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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

#311
post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Facts: Tesla was the first to introduce such wide range of safety features in every car they sold. Please itemize these "wide range of safety features" for us that other manufacturers do not have or did not have until Tesla innovated them. > They invest in own crash test facilities. Only Volvo is kind of on par. Audi owns one, for just one.

Sure, https://www.tesla.com/safety https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KR2N_Q8ep8 Tesla roll out cars in generations. So just take a $40k Model 3/Y platform was introduced in 2017 and compare it with any car been introduced that year. My friend bought a BMW in 2019 for similar money, it doesn't have half of that. Maybe you can have them but you have to buy extra packages for extra money. Tesla don't sell safety features…

Well, apparently Tesla's motto should be "Bad driver's car"

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

#312
post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> My friend bought a BMW in 2019 for similar money, it doesn't have half of that. That's an incredibly bad example, because in German brands you have to pay extra for basic safety features(famously in the new Polo you have to pay extra to have more than the basic 3 airbags, I don't even know how that's allowed). Look at a brand new Peugeot/Citroen/Kia/Hyundai and you will pay less than what a Model 3 costs and get j…

You just excluded 60% of luxury market. Peugeot/Citroen almost not exists in US. Kia and Hundai they will be the biggest competitors among legacy auto brands. Even though their tech is not ambitious, basically copy paste from best and make it a bit cheaper, but not very cheap :)

People shopping in the luxury market can afford options they want. Did you know that any paint other than basic black and basic white is extra cost on BMW? If your argument about luxury cars not having safety options because they cost extra money had been valid then the argument that there are only black and white BMWs also had been a sensible one.

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

#313
post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So to summarize: - Freeways account for 93% of distance travelled with Autopilot - Freeways account for 28% of the distance travelled by regular drivers. - "vehicles on non-freeways crashed 2.01 times more often per mile" a quick back of the envelop calculation suggests merely driving on the freeway lowers accidents per mile by ~40%, which accounts for most of the difference between Autopilot and regular drivers.

There are additional confounding variables noted in the paper: - Age of driver - Specific highways used (congestion, road conditions) - What is classified as a highway Overall this is pretty good news for "autopilot" systems. It gives some humans an ego-boost as they clutch to steering wheels like John Henry. It gives others interested in a more relaxed driving experience the confidence that the computer isn't going…

And you know what? All I want out of the first fifteen years of self-driving is a really good highway autopilot.

As in one I can hopefully sleep at the wheel on a late night trip between midwestern US cities.

John Henryism can navigate the suburbs, stroads, and drivethrus. If they achieve a backup safety system that monitors the humans, well, ok great.

But right now, I want long distance automation, and I can handle the messy last mile. Highways are much easier to get uniform infrastructure convergence: some sensors, PSA warnings, better signs + markings + construction notices, etc.

I think Uber making as big a splash at it did sidetracked this low hanging fruit. IMO that was where the bootstrap bucks were, because you would have gotten freight/shipping to pay the cost of the next gen software, and would have provided the impetus for the convergent infrastructure.

Alas, they are obsessed with robotaxis.

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

#314
post #248
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are moments a pilot has seconds to react and disengage autopilot. Example: Traffic Resolution advisories require a 5 second reaction time and 2.5 seconds for any follow-on reactions. This reaction time includes the time to disengage autopilot and also put the aircraft into a climb-or-dive. Studies show that a situationally aware pilot takes at least 2 seconds to start the reaction, and another second to achieve…

5 seconds (or the 2 seconds that pilots require) is a lot more time than you’re afforded to take action while driving a Tesla in autopilot. And when driving the Tesla you often won’t get a clear warning signaling that you have to take over and do something - it can fail silently and swerve straight into an obstacle.

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

#315
post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So to summarize: - Freeways account for 93% of distance travelled with Autopilot - Freeways account for 28% of the distance travelled by regular drivers. - "vehicles on non-freeways crashed 2.01 times more often per mile" a quick back of the envelop calculation suggests merely driving on the freeway lowers accidents per mile by ~40%, which accounts for most of the difference between Autopilot and regular drivers.

There are additional confounding variables noted in the paper: - Age of driver - Specific highways used (congestion, road conditions) - What is classified as a highway Overall this is pretty good news for "autopilot" systems. It gives some humans an ego-boost as they clutch to steering wheels like John Henry. It gives others interested in a more relaxed driving experience the confidence that the computer isn't going…

Obviously the article goes into a lot more depth, though in my opinion things could be a bit clearer if they first established if Autopilot performs any differently on freeways or not and then try to see if controlling for any of the other possible confounds has any effect. I'm also not overly fond of their reweighting method, if not done carefully you'll just be amplifying a lot of noise.

