How regulators deal with this frankly tricky as the same will likely apply to all self driving systems.
The statistics aren't there. The risks people have been shouting about for years just haven't materialized. If regulatory agencies are looking to reduce crashes, injuries, or deaths, there must be dozens of more effective places to focus attention on than Autopilot. But it's 2022, and yet again, it's on the front page of Hacker News, and the top comment is (you guessed it): the naming of the features is the problem.
It's Groundhog Day all over again. Geesh.
“On average, there are over 5,891,000 vehicle crashes each year. Approximately 21% of these crashes - nearly 1,235,000 - are weather-related” “ 70% on wet pavement and 46% during rainfall. A much smaller percentage of weather-related crashes occur during winter conditions: 18% during snow or sleet, 13% occur on icy pavement and 16% of weather-related crashes take place on snowy or slushy pavement. Only 3% happen in the presence of fog.”
Unless this is on the same road and conditions, instead of “autopilot where and when used vs. real drivers everywhere and everywhen” it is meaningless, even moreso if it doesn't also account for “autopilot disengages immediately before anticipated collision so it doesn't count as driving when it occurred.”
People count disengagements directly before collisions such as NTSB is doing in the article. Where people disagree on how wide that window should be. Disengaging 15 seconds before a collision is hardly autopilots fault, but even picking such a wide threshold doesn’t somehow push autopilot to less safe than the average driver.
This is just so frustrating. It's not meaningless, it's measured data. Could it be better corrected? Could there be other analysis done? Sure. But data is data, and the effect is extremely large. Cars with AP enabled aren't just safer, they're like 5x safer!
You can't wave that away with a innumerate statement about confounding factors. You need to counter data with data, and (despite millions of Teslas on the road now!) no one has it.
Is it really so hard to just accept that... the system is safe?
Measured data that is used to make a comparison to data not gathered under similar conditions aside from the difference being assessed or structured so as to support controlling for the irrelevant differences is, in fact, meaningless for that purpose.
It may have meaning in other contexts, but when it's offered to justify the comparison it cannot support, it is, in that context, meaningless.
Is autopilot engaged in the places where crashes are frequent, eg. during left turns?
What are the “scenario-equalized” safety stats for autopilot vs human drivers?
It seems reasonable for a regulator to decide what that time span is and require all automated driving assist systems to report in a consistent way. I'm curious what % of the time a crash in a typical car occurs within N seconds of cruise control or lane assist or traffic aware cruise control engaged.
Further, rather than what the article is insinuating autopilot disengages when users apply the break such as occurs when they are trying to avoid an accident. What’s concerning is cases when autopilot decides to give up control and the driver isn’t ready to take over.