Because self driving car companies are putting a dangerous product onto the road, citing “safer than human drivers” in a disingenuous manner. Musk likes to cite autopilot as safer than human drivers, based upon accidents per miles driven. However, where are autopilot miles primarily being driven? On the highway. I expect a sober human driver to have a much lower accident rate than Tesla’s autopilot when driving the same highway miles. And yet Musk pushes his agenda... which is possibly an overreach. When I see cars plowing into the rear of fire trucks, into freeway split barriers, into tow trucks or under turning semis, I have to ask myself if I would have been able to avoid those, and I can honestly say that I would have. Would a drunken high schooler? Probably not.
I simply don’t believe the “safer than humans” narrative is being honest with the number of caveats.
Until self driving car executives are willing to send their children into the street in a real life game of frogger with their cars being driven by a bunch of drunken frat boys in a blizzard, they shouldn’t expect the general public to blindly agree to be their guinea pigs either.
> I have to ask myself if I would have been able to avoid those, and I can honestly say that I would have.
This is not the whole equation. The question is also would you be able to react to all accidents that Autopilot is avoiding? Are you 100% diligent ALL the time? Can you react in 200 ms ALL the time to someone else stupidity? Last-minute breaking for the exit, veering into your lane, speeding trough crossroad on red etc.?
> I expect a sober human driver to have a much lower accident rate than Tesla’s autopilot when driving the same highway miles.
This is based on what?
What about Tesla miles without active safety features vs. Tesla miles with active safety features?
Based on Tesla safety report just having active safety features active without an autopilot is decreasing the risk of collision by 36%. As far as I know, both numbers include miles out of highways.
"For those driving without Autopilot but with our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 2.19 million miles driven. For those driving without Autopilot and without our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 1.41 million miles driven."
Tesla’s autopilot miles are primarily driven on highway miles (in low speed, bumper to bumper Bay Area/LA traffic), in new cars (with well engineered safety cages and multiple airbag systems) which are well maintained (Tesla owners are unlikely the be driving on bald tires and experience blowouts), unlikely to rollover (one of the most fatal accident types) due to battery weight distribution. The car, without autopilot, is much less likely to experience fatal accidents. Couple that with the type of autopilot miles driven, and I expect sober human drivers in the 30-69 age bracket would have been less likely to experience accidents in those same miles.
I expect Tesla is intentionally trying to cloud the statistics to build the public narrative that self driving cars are safer. I believe that Tesla truly expects them to be safer eventually, but they’re smart enough to have the numbers on equivalent human driver crash rates... I’m sure that data was compiled by a very energetic Tesla engineer, put into an power point deck and emailed around. Perfect for a lawyer to subpoena.... and prove that Tesla knew their product wasn’t.....
And Tesla isn’t the only self driving aspirational car company pushing the “self driving cars are safer narrative”. Even Waymo (or maybe the media) claims their vehicles are involved in fewer accidents per mile... but they’re not self driven cars. They’re self driving cars with a human overriding the car’s decision every ~10k miles. Human drivers have an accident approximately every 500k miles (eliminating the under 25 and over 70 age bracket, and non-sober drivers - I expect that number to be closer to an accident per 500k-1M miles). So, a self driving car, without a human, would have been in some type of bad situation 50 times in those 500k miles a human would have driven with just one accident. My suspicion is that in a high fraction of those 50 disengagements, there would have been an accident had a human not intervened. My real suspicion is that self driving cars without human supervision are 50-100x worse than humans.
Lawyers are the only ones who are paid to figure out if my statistical assumptions are correct and to bring them to light.
And yet, I drive with Tesla Autopilot every day. Why? Because I believe that on a portion of my commute, it’s absolutely a better driver than I am. That portion of my commute is straight high speed traffic, periodically interrupted by people slamming on the brakes. It’s boring and mentally draining at the same time. I wish everyone on that portion of the freeway was driving with Tesla autopilot, as accidents are the major cause of my commute delays. Those 20 miles of new, well
maintained, straight, properly marked freeway miles, driven during perfect weather, not into the sun, are ideal for Tesla autopilot. Nobody should take those ideal miles and extrapolate them to the rest of my much more dangerous commute.
"And yet, I drive with Tesla Autopilot every day. Why?"
I think we generally agree on our understanding.
See my other answer:
As I said, whatever the reason, there are fewer accidents with Autopilot, than without. Autopilot is a convenience feature.
The question is: Are you willing to accept only 33% less likely hood of an accident with autopilot engaged as compared to when you drive on your own in not Autopilot safe conditions?
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"My real suspicion is that self driving cars without human supervision are 50-100x worse than humans."
Yes, Waymo in their fully mapped safe heaven may be around that.
Teslas in cities are probably more like 1000-100000x worse than humans, I don't think they would be able to drive even 100km in random city traffic, like a taxi, without an accident. They would probably be super eager to get rid of the steering wheel if they would think that Teslas are better unequivocally, all the time, no matter the conditions. Maybe the next iteration will improve it 10 times, but they are a long way from self-driving taxis.
> However, where are autopilot miles primarily being driven? On the highway.
Precisely. Autopilot has the luxury (need) for disengagement in suboptimal conditions. Human drivers don't have that. So Autopilot stats self-select for ideal miles. Of course, we don't have as concrete metrics for "how humans drive in clear dry well marked highways" to the exclusion of crappy conditions.
