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There is about 36000 death on the road per year in the USA for 280 millions vehicles, that's 128.5 death/million vehicule/year If we assume the number of tesla

by guerby 5y ago

There is about 36000 death on the road per year in the USA for 280 millions vehicles, that's 128.5 death/million vehicule/year If we assume the number of tesla autopilot death double this year to 8 (from 4 at the time of probe launch), for about 900 thousand tesla on the road in USA, that's 8.9 autopilot death/million tesla/year. Ratio between the numbers of 14.4. Tesla reporting says for Q1 2021 one crash on autopilot per 4.19 millions miles vs one crash per 484 thousand miles all vehicules. Ratio between the numbers of 8.7 All numbers are full of biases and their ratio probably aren't that meaningful but they end up in the same magnitude. Interesting data there "Fatality Facts 2019 Urban/rural comparison": https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/urban-rural-comparison https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/urban... "Although 19 percent of people in the U.S. live in rural areas and 30 percent of the vehicle miles traveled occur in rural areas, almost half of crash deaths occur there. " I was shocked that in the USA in 2019 about 40-46% of all road death people were unbelted, while 90% of front seat people wear seat belts according to observation studies. Incidentally tesla car will beep to no end if weight is detected on a seat and seat belt isn't clicked: I have to click the seat belt when I put my (not so heavy) bag on the passenger seat since there's no software option to disable the beeping.

darkwizard42 5y ago
Two notes: 1. generally speaking the right way to think about accidents/fatalities/hard breaking events is per miles driven given that risk scales with time spent on road (and miles driven is the best proxy we have at the moment, insurance companies use this stat) 2. If wearing a seat belt prevents a ton of fatalities as advertised and generally proven, it would make sense that of the road fatalities that do happen, many are due to not wearing a seat belt. 10% of people not wearing seat belts is still hundreds of millions of miles driven without seat belts.
jazzyjackson 5y ago
My issue with comparing these statistics is that on the highway I see no shortage of reckless driving: speeding 20 over, weaving traffic, etc. Subtract this population (maybe by taking away their license and building public transit for them) and what do the numbers look like? Your seat belt stat supports this, a lot of drivers aren’t even trying not to die. Of course, highway driving is the least dangerous (per passenger mile) since everything is so predictable, I don’t know how many deaths are caused by t-bones at intersections but that at least should disappear now that auto-radar brakes are a thing… (tesla thinks it’s too good for radar of course, even tho it can’t recognize a god damn fire truck is in the way)
btbuildem 5y ago
> I was shocked that in the USA in 2019 about 40-46% of all road death people were unbelted, while 90% of front seat people wear seat belts according to observation studies. Doesn't that just speak to the effectiveness of seatbelts? Most people wear them, and two-fifths of those who died in a crash did not wear a seatbelt. If we had the same proportion of deaths as we have seatbelt wearers, that would indicate the belts are ineffective.
- zzt123 5y ago
  Assuming that belted and unbelted people get into accidents at the same rate, and given another commenter mentioning that Autopilot users have 8.7x lower accident rate than baseline, that makes Autopilot a greater safety add than seat belts, no?
  - foepys 5y ago
    Can Autopilot work in heavy rain or fog? If not, those comparisons are useless. Those are the conditions where most accidents occur, not in sunny Californian weather.
    - guerby 5y ago
      Yes up to a point where it gives up and asks the driver to take back the wheel. But at this point you really see nothing and you'll limit your speed to 10-40 km/h by yourself. I used it in those situation on my tesla model 3 to be able to focus a maximum on the small visibility left as a driver, and with both hands strongly on the wheel and foot on the brake, low visibility is really dangerous and scary on the road. Part of the issue is that you don't know what speed the car arriving behind you will have so where's your optimum speed? Too slow and rear ended by bad drivers, too fast and it won't go well. It's fresh on my mind since I had such driving conditions two weeks ago on the highway. Trucks stayed at suicidal 90 km/h ...
- guerby 5y ago
  Yes we agree. It's just that in France "only" 20-25% of fatalities are for people not wearing seatbelt. Observation statistics are at about 98-99% of front seat users wearing seat belt in France. Seat belt in front is mandatory since 1st july 1973 and back seat since 1st october 1990. So seat belts not Tesla autopilot or whatever would save around 8000 lives per year in the USA. Are tesla cars in the USA nagging about seat belt with no software off switch like in France?
jeffbee 5y ago
You can't really make the comparison between the entire US fleet and Tesla alone. All Teslas are newer than the median car in the fleet, and Tesla owners are self-selected among wealthy people, because the cars are pretty expensive. The IIHS says that deaths per million vehicle-years among midsize luxury cars is 20. There are many cars where no driver died in a given year, for example the Mercedes C-class "4matic" sedan .
akira2501 5y ago
> If we assume You shouldn't. 16% of accidents are pedestrians. 8% are motorcyclists. 40% of accidents involve excessive speed or drugs and alcohol. Accidents aren't a fungible item you can do this with. > bag on the passenger seat since there's no software option to disable the beeping. There is in the US for the rear seats. Additionally, you can just leave the belt always clicked in and just sit on top of them. There aren't many great technological solutions to human behavior.

