Notice how quick they are to bring up "this is the first fatality in 130 million miles", but AFAICT, traffic fatalities in the US occur at a frequency of around 10 per billion miles [1], which is the same.
So even though this is just one data point, it's spot on the current average for fatality frequency in normal cars.
Furthermore, to gather enough statistics to be able to say with confidence "semi-autonomous Teslas are/aren't safer than normal cars", Tesla either needs to increase their sales volume by several orders of magnitude, or we'll have to wait for ten years.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i...
If we had data for the "high end modern full-size car" category, it would most definitely be lower than 10 fatalities per billion miles.
If you want to do the numbers to compare the Tesla to other cars, where they measure driver fatalities per million registered years, do this:
130,000,000 miles / 12,000 average miles per year per car = 10,833 years.
That's 10,833 registered years for the Model S.
The IIHS site normalizes to deaths per million registered years, so multiply that number by 92.3, and since we have one death so far, the Tesla Model S is now at 92.3 driver deaths per million registered car years.
Let's compare to other car models:
Ford Taurus 2WD: 20 deaths
Hyundai AccentL: 86 deaths
Lexus LS 460 2WD: 18 deaths
Acura TL 2WD: 5 deaths
Audi A4 4WD: 0 deaths (yes, a bunch of car models had zero driver deaths)
And average for ALL 2011 vehicles: 28 deaths.
Auto-pilot is semi-autonomous... I gather you consider that a risk...
What about Subaru EyeSight? It can autonomously brake. I can drive for hours on the freeway without ever hitting the brake nor gas, even in stop and go traffic. It has warned me multiple times of a sudden slowdown just as I noticed it. It hasn't yet saved me from anything, but if any of those circumstances I'd been distracted (even for a legit reason) it could have. It once warned me of a motorcycle in my path on a very dark night when the dim tail-light of the motorcycle was overwhelmed by the much brighter tail-lights of the cars to its left and right. I would have seen it soon enough, but the car saw it first. Is that a risk to other road-users? Yet, it's automated by some definition.
What about various other manufacturer's lane keeping features? That automation to some degree.
What about ABS? Stability control? Again... automation to some degree.
All of these have their detractors, yet I think statistics clearly show an improvement with each level of driver assist.
How you can draw such a conclusion from a singular data point? That's beyond ridiculous.
> This is the first known fatality in just over 130 million miles where Autopilot was activated. Among all vehicles in the US, there is a fatality every 94 million miles. Worldwide, there is a fatality approximately every 60 million miles.
"4 Times Deadlier!" certainly comes across as sensationalist based on such flimsy data (never mind that the real figure is actually 3.2 and the parent chose to round up rather than down to serve his/her purpose).
Whereas Tesla's statement comes across more as a statement of fact (albiet quite self-serving.. no question about that).
A normal car drives about 100 000 miles in 10 years. You then need one million autonomous cars driving around for a decade before you even know whether they're safer!
Maybe a billion miles are needed for a fatal crash, but for small mistakes it's much less.
Can you give a source for that number as it seems a bit low given warranty numbers.
"Among all vehicles in the US, there is a fatality every 94 million miles. Worldwide, there is a fatality approximately every 60 million miles."
Although US foreign policy and intelligence decisions were more or less directly responsible for 9/11, you don't lecture people at Ground Zero about the dangers of blowback and not being aware of your government's activities.
There's no such thing as "condolences, but...", and Elon Musk has shown a pattern of this kind of tone-deafness before. Not to say he's not brilliant and not to say autonomous cars won't ultimately save many lives, just that he should either listen to his PR department if he overruled them, or fire his PR department if they did this without him.
Excellent, Doc. Further to the point about these statements and Musk's leadership: not too long ago Tesla would include the fact that nobody has been killed in a Tesla in their public statements. I found it completely inappropriate since we all knew it was just a matter of time, sadly. Again they play with fire, as another death with autopilot will really wreck their statistics.
there is no such feature, there is a MobilEye _lane following_ system Tesla repackaged under Autopilot(TM) brand.
Say it out loud - lane following. Mercedes sold this same tech almost 10 years ago, difference is Tesla felt pressure and started believing their own marketing lies about autonomous driving.
I would assume that the higher-end GM cars do have an automatic braking collision avoidance system by now, since that's a pretty standard feature above a certain price point. And I would assume it's not foolproof either, but at least it doesn't lead the driver to think he can take his hands off the wheel and not pay attention to what's happening on the road.
Tesla reiterates every time and makes you confirm you understand that this is not the case. If the driver did it, that's completely on them being irresponsible.
And pilots still make mistakes when adjusting to a context where the autopilot has unexpectedly handed control back to the humans.