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You could have told us your evidence of Tesla safety data is "Tesla says" and saved me a click.

by anotherman554 5y ago

HatchedLake721 5y ago
Are you suggesting Tesla is lying?
- soneil 5y ago
  They can be cherry-picking without being lying.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  Is it a lie to call Tesla's level 2[1] driving system "Full Self Driving" when it isn't actually capable of full self-driving? What about when Tesla's marketing says FSD can do[2] things it can't do? [1] https://www.thedrive.com/tech/39647/tesla-admits-current-full-self-driving-beta-will-always-be-a-level-2-system-emails https://www.thedrive.com/tech/39647/tesla-admits-current-ful... [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/oey4g1/for_those_who_never_know_and_those_who_have/ https://old.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/oey4g1/for_tho...
- Syonyk 5y ago
  As a general rule of thumb, if someone has a large, comprehensive data set about something, has claimed they've used it to back a conclusion that is very favorable to them or some cause they're supporting, and refuses to let anyone else see the data set, it's a reasonable bet that they've been "creative" with at least some of the interpretations and analysis. It doesn't mean they're directly lying, in the sense of "You can't reasonable get these numbers out of the dataset." But it probably means that there are some games being played such that the number you're getting isn't the number it's strongly implied (or, occasionally, outright stated) to be. Or, if it is, it doesn't mean what they'd like you to think it means. So, if you go back a few years to the first waves of numbers Tesla trotted out to "prove" how amazing Autopilot was, you roughly had: - The fatality rate per mile of all drivers, in all vehicles, in all conditions being compared with: - The fatality rate per mile of expensive luxury cars, driven by older, well off drivers, mostly on limited access divided highways, in "easy" driving conditions. You can certainly do the math and get a comparison, but it's not a particularly reasonable comparison, because: - In general, six figure luxury cars are really, really safe. They're big, heavy, loaded with airbags and safety features, and really don't kill people very often at all. You can go look at a breakdown of death by vehicle type and class, and it turns out that luxury cars are very much under-represented in fatalities. - Expensive cars tend to be driven by older, more experienced drivers. There's a bathtub curve of fatality rates by age (https://aaafoundation.org/rates-motor-vehicle-crashes-injuries-deaths-relation-driver-age-united-states-2014-2015/ https://aaafoundation.org/rates-motor-vehicle-crashes-injuri...) - younger drivers without much driving experience die more, and once you get to 70+, your fatality rate goes up, but there's a sharp drop going to the 30-39 group, continuing to decline up to the 60-69 group. Guess what age range is going to be mostly buying Teslas? - Divided highways tend to be fairly safe places to drive - especially in lower speed situations where a lot of people are going to be using Autopilot. You're exceedingly unlikely to die doing 20mph in rush hour traffic. Even running at speed, limited access highways are fairly safe places. - And Autopilot simply doesn't work in bad enough weather. Again, a lot of traffic deaths are in pretty sketchy conditions - rain, snow, sleet... things that older Autopilot, especially, simply won't work in. So, yes, a straight up comparison of the two numbers ("fatalities per million miles in Teslas with Autopilot engaged" vs "fatalities per million miles of all vehicles in all conditions") is at least somewhat deceptive.

You could have told us your evidence of Tesla safety data is "Tesla says" and saved me a click.

HatchedLake721 5y ago

Are you suggesting Tesla is lying?

soneil 5y ago
They can be cherry-picking without being lying.
heavyset_go 5y ago
Is it a lie to call Tesla's level 2[1] driving system "Full Self Driving" when it isn't actually capable of full self-driving? What about when Tesla's marketing says FSD can do[2] things it can't do? [1] https://www.thedrive.com/tech/39647/tesla-admits-current-full-self-driving-beta-will-always-be-a-level-2-system-emails https://www.thedrive.com/tech/39647/tesla-admits-current-ful... [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/oey4g1/for_those_who_never_know_and_those_who_have/ https://old.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/oey4g1/for_tho...
Syonyk 5y ago
As a general rule of thumb, if someone has a large, comprehensive data set about something, has claimed they've used it to back a conclusion that is very favorable to them or some cause they're supporting, and refuses to let anyone else see the data set, it's a reasonable bet that they've been "creative" with at least some of the interpretations and analysis. It doesn't mean they're directly lying, in the sense of "You can't reasonable get these numbers out of the dataset." But it probably means that there are some games being played such that the number you're getting isn't the number it's strongly implied (or, occasionally, outright stated) to be. Or, if it is, it doesn't mean what they'd like you to think it means. So, if you go back a few years to the first waves of numbers Tesla trotted out to "prove" how amazing Autopilot was, you roughly had: - The fatality rate per mile of all drivers, in all vehicles, in all conditions being compared with: - The fatality rate per mile of expensive luxury cars, driven by older, well off drivers, mostly on limited access divided highways, in "easy" driving conditions. You can certainly do the math and get a comparison, but it's not a particularly reasonable comparison, because: - In general, six figure luxury cars are really, really safe. They're big, heavy, loaded with airbags and safety features, and really don't kill people very often at all. You can go look at a breakdown of death by vehicle type and class, and it turns out that luxury cars are very much under-represented in fatalities. - Expensive cars tend to be driven by older, more experienced drivers. There's a bathtub curve of fatality rates by age (https://aaafoundation.org/rates-motor-vehicle-crashes-injuries-deaths-relation-driver-age-united-states-2014-2015/ https://aaafoundation.org/rates-motor-vehicle-crashes-injuri...) - younger drivers without much driving experience die more, and once you get to 70+, your fatality rate goes up, but there's a sharp drop going to the 30-39 group, continuing to decline up to the 60-69 group. Guess what age range is going to be mostly buying Teslas? - Divided highways tend to be fairly safe places to drive - especially in lower speed situations where a lot of people are going to be using Autopilot. You're exceedingly unlikely to die doing 20mph in rush hour traffic. Even running at speed, limited access highways are fairly safe places. - And Autopilot simply doesn't work in bad enough weather. Again, a lot of traffic deaths are in pretty sketchy conditions - rain, snow, sleet... things that older Autopilot, especially, simply won't work in. So, yes, a straight up comparison of the two numbers ("fatalities per million miles in Teslas with Autopilot engaged" vs "fatalities per million miles of all vehicles in all conditions") is at least somewhat deceptive.