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Total straw man. The question isn't whether Tesla's are safe to drive. The question is whether "autopilot" is safe to auto pilot.
by ken47 4y ago
Total straw man. The question isn't whether Tesla's are safe to drive. The question is whether "autopilot" is safe to auto pilot.
- Retric 4y agoActual real world data says autopilot is on average at least as safe as the average driver in the average car. Of course that’s on average, in many specific situations it’s much worse but conversely it means it’s better in other situations. How regulators deal with this frankly tricky as the same will likely apply to all self driving systems.
- ken47 4y agoSources for claims would be appreciated.
- usrusr 4y agoThose real world autopilot averages happen exclusively in the most trivial driving situations. Fair weather and almost exclusively on limited access roads. No real world average driver dataset exists that is similarly restricted to the subset of least error-prone driving situations.
- Retric 4y agoFair weather limited access highways is one of many datasets available. However, Autopilot operates in wet and rainy conditions so that’s hardly an accurate assessment. Weather bad enough to prevent autopilot is a contributing factor ~5% of accidents. “On average, there are over 5,891,000 vehicle crashes each year. Approximately 21% of these crashes - nearly 1,235,000 - are weather-related” “ 70% on wet pavement and 46% during rainfall. A much smaller percentage of weather-related crashes occur during winter conditions: 18% during snow or sleet, 13% occur on icy pavement and 16% of weather-related crashes take place on snowy or slushy pavement. Only 3% happen in the presence of fog.” https://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/weather/q1_roadimpact.htm https://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/weather/q1_roadimpact.htm
- moduspol 4y agoBut it is also not the case that people are crashing and dying left and right from the FSD beta, or as a result of using Autopilot in less than ideal conditions. This despite OTA updates increasing functionality and millions more cars being sold. Even if what you're saying is true: it is empirically true that in practice, humans take over when necessary. The statistics aren't there. The risks people have been shouting about for years just haven't materialized. If regulatory agencies are looking to reduce crashes, injuries, or deaths, there must be dozens of more effective places to focus attention on than Autopilot. But it's 2022, and yet again, it's on the front page of Hacker News, and the top comment is (you guessed it): the naming of the features is the problem. It's Groundhog Day all over again. Geesh.
- dragonwriter 4y ago> Actual real world data says autopilot is on average at least as safe as the average driver in the average car. Unless this is on the same road and conditions, instead of “autopilot where and when used vs. real drivers everywhere and everywhen” it is meaningless, even moreso if it doesn't also account for “autopilot disengages immediately before anticipated collision so it doesn't count as driving when it occurred.”
- Retric 4y agoThe point is people have risk tolerances, if the average driver is taking an acceptable risk then suggesting a lower risk than that is unacceptable is hardly reasonable. If that level of risk is actually unacceptable then you should be suspending peoples licenses for doing 5 MPH over the speed limit etc. Instead driving laws are based on a wider risk tolerance. People count disengagements directly before collisions such as NTSB is doing in the article. Where people disagree on how wide that window should be. Disengaging 15 seconds before a collision is hardly autopilots fault, but even picking such a wide threshold doesn’t somehow push autopilot to less safe than the average driver.
- ajross 4y ago> Unless [...] it is meaningless This is just so frustrating. It's not meaningless, it's measured data. Could it be better corrected? Could there be other analysis done? Sure. But data is data, and the effect is extremely large. Cars with AP enabled aren't just safer, they're like 5x safer! You can't wave that away with a innumerate statement about confounding factors. You need to counter data with data, and (despite millions of Teslas on the road now!) no one has it. Is it really so hard to just accept that... the system is safe?
- dragonwriter 4y ago> This is just so frustrating. It's not meaningless, it's measured data. Measured data that is used to make a comparison to data not gathered under similar conditions aside from the difference being assessed or structured so as to support controlling for the irrelevant differences is, in fact, meaningless for that purpose. It may have meaning in other contexts, but when it's offered to justify the comparison it cannot support, it is, in that context, meaningless.
- fshbbdssbbgdd 4y agoIf autopilot disengages 1 second before crashing into a stationary object, does this count as autopilot crashing or the human driver? Is autopilot engaged in the places where crashes are frequent, eg. during left turns? What are the “scenario-equalized” safety stats for autopilot vs human drivers?
- kylecordes 4y agoTesla's statistics count it as autopilot if it was engaged within 5 seconds of the collision. It seems reasonable for a regulator to decide what that time span is and require all automated driving assist systems to report in a consistent way. I'm curious what % of the time a crash in a typical car occurs within N seconds of cruise control or lane assist or traffic aware cruise control engaged.
- hedora 4y agoThe article says they're using a 1 second threshold, not 5, and that a substantial number of accidents fall between the two numbers.
- Retric 4y agoNo, those 16 accidents are counted as a failure by autopilot. Hell the NTSB is explicitly doing so in the article. Further, rather than what the article is insinuating autopilot disengages when users apply the break such as occurs when they are trying to avoid an accident. What’s concerning is cases when autopilot decides to give up control and the driver isn’t ready to take over.
- justapassenger 4y agoBy actual real world data, you mean cherry picked average data published by Tesla, that doesn’t account for any bias, and wasn’t audited by independent third parties?
- jquery 4y agoIt’s also worth noting Tesla is nearly infamous at this point for making owners sign NDAs in exchange for repairs when their autopilot is likely at fault.
- b112 4y agoReally? Wow. That's a lawsuit waiting to happen. No way would I sign, and they'd fix it, or see me in court. And not rich guy wins US court, but Canadian court. And yeah, it's different.
- ajross 4y agoThis is a meme. I've never seen any significant corroboration on this. I mean, how would they even know without violating their own published privacy policy? I think you got hoodwinked. This is what's so frustrating about this argument. The clear truth is that the system is operating very safely on millions of vehicles, because a safety defect of that magnitude would clearly be visible in the data, and it's not. So people invested in the argument now have to resort, like you just did, to theorizing about a literal conspiracy to hide the data that you know must be there even though it can't be measured. It's just exhausting. They're fantastic cars. Get a friend to give you a ride.
- ajross 4y agoI think that's largely a correct way to reason about it. And what data we have says that a Tesla on autopilot is safer than a Tesla driven by a human, which is safer than an average vehicle. Both by quite some margin.[1] Tesla publishes this data quarterly. And it's been largely unchanged for years. And yet we still keep having these discussions as if this system "can't be proven safe" or "is presumptively unsafe" despite years of data showing the opposite. It's just getting so tiresome. Where are the accidents if it's unsafe? How are they managing to hide all the bodies? [1] Now, could there be a more rigorous study? Undeniably! But no one has managed to do one, despite this kind of data being readily available (especially to bodies like the NHTSA).