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Comment by maxharris | Hacker News Reader

This is a stunt by Green Hills Software, a maker of embedded operating systems and programming tools that supplies directly to Tesla's competitors (and stands to lose massively as Tesla grows). You might be interested to know that they initiated a public relations campaign decrying the use of Linux as insecure back in 2004:

https://lwn.net/Articles/83242/

Here's an article by the very same Dan O’Dowd: "Linux: unfit for national security?"

https://web.archive.org/web/20040912190752/http://www.ghs.co...

https://web.archive.org/web/20040916074333/https://www.ghs.c...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Hills_Software

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So he has a motive, but how is he wrong? By any measure the low quality of FSD's performance is seriously dangerous. That regulators allow "beta" software like this to be used by end users on public roads is scandalous.

>>In the 4th quarter, we recorded one crash for every 4.31 million miles driven in which drivers were using Autopilot technology (Autosteer and active safety features). For drivers who were not using Autopilot technology (no Autosteer and active safety features), we recorded one crash for every 1.59 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.

The ratio of accidents per mile driven is 8 human accidents per software accident. It doesn't account for reduced injury and damage in accidents that do happen, or other indirect benefits (or costs. )

Your assertion that the use of driving automation is scandalous is just wrong.

FSD is different. It's obviously having a would-be accident every few miles from watching Youtube videos (by the biggest fans). And those statistics are ridiculous advertising material comparing the extremely easy fair-weather driving on highways where drivers felt safe enough to use autopilot vs all miles.

Are you claiming that your personal analysis of a biased selection of YouTube videos is more accurate than the statistics provided to and validated by regulators under weight of law?

The author of the article is also a known bad faith operator. Isn't it more reasonable to base your understanding of driving automation (by Tesla and other companies) on actual numbers and not a laughably biased hit piece by a nonsense person?

Yes in this case my perusing youtube videos is more accurate than the statistics Tesla is touting. Almost every trip I see has them making bad mistakes.

Electricity is different. It's obviously having a would-be electrocution every few homes from reading too many novels (by the biggest fans).

https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/8qcy9y/antielectricit...

I can think FSD is inevitable while also thinking Tesla's current version is garbage and shouldn't allowed for the public, much less sold for $12k.

This is like defending an early electric company that is deploying lines all over the place and risks shocking people while not working at all.

New things are inherently riskier than old things. How do you expect to see progress without experimentation and short feedback cycles?

There are ways to make new things safely without selling a technology that absolutely doesn't work to the public. What Waymo and Cruise are doing for example in this case

There are ways to make new things safely without selling a technology that absolutely doesn't work to the public.

Waymo and Cruise are bad examples because they are both far, far behind Tesla...

Are those numbers directly comparable? Autosteer, etc. are only used in clear weather conditions with good lane markings. Obviously automated systems will work better in those conditions, but so do humans. But humans drive in all conditions.

I own two older Teslas, so I don't have FSD, only the previous gen autopilot. I am still a big fan of Tesla in general and hope they continue to push forward with FSD, but I will point out one very big hole in the statistics quoted above.

The 1 in 4.31m statistic counts only actual crashes. To get a better sense of the actual risk, I believe you need to consider how many incidents would have resulted in a crash if the driver did not take over and correct for the FSD's mistake.

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