by guerby 5y ago

darkwizard42 5y ago

Two notes: 1. generally speaking the right way to think about accidents/fatalities/hard breaking events is per miles driven given that risk scales with time spent on road (and miles driven is the best proxy we have at the moment, insurance companies use this stat) 2. If wearing a seat belt prevents a ton of fatalities as advertised and generally proven, it would make sense that of the road fatalities that do happen, many are due to not wearing a seat belt. 10% of people not wearing seat belts is still hundreds of millions of miles driven without seat belts.

jazzyjackson 5y ago

My issue with comparing these statistics is that on the highway I see no shortage of reckless driving: speeding 20 over, weaving traffic, etc. Subtract this population (maybe by taking away their license and building public transit for them) and what do the numbers look like? Your seat belt stat supports this, a lot of drivers aren’t even trying not to die. Of course, highway driving is the least dangerous (per passenger mile) since everything is so predictable, I don’t know how many deaths are caused by t-bones at intersections but that at least should disappear now that auto-radar brakes are a thing… (tesla thinks it’s too good for radar of course, even tho it can’t recognize a god damn fire truck is in the way)

btbuildem 5y ago

> I was shocked that in the USA in 2019 about 40-46% of all road death people were unbelted, while 90% of front seat people wear seat belts according to observation studies. Doesn't that just speak to the effectiveness of seatbelts? Most people wear them, and two-fifths of those who died in a crash did not wear a seatbelt. If we had the same proportion of deaths as we have seatbelt wearers, that would indicate the belts are ineffective.

zzt123 5y ago
Assuming that belted and unbelted people get into accidents at the same rate, and given another commenter mentioning that Autopilot users have 8.7x lower accident rate than baseline, that makes Autopilot a greater safety add than seat belts, no?
- foepys 5y ago
  Can Autopilot work in heavy rain or fog? If not, those comparisons are useless. Those are the conditions where most accidents occur, not in sunny Californian weather.
  - guerby 5y ago
    Yes up to a point where it gives up and asks the driver to take back the wheel. But at this point you really see nothing and you'll limit your speed to 10-40 km/h by yourself. I used it in those situation on my tesla model 3 to be able to focus a maximum on the small visibility left as a driver, and with both hands strongly on the wheel and foot on the brake, low visibility is really dangerous and scary on the road. Part of the issue is that you don't know what speed the car arriving behind you will have so where's your optimum speed? Too slow and rear ended by bad drivers, too fast and it won't go well. It's fresh on my mind since I had such driving conditions two weeks ago on the highway. Trucks stayed at suicidal 90 km/h ...
guerby 5y ago
Yes we agree. It's just that in France "only" 20-25% of fatalities are for people not wearing seatbelt. Observation statistics are at about 98-99% of front seat users wearing seat belt in France. Seat belt in front is mandatory since 1st july 1973 and back seat since 1st october 1990. So seat belts not Tesla autopilot or whatever would save around 8000 lives per year in the USA. Are tesla cars in the USA nagging about seat belt with no software off switch like in France?

jeffbee 5y ago

You can't really make the comparison between the entire US fleet and Tesla alone. All Teslas are newer than the median car in the fleet, and Tesla owners are self-selected among wealthy people, because the cars are pretty expensive. The IIHS says that deaths per million vehicle-years among midsize luxury cars is 20. There are many cars where no driver died in a given year, for example the Mercedes C-class "4matic" sedan .

akira2501 5y ago

> If we assume You shouldn't. 16% of accidents are pedestrians. 8% are motorcyclists. 40% of accidents involve excessive speed or drugs and alcohol. Accidents aren't a fungible item you can do this with. > bag on the passenger seat since there's no software option to disable the beeping. There is in the US for the rear seats. Additionally, you can just leave the belt always clicked in and just sit on top of them. There aren't many great technological solutions to human behavior.