Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And because it's Tesla, not Honda. And because it’s Elon Musk, not some ethical CEO
Ethical CEO is an oxímoron.
I feel sad that you believe that.
Normalized crash data shows Autopilot is much less safe than Tesla claims
121–130 of 462 posts
Re: Normalized crash data shows Autopilot is much less safe than Tesla claims
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the fact that autopilot isn't worse is pretty promising! Presumably drivers take over when it makes mistakes, which tilts the stats a bit. > When I was 19 probably safer to use autopilot. As a parent, I wonder about what safety tech I would let my kids use when learning to drive. I want to make sure they fully learn how to drive, which makes me think I shouldn't let them use too much semi-autonomous tech. At the sa…
I also think it will be important for any future teenager of mine to learn to drive without the regenerative braking that Teslas default to. It’s a much better driving experience IMO, but I worry a new driver won’t learn the “oh no hit the brakes!” reflex if they rarely use the brake pedal. I’d probably force them to learn with the car set to “normal” ICE/idle—style for the first few months.
Is there actually a "normal" style? I've only done a test drive but it seemed like there were various levels of automatic braking, but none that actually allowed you to coast.
Re: Normalized crash data shows Autopilot is much less safe than Tesla claims
#123How is this still front page? Somebody sleeping? In case you missed them, there have been 5 tesla stories nuked from the front page today: 'Self driving' Tesla fails miserably on the streets of South Boston 30 points 22 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30173566 Tesla Australia admits its sales figures were wrong 39 points 14 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30176635 Tesla drivers report a su…
There are valid criticisms of Tesla, this normalized data story is probably one of them, but the fans and anti-fans of Tesla are so equally rabid that it is nearly impossible to have a rational conversation about it. Expressing a view in either direction results in an instant pile-on of trolls and flames.
So Tesla news can be discussed anywhere except HN?
The reason HN is exceptional is that it has a lot of readers working on or near AI, who will quickly call out the B.S. in Tesla PR. They know this, so all Tesla stories get nuked.
Re: Normalized crash data shows Autopilot is much less safe than Tesla claims
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good question! According to one study in LA, [1] men cause 60% of accidents. I do wonder, however, the extent to which this gap fades with age. Given that most Tesla owners are not super young, it might not make as much of a difference as the 60% number (assuming it is nationally representative) would indicate. 1: https://xtown.la/2019/12/12/women-drivers-maybe-we-need-more...
Note when looking at 40% vs 60% of accidents (assuming males and females drive the same amount) the % difference seems small, only 20%, but actually this means males cause 50% more accidents than females do (60/40=1.5).
I don't know if we can assume males and females drive the same amount.
Re: Normalized crash data shows Autopilot is much less safe than Tesla claims
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's fair to compare to the average driver. You may be not average by virtue of not being a teenager and not driving drunk, but you're not magically immune to being run over or crashed into by one of those. So even if a hypothetical FSD capable car would not drive one yota better than you do, it cwould still make you safer by virtue of making the surrounding environment safer.
My problem is that the median driver is much much better than the mean driver and tesla os comparing against means. The damage done in a car distribution is heavily skewed towards people that get in fatal crashes or total a car. I'd randomly guess like 20-30% of drivers are below mean. Most people won't total a car, vast majority will never kill anyone. If you get median people into an autopilot car that's got a mean…
Median vs mean of what measure?
Re: Normalized crash data shows Autopilot is much less safe than Tesla claims
#126I was just watching this video of a Tesla trying and miserably failing to drive itself through the streets of Boston: https://twitter.com/TaylorOgan/status/1488555256162172928 A number of these near-crashes seem to be pretty odd errors (a couple of times it just decided to drive on the wrong side of the street?) -- albeit ones that one _could_ see drivers unfamiliar with the area making. If a human driver started dri…
To be fair Boston city roads are like horse carriage routes that were converted to streets and will probably one of the last places FSD optimizes for.
