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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

The 40% reduction in accident rate was the result of the NTHSA investigation: https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/19/nhtsas-full-final-investig...

"It’s essentially as good as result as Tesla can have hoped for from the U.S. traffic safety agency’s investigation, which took place over the last six months. Reuters reported earlier on Thursday that the investigation would not result in a recall of Tesla vehicles, but the full findings show that in fact, the federal regulatory body found plenty to praise while conducting its inquiry.

The investigation does conclude with a minor admonition that Tesla could perhaps be more specific about its system limitations in its driver-assist features, but acknowledges that all required information is present and available to drivers and vehicle owners."

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I know this report. This does not deal with the bias problem however. Obviously it reduced the number of accidents in good road conditions where the autopilot works and is primarily used (much like auto-stop feature did and BLIS). Particularly after they introduced the driver monitoring (this report was conducted after that) - now in fact the driver using autopilot is likely more alert then one not using it.

But that does not indicate anything about conditions where autopilot should not be used in which it is gravely dangerous.

It is all about tail of the distribution, which why it is not so obvious.

Why does it matter if it's dangerous if used incorrectly, if the majority of users use it correctly, and the overall effect is that fatalities go down?

I don't think the argument here is whether technology features can improve safety. The core of the argument is (and always has been) over misleading marketing and naming (suggestive "autopilot"), which exactly encourages the misuse of the feature. When used correctly, with alert driver it can clearly be beneficial. But when misused e.g. by this poor young person who plowed into a truck, this feature could be deadly.

This has a long way to go for true "autonomy" and until then such marketing should be avoided and examples of misuse (which youtube is full of) should be explicitly discouraged and if possible penalized. Tesla should be more explicit and pro-active about it. This is my only point really.

40 years old is "young"? You must be as old as I am :-)

I was thinking about the Chinese boy who hit the truck parked on the service lane, not the guy who decapitated himself in Florida. But either way, both were tragic.

Put "don't crash into things" in the manual and all accidents are incorrect use by definition? That's why it matters.

uh, because if the effectiveness drops dramatically then you are literally going to be killing people.

>But that does not indicate anything about conditions where autopilot should not be used in which it is gravely dangerous.

Yes it does include those conditions because this specific accident occurred in conditions in which autopilot should not be used. That single fatality is the only one that autopilot has seen in close to one billion miles. That is an order of magnitude better than traditional fatality rates.

That leaves two possible scenarios. Either people are likely to use this system incorrectly, in which case many of those billion miles were used in poor conditions for the autopilot. Or few people are likely to use the system incorrectly, in which there is little to worry about since the autopilot system has never been involved in a reported fatality when used properly.

How can autopilot be involved in a fatality when used correctly, when by very definition the correct use implies alert driver who is responsible for everything that happens?

We have both used the term "involved" and not at fault. If autopilot is on when (or immediately before) a fatality occurs, that is being involved in a fatality. The driver may be at fault in those instances if they are not alert. Although it is also possible that a separate driver is at fault and both the autopilot and Tesla driver performed adequately. For example a second driver might rear end the Tesla driver and push the car into oncoming traffic.

There was another accident in China, in a controlled access divided highway where a Tesla failed to notice a maintenance vehicle moving slowly ahead on the side of the road, ended up rear-ending it and killing the driver.[1]

By the way, can you point me to statistics about “traditional fatality rates” at controlled access divided highway in conditions where the line markings are clearly visible? It's dishonest to compare apples to oranges, especially given that a Tesla can't or won't recognize one from the other.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/15/business/fatal-tesla-cras...

That sounds like a comparison between autopilot miles and general driving miles. What would the comparison look like between autopilot miles and interstate highway miles?

Edit: nope, I was wrong. 1.3 to 0.8 airbag deployment crashes per million miles for Tesla cars before and after autopilot release.

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