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NHTSA’s full investigation into Tesla’s Autopilot shows 40% crash rate reduction

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Re: NHTSA’s full investigation into Tesla’s Autopilot shows 40% crash rate reduction

#101

Post by GrantS »

Vik1ng wrote: post #58
snewman wrote: post #2

Tesla comes off extremely well in this report. For one thing, the 40% statistic cited in the headline appears to be well supported by the NHTSA report (section 5.4) and actually manages to frame the incident in a very positive light: ODI analyzed mileage and airbag deployment data supplied by Tesla for all MY 2014 through 2016 Model S and 2016 Model X vehicles equipped with the Autopilot Technology Package, either in…

Just funny that the 40% from Autosteer seem to exactly match with the general AEB safety improvement rate also mentioned in the report... IIHS research shows that AEB systems meeting the commitment would reduce rear-end crashes[emphasis added] by 40 percent. IIHS estimates that by 2025 – the earliest NHTSA believes it could realistically implement a regulatory requirement for AEB – the commitment will prevent 28,000…

Here is some of that IIHS research [1] from Jan 2016 that gives lots of raw crash numbers broken down by manufacturer, type of system (AEB/FCW), injuries involved, etc. Really informative.

Some excerpts from "Effectiveness of Forward Collision Warning Systems with and without Autonomous Emergency Braking in Reducing Police-Reported Crash Rates", January 2016:

"FCW alone and FCW with AEB reduced rear-end striking crash involvement rates by 23% and 39%, respectively. "

"Among the 15,802 injury crash involvements in these states, the percentage of injury crash involvements that were rear-end striking crashes was larger among vehicles without front crash prevention (15%) than among vehicles with FCW alone (12%) or FCW with AEB (9%). Only 4% of rear- end injury crashes involved fatalities or serious (A-level) injuries."

"Approximately 700,000 U.S. police-reported rear-end crashes in 2013 and 300,000 injuries in such crashes could have been prevented if all vehicles were equipped with FCW with AEB that performs similarly as it did for study vehicles."

[1] http://orfe.princeton.edu/~alaink/SmartDrivingCars/Papers/II...

Re: NHTSA’s full investigation into Tesla’s Autopilot shows 40% crash rate reduction

#102

Post by sfifs »

snewman wrote: post #2

Tesla comes off extremely well in this report. For one thing, the 40% statistic cited in the headline appears to be well supported by the NHTSA report (section 5.4) and actually manages to frame the incident in a very positive light: ODI analyzed mileage and airbag deployment data supplied by Tesla for all MY 2014 through 2016 Model S and 2016 Model X vehicles equipped with the Autopilot Technology Package, either in…

Is the base size and confidence levels reported anywhere? I get professionally suspicious when reports publish percentage figure comparisons of rare events.

Re: NHTSA’s full investigation into Tesla’s Autopilot shows 40% crash rate reduction

#103

Post by stale2002 »

mikeash wrote: post #24
stale2002 wrote: post #6

Oh, hey, will you look at that. The imperfect, incomplete, beta, level 2 self driving cars that were supposed to be the "dangerous" area of self driving are ALREADY better than human drivers. Can we stop the politics and deploy all the real self driving cars to the road immediately, since the government has proven that even the shitty variety is safer than humans?

Level 3 is the real danger area. That's the level where the driver is able to do other things, but must be prepared to retake control at any time. Those two ideas are basically contradictory: if you're not already involved with driving, it takes too long to get back into it to do anything useful. Tesla's system is level 2, meaning that the driver must (as in, is supposed to) remain engaged and aware of the driving ta…

The politics will hopefully be solved soon. A few red states, that are anti government and pro innovation (like Arizona or something) , will make them legal, and then we will start collecting irrefutable data that they are 10 times safer.

Re: NHTSA’s full investigation into Tesla’s Autopilot shows 40% crash rate reduction

#104

Post by jfoutz »

ebbv wrote: post #42
cryptoz wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

35,000 people die from car accidents every single year in the USA alone. Other drivers are not "really good".

Personally I believe most people are really terrible drivers. That being said, there were 210 million drivers in the US in 2009. There's probably a lot more today. That's just 0.01% of drivers. That fact makes me have to question just how bad people really are, despite my own personal opinion. Or maybe cars are just really safe. A better statistic might be number of accidents. In 2015 2.44 million people were injured…

I believe most people are inconsistent drivers. Usually they do a reasonable job, but some fraction of the time they're worried about a sick kid, or a job interview, or a recent breakup, or whatever, and they aren't paying attention.

There are some truly consistently horrible drivers. But in general most people do ok most of the time. I think the real challenge is cutting of that really bad end of the distribution, which autopilot seems to be doing.

Re: NHTSA’s full investigation into Tesla’s Autopilot shows 40% crash rate reduction

#105

Post by fmihaila »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #91
fmihaila wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can rephrase my original comment according to your terms: there is no evidence that TACC reduces safety. That's equivalent to what I said. Do you have evidence to the contrary? Moreover, if experience showed that TACC reduces safety, NHTSA and its counterparts in other countries would have noticed and put the brakes on it. If you don't think this is a reasonable assumption, so be it.

