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Just off the top of my head: - A Tesla near that drive into the median divider near Sunnyvale on Highway 101, because it thought the gore point was an extra la

• ajross 4y ago
  Those are autopilot accidents from before FSD beta was even released. I mean, it's true, that if you broaden the search to "any accident involving Tesla-produced automation technology" you're going to find more signal, but your denominator also shrinks by one (maybe two) orders of magnitude. And it also lets me cite Tesla's own statistics for its autopilot product (again, not FSD beta): https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport These show pretty unequivocally that AP is safer than human drivers, and by a pretty significant margin. So as to: > Is it quantitatively safer than human drivers? I don't have that data to say one way or the other. Now you do. So you'll agree with me? I suspect not, and that we'll end up in a long discussion about criticism of that safety report instead [edit: and right on queue...]. That's the way these discussions always go. No one wants to give ground, so they keep citing the same tiny handful of accident data while the cars keep coming off the production line. It's safe. It is not perfect, but it is safe. It just is. You know it's safe. You do.
  • Xylakant 4y ago
    This data does not show what it pretends to show. The underlying statistics are heavily skewed in favor of Tesla by various factors: * Autopilot can only be enabled in good conditions and relies on human drivers in all other, to the point of handing over to a human when it gets confused. Yet, they compare to all miles driven in all conditions. * Teslas are comparatively new cars that have - as they proudly point out - a variety of active and passive safety features that make the car inherently less prone to accident than the average, which includes old, beat up cars with outdated safety features. Teslas are also likely to be better maintained than the average car in the US by virtue of being an expensive car driven by people with disposable income. * Teslas are driven by a certain demographic with a certain usage pattern. Yet, they provide no indicator on how that skews the data. Tesla could likely provide a better picture by comparing their data with cars in the same age and price bracket, used by a similar demographic, in similar conditions. They could also model how much of the alleged safety benefit is due to the usual, active and passive safety features (brake assistance, lane assist, …). They don‘t, and as such, the entire report is useless or worse, misleading.
    • sidibe 4y ago
      All very true, by far the biggest factor is the first bullet. Autopilot is enabled exactly when the driver thinks it is very safe and easy driving. If we are comparing miles without an accident it shouldn't be compared to all miles, it's much more like all miles with cruise control activated, data which Tesla doesn't have and probably can't get, but I don't think they'd want to trumpet it either. It should be blindingly obvious that FSD is not safer than a human right now from using it or watching it be used. It's weird that people are trying to point to some very misleading statistics when you can go to YouTube and see serious problems in almost every video about FSD, even those by owners clearly wanting to paint it as great. Of course getting data-based answers is great but when you see problems every couple miles and the data is saying is saying it's way safer than a human, you are doing something wrong with or using irrelevant data.
      • ajross 4y ago
        > when you see problems every couple miles and the data is saying is saying it's way safer than a human, you are doing something wrong with or using irrelevant data. That's right, you are doing something wrong. It's a supervised system. There's a driver in the loop, and yes: the combination is safer. You're engaging with another favorite trope of Tesla argumentation: pretending that a system that isn't actually deployed as fully autonomous actually is. Safety is about deployed systems as they exist in the real world. Your point is that in a alternate universe where Teslas all ran around without drivers, they might be less safe. And... OK! That's probably true. But that's not a response to "Teslas are safe", is it? They're safe. Just admit that, and then engage in good faith argument about what needs to change before they can deploy new modes like full autonomy. Lots of us would love to have that discussion and provide detailed experience of our own, but we can't because you people constantly want to ban the cars instead of discuss them.