Earlier quoted context omitted.
The base rate was discussed early in the article, but not by that name: > It’s not just that self-driving cars in general are dangerous for motorcycles, either: this problem is unique to Tesla. Not a single other automobile manufacturer or ADAS self-driving technology provider reported a single motorcycle fatality in the same time frame.
That is not addressing the base rate. To take a hypothetical extreme: If all cars but one on the road were Teslas, it would not be meaningful to point out that there have been far more fatalities with Teslas. Even more illustrative, if 10 people on motorcycles had died from Teslas, and 1 person had died from that sole non-Tesla, then that non-Tesla would be deemed much, much more dangerous than Tesla.
However, in such a case, “base rate fallacy” would prevent you from blaming Tesla even if it had a 98% fatality rate. How do you square that? What happens if other companies aren’t putting self driving cars out yet because they aren’t happy with the current rate of accidents, but Tesla just doesn’t care?