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Normalized crash data shows Autopilot is much less safe than Tesla claims

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Re: Normalized crash data shows Autopilot is much less safe than Tesla claims

#201

Post by jonathankoren »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #97
mrtksn wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans don’t disengage and let the machines handle the situation but machines do it all the time. Do the machines disengage at tricky situations or straight lines?

The statistics are there to read however, and suggest your reasoning is not correct. Case A: Non Tesla Human drives 999 easy miles and 1 hard mile Case B: Autopilot drives 999 easy miles, and human drives 1 hard mile If the effect size of the hard mile is so large that its skewing the statistics, you would expect the Telsa human driver to have a horrendous per mile accident rate relative to the non tesla human driver…

It’s not just that. There’s a context switch when the autodrive disengages, so the human is actually less ready for the hard mile than if they were driving the whole time. Sure m, the human is supposed to be able to take control at anytime, but I don’t think that really happens. The whole purpose of autodrive is do you don’t have to pay attention and drive.

Re: Normalized crash data shows Autopilot is much less safe than Tesla claims

#202

Post by jacquesm »

jonathankoren wrote: post #192
bambax wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes it's legal IDK about the US, but in France the speed limit is a target speed; if conditions are good (weather, visibility, traffic) you're supposed to drive at or near maximum speed. It's illegal to drive too slow, and there's a specific fine for this. https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/article_lc/LEGIARTI0000... [in French]

In the US it’s legally a max. I have seen — although rarely — entire lines of cars pulled over and ticketed for speeding on an interstate (limited access, multilane divided highway, max speed 65-70 mph (104-112 kph)) Driving too fast for conditions, is a different fine, so if it’s foggy and you’re going the posted limit, you could also get fined. You can get ticketed for driving too slow, but I’ve never seen it. I’ve…

> You can get ticketed for driving too slow, but I’ve never seen it.

I have (very gently) forced a car off the road once in Germany with the police on 112, a very elderly gentleman was doing 30 Kph on the autobahn and caused one near miss after another. Police came and helped him to get home, we talked for a while and it turned out that it was his first trip in a long time to go and see his sister in another town, he'd gotten lost and was frightened out of his wits by all the traffic zooming by.

I don't know how it ended, he probably kept his license because clearly there was no officer around to witness the event but I'm pretty sure he avoided the autobahn after that.

Re: Normalized crash data shows Autopilot is much less safe than Tesla claims

#203

Post by paxys »

capableweb wrote: post #197
sudosysgen wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they are buying an expensive, new car, meaning higher income, meaning that those things are less likely : https://academic.oup.com/alcalc/article/46/6/721/129644

In my person experience, the "drunk drivers", "road ragers", "habitual speeders" groups seems to be over-represented in expensive cars rather than cheaper cars. Poor people cannot afford to crash their car while rich people can.

Data released by the DOL and insurance companies does not match with your personal experience. There's a reason 18 year olds driving shitty cars pay through their nose for liability coverage.

Re: Normalized crash data shows Autopilot is much less safe than Tesla claims

#204

Post by RyEgswuCsn »

gnicholas wrote: post #2

Underlying study is here. [1] Full disclosure, I co-wrote the piece for The Daily Beast [2] that originally suggested that Tesla's methodology was seriously flawed. I am not a Tesla-hater though — I just thought it was odd that the company was playing quite so fast and loose with their safety claims. 1: https://engrxiv.org/preprint/view/1973/3986 2: https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-tesla-and-elon-musk-exagge...

So it sounds like it's Simpson's paradox [1] at work. I had always wondered why many people are slow to accept self-driving cars despite the claims of them being statistically safer. I think that explains it --- to make consumers confident about the self-driving technologies, it is not enough for them to be able to handle the "easy" kind of driving (e.g. on highway and under relatively good visibility conditions) better than humans; they need to demonstrate that they can drive better than humans in the most challenging driving environments too.

I guess this is the classic scenario where human intuition is defeated by carefully presented statistics.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox

Re: Normalized crash data shows Autopilot is much less safe than Tesla claims

#205

Post by jlmorton »

sandworm101 wrote: post #20
jacquesm wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just thought it was odd that the company was playing quite so fast and loose with their safety claims. That's because it's marketing, not science.

And because it's Tesla, not Honda. Every car company does marketing. Few make over-the-top safety claims about their products. This is the company that decided to have its cars not stop at stop signs. Normal rules don't apply to Tesla. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-60230072 "In recall documents, the electric vehicle maker notes that if certain conditions are met, the "rolling stop" feature is designed to allow…

> This is the company that decided to have its cars not stop at stop signs. Normal rules don't apply to Tesla.

It's a driving profile which must be turned on that implements behavior extremely common among the driving public. My Honda with Traffic Sign Recognition and adaptive cruise control lets me set the speed above the speed limit, too.