Editted to respond to edit. (perhaps my original comment was a bit brash as well) The problem here is that you're mis specifying the null hypothesis. We have had human drivers for 100 years. New automated systems start to come into the fray. We're trying to figure out if they are safer than humans. The null in this case is that they are not. That's what we assume until proven otherwise.

> We're trying to figure out if they are safer than humans.

No, we're not. We're trying to figure out if TACC has any impact either way. Accordingly, the null hypothesis is that they are no more and no less safe than human drivers alone. You need data to show the direction of the change. You just picked a direction (i.e., towards worse) that was more intuitive to you.

Re: NHTSA’s full investigation into Tesla’s Autopilot shows 40% crash rate reduction

#106

Post by tlrobinson »

fabianhjr wrote: post #93
mikeash wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Level 3 is the real danger area. That's the level where the driver is able to do other things, but must be prepared to retake control at any time. Those two ideas are basically contradictory: if you're not already involved with driving, it takes too long to get back into it to do anything useful. Tesla's system is level 2, meaning that the driver must (as in, is supposed to) remain engaged and aware of the driving ta…

Wouldn't Level 3 be like Otto? (Automated, No human attention required on Highways; Human driving otherwise) The truck would know well in advance which exit it would take and could give the driver a heads-up some minutes before they need to take the wheel.

As I understand it, level 3 could still require human intervention at unforeseen times (e.x. weather, etc).

Re: NHTSA’s full investigation into Tesla’s Autopilot shows 40% crash rate reduction

#107

Post by ZoeZoeBee »

JBReefer wrote: post #83
r00fus wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need audiobooks or podcasts. Heck, I love taking a conference call while on my commute (handsfree of course) - 80% of it is in the left lane of an interstate.

The left lane is only for passing, and if you are passing >80% of the cars on the road, you are a reckless driver.

Incorrect, the left lane is only for passing only in certain states, and mainly on roads with only 2 lanes of traffic in each direction.

>The Uniform Vehicle Code states: Upon all roadways any vehicle proceeding at less than the normal speed of traffic at the time and place and under the conditions then existing shall be driven in the right-hand lane then available for traffic ...

>All states allow drivers to use the left lane (when there is more than one in the same direction) to pass. Most states restrict use of the left lane by slow-moving traffic that is not passing. The table below describes the law in effect in each state.

http://www.mit.edu/~jfc/right.html

Re: NHTSA’s full investigation into Tesla’s Autopilot shows 40% crash rate reduction

#108

Post by stale2002 »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #96
stale2002 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Level 1 is Human drivers, level 2 is computer "lane assist" and "automated cruise control". So yes, it is literally human Vs computer driven safety.

Level 1 is Driver Assistance. Level 0 is No Automation. It's literally a graphic in the report... Someone kindly posted the pdf link if you'd like to read it.

Do you actually believe that cruise control is less safe, to any non negligible degree than human driving?

You are bringing it up, but I don't think you are doing this for any reason other than to be contrarian.

Also, ALL cars have cruise control right now. So the 40 percent STILL applies to all these cars.

The correct way to frase the study is that "99 percent of cars are level 1 autonomous cars. For this 99 percent, going from level 1 to level 2 would make them 40 % safer"

Re: NHTSA’s full investigation into Tesla’s Autopilot shows 40% crash rate reduction

#109

Post by DonHopkins »

snewman wrote: post #2

Tesla comes off extremely well in this report. For one thing, the 40% statistic cited in the headline appears to be well supported by the NHTSA report (section 5.4) and actually manages to frame the incident in a very positive light: ODI analyzed mileage and airbag deployment data supplied by Tesla for all MY 2014 through 2016 Model S and 2016 Model X vehicles equipped with the Autopilot Technology Package, either in…

The car should immediately pull over and shut down if it detects any activity on the driver's Twitter or Facebook feeds: Social Media Strike Out!

Re: NHTSA’s full investigation into Tesla’s Autopilot shows 40% crash rate reduction

#110

Post by OrwellianChild »

camiller wrote: post #78
ebbv wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I believe most people are really terrible drivers. That being said, there were 210 million drivers in the US in 2009. There's probably a lot more today. That's just 0.01% of drivers. That fact makes me have to question just how bad people really are, despite my own personal opinion. Or maybe cars are just really safe. A better statistic might be number of accidents. In 2015 2.44 million people were injured…

I had an econ professor assert that as cars got safer there were more accidents because people trusted the car to protect them more.... Logically, to reduce accidents due to carelessness we should put a 12" sharpened spike right in the middle of the steering wheel pointing at the drivers chest. If all accidents were deadly wouldn't drivers then exercise the utmost care?

It's a great joke, but a poor strategy. Remember the end game: minimize harm. The universal solutions that remove human error have a better long-run potential to minimize harm, since they can exceed the effectiveness of even the most attentive and cautious human driver.
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