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This Tesla AI does not work well enough in many conditions and is clearly sometimes more dangerous than humans. Just watch videos of people using it - it's obvious that is making unforgivable errors.
It's very easy to make pronouncements like "one accident is too many", but we all know that's not correct in context. Right? If FSD beta is safer than a human driver it should be encouraged even if not perfect. So... where's the evidence that it's actually less safe? Because no one has it.
[1] Which I continue to insist looks a lot more like "confused driver disengaged and stopped" (a routine accident) than "FSD made a wild lane change" (that's not its behavior). Just wait. It took a year before that "autopilot out of control" accident was shown (last week) to be a false report. This will probably be similar.
- A Tesla near that drive into the median divider near Sunnyvale on Highway 101, because it thought the gore point was an extra lane. Split the car in half and killed the driver. [1]
- A Tesla that autonomously ran a red light and killed two people. [2]
- Multiple accidents where Teslas have driven into parked emergency vehicles / semi trucks.
Is it quantitatively safer than human drivers? I don't have that data to say one way or the other. But it's not correct to say the Bay Bridge is the only at fault accident attributable to autopilot.
[1]: https://ktla.com/news/local-news/apple-engineer-killed-in-ba...
[2]: https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/01/21/felony-charges-are-1s...
I mean, it's true, that if you broaden the search to "any accident involving Tesla-produced automation technology" you're going to find more signal, but your denominator also shrinks by one (maybe two) orders of magnitude.
And it also lets me cite Tesla's own statistics for its autopilot product (again, not FSD beta): https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport
These show pretty unequivocally that AP is safer than human drivers, and by a pretty significant margin. So as to:
> Is it quantitatively safer than human drivers? I don't have that data to say one way or the other.
Now you do. So you'll agree with me? I suspect not, and that we'll end up in a long discussion about criticism of that safety report instead [edit: and right on queue...]. That's the way these discussions always go. No one wants to give ground, so they keep citing the same tiny handful of accident data while the cars keep coming off the production line.
It's safe. It is not perfect, but it is safe. It just is. You know it's safe. You do.
* Autopilot can only be enabled in good conditions and relies on human drivers in all other, to the point of handing over to a human when it gets confused. Yet, they compare to all miles driven in all conditions.
* Teslas are comparatively new cars that have - as they proudly point out - a variety of active and passive safety features that make the car inherently less prone to accident than the average, which includes old, beat up cars with outdated safety features. Teslas are also likely to be better maintained than the average car in the US by virtue of being an expensive car driven by people with disposable income.
* Teslas are driven by a certain demographic with a certain usage pattern. Yet, they provide no indicator on how that skews the data.
Tesla could likely provide a better picture by comparing their data with cars in the same age and price bracket, used by a similar demographic, in similar conditions. They could also model how much of the alleged safety benefit is due to the usual, active and passive safety features (brake assistance, lane assist, …). They don‘t, and as such, the entire report is useless or worse, misleading.
It should be blindingly obvious that FSD is not safer than a human right now from using it or watching it be used. It's weird that people are trying to point to some very misleading statistics when you can go to YouTube and see serious problems in almost every video about FSD, even those by owners clearly wanting to paint it as great. Of course getting data-based answers is great but when you see problems every couple miles and the data is saying is saying it's way safer than a human, you are doing something wrong with or using irrelevant data.
That's right, you are doing something wrong. It's a supervised system. There's a driver in the loop, and yes: the combination is safer.
You're engaging with another favorite trope of Tesla argumentation: pretending that a system that isn't actually deployed as fully autonomous actually is. Safety is about deployed systems as they exist in the real world. Your point is that in a alternate universe where Teslas all ran around without drivers, they might be less safe. And... OK! That's probably true. But that's not a response to "Teslas are safe", is it?
They're safe. Just admit that, and then engage in good faith argument about what needs to change before they can deploy new modes like full autonomy. Lots of us would love to have that discussion and provide detailed experience of our own, but we can't because you people constantly want to ban the cars instead of discuss them.
No one would have any major issues if this (self)killing system was called "Extended Driver Assist" and it had implemented the minimal safety features like driver monitoring, safely stopping the car if the driver doesn't pay attention to the road.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/IdiotsInCars/comments/100pemh/tesla..., also, in this case, even a $20K Škoda [2] has basic automatic braking safety features, no need for artificial intelligence to detect something stationary in front of you.
[2] https://www.skoda-auto.com/world/safety-assistence-system-ci...
Now, maybe the data says otherwise. If that is the case, then great! Let's role out some more FSD beta. But for that data to be valid, you have to account for the fact that Tesla filters bad drivers out of the pool of FSD users. And as I understand it there is not public data about the risk profiles of the people Tesla lets use FSD.
Also, public transit would do the same.
Does public transit pick me up at my front door and drop me off at any location I choose?
Does public transit take of the minute I leave the house?
Is public transit available 24/7, even in remote areas?
Does public transit wait for me to load 2 kids, a dog, 4 suit cases, and various bags, blankets, and toys?
Does public transit turn around after 2 minutes, bring me back, and wait for 30 seconds because I forgot my wallet on the kitchen counter?
Will public transit still work during a public transit strike? (yes, this actually happens over here in Europe)
No? Well, then you can hardly claim that "public transit would do the same" as a self-driving car.
No? Well, then you can hardly claim that a self-driving car oh for goodness’ sake why am I even attempting to argue with motorheads on HN.
That's not what I'm saying at all. Please read again.
I did not mean to suggest that this end justifies Tesla's reckless means.
Are they really?
It looks like they have got the timeless problem of "the last big(s)". This time it is safety critical.
How about better public transit, encouraging people to use smaller cars, encouraging cycling with corresponding infrastructure, etc.
Far, far, far wider. Reducing road deaths is a pretty well understood, political implementation is the problem.
And the simply fact is, reducing road deaths is cheap. Its very cheap. If you want to make it look good, and fancy, its a bit more expensive.
But the fact is, we know how to do it, and do it cheaply. Fancy next generation car technology is pretty terrible in terms of investment to return.
All you really need is a bunch of paint, and a few concert spectators over various shapes. Pretty much all you have to do is make cars slower, that is by far the most important factor in mixed traffic. There are many ways to achieve this.
If you want to get a bit more fancy and technical, you can make dutch intersections:
Doing things like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_intersection
> How about better public transit, encouraging people to use smaller cars, encouraging cycling with corresponding infrastructure, etc.
How about banning cars from many city centers, or only allowing commercial and people who live there.
How about REQUIRING smaller cars. A limit on car size, specially if you want to enter cities.