Those roads seem much easier to drive on than basically any city I've been in Europe. Paris is 10x more complex than that for instance. If FSD can't handle that there's really not of a use case apart from highways in Europe.
To give you an idea of the incredible features in some cities, I have recently driven in Rennes where they found a good idea to makes roads with one single central lane for cars with wide bicycle path on each side. You are supposed to drive in the center and if a car comes in the other direction each car needs to go on the bicycle lane on their respective side of the road while giving priority to bicycles. I wonder how FSD would handle that...
Re: Normalized crash data shows Autopilot is much less safe than Tesla claims
#127I have felt since day 1 that "autopilot is better than the average driver!" is the most misleading fact/statistic in the industry. The "average driver" involved in an accident includes drunk drivers, road ragers, habitual speeders, teenagers, people driving in bad conditions (rain, snow), people driving without sleep and several other risky groups that most people buying Teslas aren't part of. To be worth it, the car…
> several other risky groups that most people buying Teslas aren't part of. This is a fallacy. Ask any demographic you like if they're road ragers, drunk drivers, etc... and they'll deny it. Everyone is sure that rare and terrible outcomes will never happen to them because of their own behavior, including the people to whom it happens! It's probably true that middle aged premium car owners are safer on average, but y…
> You can't take a vague dataset and then "correct" it like this without absolutely huge error bars.
That ship has already sailed; Tesla makes active safety claims based on that dataset. To hold research to your standard here would be to say that Tesla can make its claims, but nobody can challenge those claims.
> Why did they all push the results in one direction?
If you have two correction steps, then a priori you'd expect a 25% chance that they both act in the same direction. I don't think this is very remarkable.
> Why not gender?
This probably would be a reasonable addition. I doubt it would change the results much, but we have the well-known fact that insurance rates differ for men and women, so it may be relevant.
> Why not income?
First, is this data even generally available? If the data doesn't exist, then we can't control for it.
Second, should we expect crash rates per mile driven to differ greatly by owner/driver income? A priori, I wouldn't think this demographic quality to have a strong impact.
> Why not compare vs. like cars?
I think "personal vehicle" is a reasonable comparative category. Would we expect collision rates to differ greatly between more specific categorizations? For the sake of the overall conclusion, would we expect Tesla-equivalents to be particularly crash prone in the broad dataset?
Any statistical analysis will have its limitations, but when we're talking about life-safety claims from a manufacturer I think we should have wide latitude to look at critical evaluations of the original data.
Re: Normalized crash data shows Autopilot is much less safe than Tesla claims
#128I was just watching this video of a Tesla trying and miserably failing to drive itself through the streets of Boston: https://twitter.com/TaylorOgan/status/1488555256162172928 A number of these near-crashes seem to be pretty odd errors (a couple of times it just decided to drive on the wrong side of the street?) -- albeit ones that one _could_ see drivers unfamiliar with the area making. If a human driver started dri…
This is interesting. I have seen similar videos of Tesla self-driving successfully on similar type of streets in Seattle. I wonder if the quality of FSD changes from city to city based on how much data Tesla receives from other drives in that city. I guess I'm suggesting that Seattle could have more Tesla drivers than Boston. I have no idea if any of this is true. Just a thought.
Re: Normalized crash data shows Autopilot is much less safe than Tesla claims
#129I was just watching this video of a Tesla trying and miserably failing to drive itself through the streets of Boston: https://twitter.com/TaylorOgan/status/1488555256162172928 A number of these near-crashes seem to be pretty odd errors (a couple of times it just decided to drive on the wrong side of the street?) -- albeit ones that one _could_ see drivers unfamiliar with the area making. If a human driver started dri…
To be fair Boston city roads are like horse carriage routes that were converted to streets and will probably one of the last places FSD optimizes for.
So the feature is useless in most european cities?
Re: Normalized crash data shows Autopilot is much less safe than Tesla claims
#130I doubt that full self driving is possible in the near future without changes to the cars and the infrastructure to help the autonomous systems.