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Comment by paul7986 | Hacker News Reader

How many here believe todays robot cars are fully safe and why? Because Tesla/Musk says so..he says a lot on Twitter and changes his mind constantly!

Personally I'd never trust him with my life and the lives of other drivers surrounding me. Hes a showman/car salesman.

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I can only speak from my experience; I’ve driven over 100k miles with Autopilot (2.5 rev hardware, ‘18 Model S) over the last 4.5 years, sometimes at speeds upwards of 70mph-80mph through mountainous terrain in driving rain at night (both in Appalachia and the Rockies). Disengagement is rare, and I will purposely push the vehicle harder to find its limits. Fully safe? Hardly, nothing is risk free, but 38k people a year die in accidents caused by humans, so the bar is not perfection. It’s your average human, which is fairly terrible at the task. They get tired, they don’t pay attention, they drink too much and get behind the wheel, and so on.

https://www.tesladeaths.com/

Tesla Deaths Total as of 12/21/2022: 335

Tesla Autopilot Deaths Count: 19 (my note: this total death count is 1/5th the amount of people who die daily [104] from human caused auto accidents)

I trust the vehicles and Tesla engineers enough to put my family in them. The evidence is clear how well they stand up in an accident, receiving highest crash test marks both in the US and Europe (with the Model Y with the Vision only stack receiving some of the highest Euro NCAP scores ever), which I can confidently decision with versus emotion about its leadership team. I really don’t care what Musk says, as long as my family is going to walk away from the worst accidents they might encounter, and the data shows they likely will.

> Euro NCAP Secretary General Michiel van Ratingen issued a statement praising the Model Y for its stellar safety scores. “Congratulations to Tesla for a truly outstanding, record-breaking Model Y rating. Tesla has shown that nothing but the best is good enough for them, and we hope to see them continue to aspire to that goal in the future,” van Ratingen remarked.

https://www.tesla.com/blog/model-s-receives-5-star-euro-ncap...

https://evannex.com/blogs/news/tree-falls-on-a-tesla-model-3...

https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-vision-model-y-highest-euro-...

(No experience with the “full self driving” software stack, so I apologize if your questions were scoped specifically to that constraint)

>sometimes at speeds upwards of 70mph-80mph through mountainous terrain in driving rain at night

You shouldn't be on the roads.

I must say I am a bit skeptical of your claim about driving 100K with autopilot at 70-80MPH on mountainous, rainy roads. That's not consistent with anything that has been reported about the capabilities of the device.

Note that 38K people dying a year in the US is 1 per 10 million miles driven. So obviously humans can't be that bad at driving.

Edit: why did you delete your reply?

good to hear that you are speeding in poor visibility conditions on mountain roads at night just so you can push the car to its limits

Tesla Autopilot Deaths Count: 19 (my note: this total death count is 1/5th the amount of people who die daily [104] from human caused auto accidents)

Come on, you’re way too smart to make this comparison. The percentage of Autopilot-driven miles in the US per year rounds to zero.

I think you’re misunderstanding my assertion or I’m not communicating it properly. People will die behind the wheel, this is inevitable. You will not get to zero auto fatalities in our lifetime. 19 deaths for how many Tesla miles are driven autonomously, in your words, rounds down to zero. For comparison, GM’s ignition switch recall (which they knew was deadly for a decade), required a 30 million vehicle recall, resulted in 124 deaths, and a $3B loss in GM shareholder value.

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

~5 billion miles have been driven on Autopilot (and that growth rate accelerates as Tesla continues to ramp manufacturing), and if it was truly wildly dangerous, we’d be discussing far more than 19 deaths from 16 incidents. Check my math: assuming the above, that’s 1 death every 263,157,894 Autopilot miles driven.

You are more likely to be killed by a shark attack or a falling coconut than Autopilot, statistically speaking.

https://www.tesladeaths.com/miles.html

https://electrek.co/2020/04/22/tesla-autopilot-data-3-billio...

(I appreciate the kind words by the way, thank you)

Autopilot is typically driven only in the newest cars by the richest people in ideal conditions. Heck, Autopilot disengages when it gets confused, which is often. And even with all of that, the fatality rate (at least the ones we know if) is only a third of the U.S. total population on a per-mile basis. Autopilot is likely more dangerous than the same set of drivers on the same routes in the same Teslas with Autopilot disabled.

And yet, regulators across the world (US, Europe, Canada, China, Japan) allow its continued sale and use. Maybe they’re right and HN is wrong? How would you reconcile conservative regulators not taking action while participants here carry on about how unsafe it is? Inaction by one regulator might be explained, but all of them? Occam's razor leads us to a tolerance for the risk exposure, not a conspiracy.

It appears that it has to be proven dangerous, not foolproof, due to the driver still being responsible and assuming liability for its use, and that burden has not been met by critics.

Edit: I’m appealing to, broadly, transport safety professionals across various governments and continents (in aggregate) versus randos on an Internet forum. That seems like a pretty solid strategy from a risk perspective, as your risk math isn’t impacted by failures at a single regulatory body, nor by a layman without the professional body of domain knowledge that might be missing something critical.

> And yet, regulators across the world … allow its continued sale and use.

Well, for one thing, regulators generally don’t “allow sales” but disallow things for various reasons.

By this logic the continued sale and use of tobacco is perfectly safe because the regulators allow it.

I don't understand why you are appealing to authority while earlier pointing out the GM ignition switches that killed 124 people. If authority are a valid judge of safety, why didn't they act on the GM ignition switches earlier?

> And yet, regulators across the world (US, Europe, Canada, China, Japan) allow its continued sale and use

The article is about Tesla FSD, not Autopilot (fancy word for cruise control and lane keeping).

I'm not aware of this feature being allowed for sale outside of North America, is this not the case?

The regulators probably don't have the expertise or access to sufficiently evaluate autopilot safety. It's not in Musk's interest to be transparent about the dangers. This is the guy who keeps cutting sensors to increase profits over safety.

> And yet, regulators across the world (US, Europe, Canada, China, Japan) allow its continued sale and use.

I wouldn't be so sure, with more and more agencies signaling their intent to escalate...

I guess you could trust Cruise ADS from GM, the same company that killed people with a faulty ignition switch (124 deaths) or literally burned down customer's homes (see the Chevy Bolt). You might find that NHTSA is investigating Cruise ADS too. (https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/inv/2022/INOA-PE22014-4871.PDF)

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