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

#316
post #289
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The study says this: > An estimated 15% of injury crashes and 24% of property damage-only crashes are never reported to police (M. Davis and Company, Inc., 2015), while9% of injury crashes and 24% of property damage-only crashes are reported but not logged (Blincoe et al., 2015). Even with robust data, establishing the statistical significance of automated vehicle safety can be expensive. Kalra and Paddock (2016)demo…

Kalra and Paddock's analysis is correct as far as it goes, but it's easy to misuse to claim that we couldn't feasibly demonstrate an autonomous vehicle is acceptably safe. It never got accepted for publication because the reviewers didn't think it was significant enough, but I wrote a paper presenting an alternative way to analyse autonomous vehicle reliability data (you'll have to take my word for it, but the review…

[deleted]

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

#317
post #289
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The study says this: > An estimated 15% of injury crashes and 24% of property damage-only crashes are never reported to police (M. Davis and Company, Inc., 2015), while9% of injury crashes and 24% of property damage-only crashes are reported but not logged (Blincoe et al., 2015). Even with robust data, establishing the statistical significance of automated vehicle safety can be expensive. Kalra and Paddock (2016)demo…

Kalra and Paddock's analysis is correct as far as it goes, but it's easy to misuse to claim that we couldn't feasibly demonstrate an autonomous vehicle is acceptably safe. It never got accepted for publication because the reviewers didn't think it was significant enough, but I wrote a paper presenting an alternative way to analyse autonomous vehicle reliability data (you'll have to take my word for it, but the review…

I am surprised a scholar would take these reports without a massive grain of salt.

> In this study, all disengagement events listed in the company reports were included in the analysis. It is likely that in some cases, disengagements occurred as a precaution by the safety driver, and no adverse event would have resulted if the AV continued in autonomous mode.

Take a look at [1]. It says that:

> Waymo has developed a robust process to collect, analyze and evaluate disengages for this report. We set disengagement thresholds conservatively for our public road testing. The vast majority of disengagements are not related to safety. Our test drivers routinely transition into and out of autonomous mode many times throughout the day, and the self-driving vehicle’s computer hands over control to the driver in many situations that do not involve a failure of the autonomous technology and do not require an immediate takeover of control by the driver.

> To help evaluate the safety significance of disengagements, Waymo employs a powerful simulator program. In Waymo’s simulation, our team can “replay” each incident and predict the behavior of our self-driving car if the driver had not taken control of it, as well as the behavior and positions of other road users in the vicinity (such as pedestrians, cyclists, and other vehicles). Our engineers use this data to refine and improve the software to ensure the self-driving car performs safely.

So effectively, Waymo has secret process, which may change all the time, to decide which disengagements to report and which not to report. There is no way to tell whether the car would have slightly bumped into another car, or killed a child if not disengaged.

Their reports to the DMV do not constitute data, they are PR.

Not trying to single out Waymo, they all do that.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20190531071448/https://www.dmv.c...

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

#318
post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> naturalistic driving study of 28 vehicles The study seems to extrapolate from this. Tesla has something like 10 billion miles total driven on Autopilot, on a fleet of a million cars.

This is the dataset: https://insight.shrp2nds.us/documents/shrp2_background.pdf It covers 5.4 million trips in 3,400 vehicles with digitally collected records and vehicle data and has been independently validated by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute and Department of Transportation.

The 93% highway driving figure, which is used to normalize Tesla numbers, and then compare agains the NHS dataset, is coming from that 28 Tesla cars study from 2018, or did I read that wrong?

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

#319
post #179
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. If you're still surprised by this you've not been paying attention to how Telsa operates.

Quoted post unavailable.

> Tesla has lots of measures to return distracted customer back to the driving as opposed to any car on the road 10 years ago

Perhaps true, but I've seen more people asleep at the wheel in Teslas in the last 2 years (two) than the rest of my life combined (zero).

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

#320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are speaking about the safety features in a new car, then I won't disagree. However, if you are implying that those with a nice new car are somehow better drivers, more attentive drivers, or care more about their car then I would highly disagree. As someone who purchased a new car last year, and does greatly care about it, I'm routinely shocked by people and their clear disregard for their own vehicle. Reckles…

Look at the accident and fatality rates for drivers of luxury cars. They are much, much lower than the same rates for less expensive cars. In fact, if you break it down by vehicle model, there are several models with 0 fatalities at all.

I'd be curious to see where you are able to find good data for that. To be honest, I haven't found data that shows a clear difference between luxury and non-luxury cars

i.e. https://quotewizard.com/news/posts/most-accident-prone-cars lists some luxury brands as having high rates - "Luxury sport car brands Infiniti, Lexus and Acura are among most accident-prone cars on the road."

and if you look through this data from IIHS https://www.iihs.org/ratings/driver-death-rates-by-make-and-... there are plenty of luxury cars with high death rates.

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