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U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

reuters.com

291–300 of 507 posts

Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#291
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every year young drivers die because they were inexperienced and didn't realize they were going too fast to too slow for a certain situation. Once full self driving is statistically safer than humans how will you not let people use it? It is like saying you would rather have 10 children die because of bad driving skills rather than 1 child die because they were not paying attention at all times.

>Once full self driving is statistically safer than humans how will you not let people use it? I'm fine with self-driving if/when it works (though I'm pretty sure from watching FSD Beta videos shot and edited by their biggest fans with a few interventions every 5 minutes, this is many many many years away for Tesla). But the company selling the self driving has to be responsible to some degree for the mistakes it mak…

And responsible for the marketing it puts out:

https://www.tesla.com/videos/autopilot-self-driving-hardware...

"… HE IS NOT DOING ANYTHING. THE CAR IS DRIVING ITSELF."

Online since 2016, debunked as a lie. Still on Tesla’s website.

Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#292

A lot of people in here saying it is not possible to drive safely with partial self driving. I wonder, how many of those people have actually driven a car with autopilot? I have autopilot on my car, and it definitely makes me a better and safer driver. It maintains my distance from the car in front and my speed while keeping me in my lane, so my brain no longer has to worry about those mundane things. Instead I can s…

I would argue that partial self driving is an irresponsible product not because it's impossible to drive safely with it, but because so many people will use it as an excuse to pay little to no attention to the road. If you personally are a responsible driver and even a better driver with it, that's great - but most people probably aren't going to use it the same way, especially those without much of an understanding…

The technical term for this is Risk Compensation:

"Risk compensation is a theory which suggests that people typically adjust their behavior in response to perceived levels of risk, becoming more careful where they sense greater risk and less careful if they feel more protected."

Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#293

A lot of people in here saying it is not possible to drive safely with partial self driving. I wonder, how many of those people have actually driven a car with autopilot? I have autopilot on my car, and it definitely makes me a better and safer driver. It maintains my distance from the car in front and my speed while keeping me in my lane, so my brain no longer has to worry about those mundane things. Instead I can s…

I would argue that partial self driving is an irresponsible product not because it's impossible to drive safely with it, but because so many people will use it as an excuse to pay little to no attention to the road. If you personally are a responsible driver and even a better driver with it, that's great - but most people probably aren't going to use it the same way, especially those without much of an understanding…

This is a question that is answerable with the right data – we can just see if it's safer or not.

Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#294
Teslas are the safest vehicles on the road, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. (https://drivemag.com/news/how-safe-are-tesla-cars-5-facts-an...).

Teslas crash 40% less than other cars, and 1/3 the number of people are killed in Teslas versus other cars.

Indeed once a common failure mode like this is identified it needs to be investigated and fixed. Something similar happened a few years ago when someone driving a Tesla while watching a movie (not paying attention) died when they crashed into a light-colored tractor trailer directly crossing the road. So an investigation makes sense. But much of the general criticism of self-driving and autopilot here seems misplaced. Teslas and other self-driving vehicle technologies are saving lives. They will continue to save lives compared to human drivers, as long as we let them.

Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#295

A lot of people in here saying it is not possible to drive safely with partial self driving. I wonder, how many of those people have actually driven a car with autopilot? I have autopilot on my car, and it definitely makes me a better and safer driver. It maintains my distance from the car in front and my speed while keeping me in my lane, so my brain no longer has to worry about those mundane things. Instead I can s…

I would argue that partial self driving is an irresponsible product not because it's impossible to drive safely with it, but because so many people will use it as an excuse to pay little to no attention to the road. If you personally are a responsible driver and even a better driver with it, that's great - but most people probably aren't going to use it the same way, especially those without much of an understanding…

Yes there have been stories about irresponsible people. Do you have any evidence that this is the common case? The aggregate evidence seems to suggest reduced accidents and reduced fatalities.

Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#296

A lot of people in here saying it is not possible to drive safely with partial self driving. I wonder, how many of those people have actually driven a car with autopilot? I have autopilot on my car, and it definitely makes me a better and safer driver. It maintains my distance from the car in front and my speed while keeping me in my lane, so my brain no longer has to worry about those mundane things. Instead I can s…

You might be giving too much credit to your ability to pay attention to your surroundings. It is possible that looking around as a passenger might actually increases risk. There's no way to tell other than looking at the data.

Personally, I tend to turn off things like lane keeping because I end up having to babysit them more than I would like. It doesn't always read the lanes correctly, though I have not tried Tesla's technology yet.

Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#298
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teslas Autopilot system is almost 10X safer than the average human driver already based on the latest 2021 Q1 numbers. https://www.tesla.com/en_CA/VehicleSafetyReport

Tesla's safety report lacks data and is extremely misleading. 1. Autopilot only works on (or intended to work on) highways. But they are comparing their highway record to all accident records including city driving, where accident rate is far higher than highway driving. 2. They're also comparing with every vehicle in the United States including millions of older vehicles. Modern vehicles are built for higher safety…

> The reality is Teslas are no safer than any other vehicles in its class ($40k+).

Would another way of saying this be that they are as safe as other vehicles in that class? And that therefore Autopilot is not more unsafe than driving those other cars?

Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#299

I remember when Google was first presenting on driverless technology about 10 years ago, and they mentioned how you have to go right to full self driving, because any advanced driver assistance will clash with human risk compensation behavior. Risk compensation is fascinating; driving with a bike helmet causes the biker and drivers around the biker to behave more dangerously. Is society sophisticated enough to deal w…

> Risk compensation is fascinating; driving with a bike helmet causes the biker and drivers around the biker to behave more dangerously.

Source please

Re: U.S. opens probe into Tesla’s Autopilot over emergency vehicle crashes

#300
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the 1st quarter, we registered one accident for every 4.19 million miles driven in which drivers had Autopilot engaged. For those driving without Autopilot but with our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 2.05 million miles driven. For those driving without Autopilot and without our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 978 thousand miles driven. By comparison, NHT…

> we registered one accident for every 4.19 million miles driven in which drivers had Autopilot engaged [...] for those driving without Autopilot but with our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 2.05 million miles driven This still isn't the correct comparison. Major selection bias with comparing miles with autopilot engaged to miles without it engaged, since autopilot cannot be engaged in al…

Even then, there's selection: people who do a lot of highway driving are more likely to opt for Autopilot than those who mostly drive in the city.
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