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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

#271

Post by phinnaeus »

lz400 wrote: post #270

I think there's sometimes a lot of marketing and hand waving in this type of argument "crashes go down with autopilot". Most car accidents are caused by drunk or old people, and they drag the average up. if you tell me a Tesla autopilot beats a drunk guy it won't surprise anyone. Now as a non-drunk, young(ish) driver but experienced and careful, my statistics don't look anything like the average, they look at lot bet…

I'm confused. You think young(ish) people need to be convinced to buy semi-autonomous vehicles? If they can afford it, why wouldn't they buy it? People love things that make their life more convenient.

In my experience, its the older people that are somehow scared of the concept of a self-driving car and would need to be convinced.

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

#272

Post by mfgrimm »

lz400 wrote: post #270

I think there's sometimes a lot of marketing and hand waving in this type of argument "crashes go down with autopilot". Most car accidents are caused by drunk or old people, and they drag the average up. if you tell me a Tesla autopilot beats a drunk guy it won't surprise anyone. Now as a non-drunk, young(ish) driver but experienced and careful, my statistics don't look anything like the average, they look at lot bet…

I suppose the best comparison would be to compare non-Tesla owners of the same demographic. Are accident rates correlated to SES? Do people who buy luxury sedans crash less?

Just a guess: probably.

Still, I know I drive stupidly sometimes, and autopilot might help.

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

#273

Post by xorxornop »

mikeash wrote: post #197
snewman wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, from previous reports it was already pretty clear that the driver was asleep at the wheel (literally or otherwise). The car is not supposed to allow this; it's supposed to check for hands-on-steering-wheel and other indicators of driver attention. It would have been nice to find out how that system broke down in this case.

It doesn't require continuous engagement. You can drive with hands off the wheel for several minutes at a time in many situations.

Besides, it's perfectly possible to fall asleep but with your hands still touching (even gripping!) the steering wheel.

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

#274

Post by __derek__ »

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…

A stylistic note: putting quotes in code format like that makes them unreadable on mobile browsers. It's a single-line side-scrolling element with three words in frame at a time that I can only see after lifting my thumb.

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

#275

Post by xorxornop »

jfoutz wrote: post #104
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 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, w…

Those same drivers are, unfortunately, also likely to be those least amenable to actually using it. Some people I know have expressed disgust toward the idea of autonomous driving; coincidentally, almost all are horrible drivers that I wouldn't want to be with as a passenger.

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

#276

Post by gnicholas »

blazespin wrote: post #246
Animats wrote: post #189

It's interesting how vague this is. There's an NTSB investigation still pending into a specific Tesla crash.[1] The goals are different. NHTSA asks "do we need to do a recall?" NTSB asks "exactly what, in detail, happened here?" NTSB mostly does air crashes, but occasionally they do an auto crash with unusual properties. Here's the NTSB report for the Midland, TX crash between a train and a parade float.[2] That has…

The only thing that matters is "NHTSA notes that crash rates involving Tesla cars have dropped by almost 40 percent since the wide introduction of Autopilot" Even if autopilot was faulty in some way, if more people were living than dying - does it matter?

This assumes that the crashes avoided by Autopilot are of similar magnitude/deadliness as the crashes facilitated (for lack of a better term) by Autopilot.

That is, Autopilot makes certain kinds of accidents more likely — those in which the human driver is not monitoring the vehicle carefully enough, Autopilot misses something critical, and an accident results. It is possible, though not necessarily the case, that these accidents tend to be more serious than accidents that Autopilot prevents, such as lane-changing bumps or other less-fatal accidents.

To be clear, I'm not saying that evidence has been presented that the type of accidents prevented are less important than the type facilitated. I'm just pointing out that not all accidents are equal, and that there may be correlation/causation that makes the overall calculus more complicated.

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

#277

Post by lz400 »

phinnaeus wrote: post #271
lz400 wrote: post #270

I think there's sometimes a lot of marketing and hand waving in this type of argument "crashes go down with autopilot". Most car accidents are caused by drunk or old people, and they drag the average up. if you tell me a Tesla autopilot beats a drunk guy it won't surprise anyone. Now as a non-drunk, young(ish) driver but experienced and careful, my statistics don't look anything like the average, they look at lot bet…

I'm confused. You think young(ish) people need to be convinced to buy semi-autonomous vehicles? If they can afford it, why wouldn't they buy it? People love things that make their life more convenient. In my experience, its the older people that are somehow scared of the concept of a self-driving car and would need to be convinced.

Because of security. I wouldn't buy an autonomous car that has an accident rate worse than my demographic. A car that has an accident rate better than average is not good enough. I hope that explains my point.

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

#278

Post by Animats »

greglindahl wrote: post #253
everlost wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it does seem vague. Isn't the NHTSA investigation meant to be a non-biased root-cause-analysis about last year's trailer crash? Instead, this just seems to be a grading report on Tesla's autopilot compliance.

Section 5.3 pretty much sums up the root cause of this accident: the driver assist requires the driver to be alert, and the driver had 7 seconds to react and didn't. There's no requirement that driver assist software magically become self-driving software in that situation. Put another way: it's nice if the software can avoid a problem, but not required. The main remaining concern is that drivers not be confused abou…

Not really. The NHTSA report says that auto-braking is initiated only when the radar and MobileEye vision systems both report an obstacle. That reflects poor sensor fusion. Tesla took an off the shelf radar product from Bosch and an off the shelf vision product from Mobileye, ANDed their processed outputs together, and called it a day. They don't seem to have confidence data from each sensor and some means to fuse it. If the radar is reporting "target dead ahead, 3 secs to crash" (radars have range rate data), and the vision system is reporting "unrecognized situation ahead", that ought to at least trigger a slowdown and alert.

This is probably why Musk pulled radar and vision processing in-house. Combining the data from both sensors is more effective, but more difficult, than combining the results from processing both sensors separately.

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

#279

Post by lz400 »

mfgrimm wrote: post #272
lz400 wrote: post #270

I think there's sometimes a lot of marketing and hand waving in this type of argument "crashes go down with autopilot". Most car accidents are caused by drunk or old people, and they drag the average up. if you tell me a Tesla autopilot beats a drunk guy it won't surprise anyone. Now as a non-drunk, young(ish) driver but experienced and careful, my statistics don't look anything like the average, they look at lot bet…

I suppose the best comparison would be to compare non-Tesla owners of the same demographic. Are accident rates correlated to SES? Do people who buy luxury sedans crash less? Just a guess: probably. Still, I know I drive stupidly sometimes, and autopilot might help.

Yes exactly, it would be interesting to see fair comparisons of people of the exact same profile (both driver and car) tesla vs others. I don't like that so many people seem happy enough to compare autopilot against the total average of accidents in the road and say "they save lives". When you are going to buy the car you want to know if it's going to be better than you.

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

#280

Post by cle »

SecretAg3nt wrote: post #259
cle wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends who you ask. I'd bet that the widow of a crash victim would disagree...

Isn't this the same argument that could be used in the context of hospital borne infections? Autopilot will reduced the number of fatalities in the same way that going to the hospital when you are sick will reduce the number of fatalities. However some people that use Autopilot will die when they otherwise would not have if they hadn't used Autopilot, just like how some people going to the hospital will die from infe…

I agree! It's a net positive, and I'm in favor it.

But it doesn't mean that people dying from faults "don't matter". Every HAI-caused death is a tragedy, and they certainly matter.

The issue is much less black-and-white than the GP's simplistic view.

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