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Comment by brianwawok | Hacker News Reader

I mean people have already died sleeping with it on. But it’s also likely saved lives based on their deaths per mile number.

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When has someone died while sleeping in an autopiloted Tesla? I've kept a close eye on this space and never heard of this.

There are six cases of death where autopilot was confirmed to be engaged at the time of the incident, with 15 total that claim AP was engaged but had not been proven (via post-crash analysis or otherwise).

https://www.tesladeaths.com/

Based on reviewing the articles linked to the data, only one includes a lawsuit that claims the driver fell asleep before the crash. Doing this would either require a weight on the wheel to simulate constant torque (otherwise, on the highway, you have to apply torque every 30 seconds and it'll lock you out from using autosteer if you ignore it for roughly a minute), or falling asleep within 30-45 seconds of an incident, which is entirely possible.

https://www.carscoops.com/2020/04/tesla-autopilot-blamed-on-...

I would advice you look into who actually runs tesladeaths.com and make up your own conclusion.

I'm fully aware - there's even a TSLAQ at the bottom of the page which is ironic given the recent stock surge. Nevertheless, it looks like it's the only source that tries to count deaths involving autopilot, so you can take their number then go through the articles to make a more informed conclusion.

that article says the driver fell asleep and the car crashed into pedestrians.

The original comment said "driver" died after falling asleep on autopilot - there has been no such case of that occurring.

Are you aware how low the deaths per mile is for humans?

I don't think we know if Waymo has a lower rate than a human yet. Tesla I don't know, but wouldn't be surprised if it is higher.

IIRC for humans it's like 1 death per million miles driven. I believe Waymo is closing in on that. Not sure if Waymo handles the variety of conditions though. Musk and Tesla seem very flippant in their marketing.

But Waymo hasn't had any deaths and has over 20 million miles driven?

I don’t think those miles are directly comparable because most of Waymo’s miles are with trained test drivers, I think?

It’s one per 100 million.

It’s not. It’s 1 per 100 million miles

> In the 4th quarter, we registered one accident for every 3.45 million miles driven in which drivers had Autopilot engaged. For those driving without Autopilot but with our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 2.05 million miles driven. For those driving without Autopilot and without our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 1.27 million miles driven. By comparison, NHTSA’s most recent data shows that in the United States there is an automobile crash every 484,000 miles.

https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport

That doesn't tell the story. Autopilot is essentially forced off for anything but highway, so they are missing the most dangerous but are racking up millions of the least dangerous miles quick.

I can't actually find anything suggesting that the most dangerous roads are not highways. I really tried. Perhaps there are more small accidents on local roads, but they would tend to be less dangerous. The evidence suggests that highways are significantly more fatal[0].

Also, Autopilot is not essential forced off for anything but highways. That is just factually incorrect. Notably, straight-aways are where Autopilot works best and are the most dangerous by crashes.[1]

I found data suggesting that a lot of accidents happen because people rear-end stopped cars at intersections[2] and issues with navigating intersections[3]. That is an area where Autopilot is pretty great today.

0: https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/People/PeopleAllVictims.aspx (see last table)

1: https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Vehicles/VehiclesAllVehicles.... (see last table)

2: https://www.hg.org/legal-articles/when-and-where-do-car-acci...

3: https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Vehicles/VehiclesLocation.asp...

I’m not sure if I feel easy about this “statistic” - deaths per mile?? These are humans, and more importantly to the business - paying customers.

If my product has the possibility of killing my customer, I’d probably not be comfortable with making it market ready (without massively improving its safety features).

Agreed. Where to draw that line is the debate. For kitchen knives there is a similar problem. As cold as it is the data is the best measure.

Here’s the thing, every car system will fail at some point and potentially cause a death. There is no such thing as perfect safety. It’s really important to quantify things like fatalities per million miles driven. At some point, you push your system into production because, even though at some point the system will fail and kill someone, it will in the mean time save dozens or hundreds of people from dying in preventable accidents. What is critically important is being confident that your system is safer than the alternatives that your customers would use if your product doesn’t ship.

Most products can kill someone. Entire lines of products routinely kill its user. Society deems them worth the risk. A no risk life is sitting alone in a room, where you will die to obesity.

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