Our traffic laws are in many ways ambiguous, such that even the police officers enforcing the laws will readily admit you're allowed to drive above the posted speed limit. When traffic rules are interpreted ambiguously, it's not that strange for a driving profile to do the same.

Re: Normalized crash data shows Autopilot is much less safe than Tesla claims

#206

Post by FireBeyond »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #76
mrtksn wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I remember correctly, they also cover the easy part of the road and make the human take over at tricky situations. So at the end of the day, you have spotless records for the autopilot that was driving many many miles on the straight line and humans having accidents at short intersections or construction sites. This translates into very favorable numbers for autopilot when presented as accidents per miles driven.

If it were the case that autopilot was benefiting from dumping all of the difficult parts on the humans, you would expect to see much higher than average rates of accidents per mile on the human driven parts, because they're only getting the hard parts. This tends not to be true, so I'm doubting it's a real effect.

Your conclusion relies on the - quite faulty - assumption that "situations that inherently difficult for FSD to handle" are automatically "also more dangerous for human drivers". In snowy conditions, humans do just fine, generally, at following "lanes", be they the actual lane, or the safest route that everyone else is following. Humans are also capable of deducting lane direction, orientation, even when there are contradictory/old lane markings on the road, a situation FSD regularly causes danger in.

Or that that negative effect is lost in the orders of magnitude of "all human drivers across all miles" versus FSD.

Re: Normalized crash data shows Autopilot is much less safe than Tesla claims

#207

Post by ummonk »

dmitriid wrote: post #199
maxdo wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

> Autopilot is a tool. You can miss use it, sure. But if you care about safety it's hard to match with what they offer. 1. It's not autopilot, by any measurable criteria 2. As the adjusted data clearl shows, it's not that hard to match it. And since you mention Volvo, they definitely match it. They are honest enough though not to call it "autopilot", or "full safe driving" or pin the plame for its failures on the dri…

Yup. Autopilot on aircraft is very different because pilots don't have to be ready to take over on a moment's notice.

Of course they have to be monitoring the flight but they can be generally assured that the autopilot won't decide to just fly into a mountain with only fractions of a second for the pilots to intervene.

Re: Normalized crash data shows Autopilot is much less safe than Tesla claims

#208

Post by FireBeyond »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #158
mrtksn wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a sourse but I could not find it ATM. It’s fairly simple, people don’t disengage and their driving safety is judged over all the miles they drive + all the situations where Autopilot disengages. Tesla Autopilot is judged only by the miles driven without disengagement, which is quite limited actually. You can watch Youtube videos to see at what kind of situations Tesla autopilot gives up. There’s no situatio…

You seem to be missing the point though. If this were significant, then human tesla drivers should be shown as performing much worse than other car drivers, because you're claiming they have a disproportionately large riding time in "tricky roads". A non tesla driver should be doing way better because they get to pad their score with the easy roads the autopilot supposedly gets.

As mentioned elsewhere, just because a situation is difficult for FSD to parse and process doesn't inherently make it a dangerous situation for a human driver.

Re: Normalized crash data shows Autopilot is much less safe than Tesla claims

#209

Post by sokoloff »

dmitriid wrote: post #199
maxdo wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

> Autopilot is a tool. You can miss use it, sure. But if you care about safety it's hard to match with what they offer. 1. It's not autopilot, by any measurable criteria 2. As the adjusted data clearl shows, it's not that hard to match it. And since you mention Volvo, they definitely match it. They are honest enough though not to call it "autopilot", or "full safe driving" or pin the plame for its failures on the dri…

> It's not autopilot, by any measurable criteria

It does seem quite comparable in capabilities to the actual autopilot in aircraft. And that’s what’s confusing to people; most don’t realize that an autopilot is a control used by a driver or pilot to reduce their workload. (As a pilot, I am still logging flight time as the “sole manipulator of controls” during the time the autopilot is engaged.)

Re: Normalized crash data shows Autopilot is much less safe than Tesla claims

#210

Post by [deleted] »

RyEgswuCsn wrote: post #204
gnicholas wrote: post #2

Underlying study is here. [1] Full disclosure, I co-wrote the piece for The Daily Beast [2] that originally suggested that Tesla's methodology was seriously flawed. I am not a Tesla-hater though — I just thought it was odd that the company was playing quite so fast and loose with their safety claims. 1: https://engrxiv.org/preprint/view/1973/3986 2: https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-tesla-and-elon-musk-exagge...

So it sounds like it's Simpson's paradox [1] at work. I had always wondered why many people are slow to accept self-driving cars despite the claims of them being statistically safer. I think that explains it --- to make consumers confident about the self-driving technologies, it is not enough for them to be able to handle the "easy" kind of driving (e.g. on highway and under relatively good visibility conditions) bet…

[deleted]
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