers who seem to be a bit hands off (bad pun) when it comes to moving forward on this front.

IncRnd 6y ago

> counterpoint is that there have not been any Tesla accidents recently while in autopilot mode I believe? Don't forget about that Tesla on autopilot which crashed into a parked police car __two days ago__ in Michigan...

jfoster 6y ago

Autopilot there has been many, but none in FSD, which is what the article is about.