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Tesla’s autonomous vehicles are crashing at a rate much higher tha human drivers

electrek.co

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Re: Tesla’s autonomous vehicles are crashing at a rate much higher tha human drivers

#151

Post by lastofthemojito »

kreetx wrote: post #137
cbeach wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. Let's examine the Elektrek editor's feed, to understand how "impartial" he is about Tesla: https://x.com/FredLambert

Yup. Btw, do you happen to know, why electrek.co changed their tune in such a way? I was commenting on a similarly negative story by the same site, and said that they are always anti-Tesla. But then somebody pointed out that this wasn't always the case, that they were actually supportive, but then suddenly turned.

Fred Lambert was an early Tesla evangelist - he constantly wrote stories praising Tesla and Elon for years. He had some interactions with Elon on Twitter, got invited to Tesla events, referred enough people to earn free Tesla cars, etc.

People roasted him for being a Tesla/Elon fanboy: https://www.thedrive.com/tech/21838/the-truth-behind-electre...

Fred gradually started asking tougher questions when Tesla's schedule slipped on projects and Elon ended up feuding with Fred (and I think blocking him) on Twitter: https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/bgmwk8/twitter...

Since then Fred has had a more realistic (IMHO) outlook on Tesla, although some might call it a "beef" since he's no longer an Elon sycophant.

Re: Tesla’s autonomous vehicles are crashing at a rate much higher tha human drivers

#152

Post by tsimionescu »

z7 wrote: post #7

The comparison isn't really like-for-like. NHTSA SGO AV reports can include very minor, low-speed contact events that would often never show up as police-reported crashes for human drivers, meaning the Tesla crash count may be drawing from a broader category than the human baseline it's being compared to. There's also a denominator problem. The mileage figure appears to be cumulative miles "as of November," while the…

All of your arguments are expounded upon in the article itself, and their conclusions still hold, based on the publicly available data.

The 3x figure in the title is based on a comparison of the Tesla reports with estimated average human driver miles without an incident, not based on police report data. The comparison with police-report data would lead to a 9x figure instead, which the article presents but quickly dismisses.

The denominator problem is made up. Tesla Robotaxi has only been launched in one location, Austin, and only since July (well, 28th June, so maybe there is a few days discrepancy?). So the crash data and the miles data can only refer to this same period. Furthermore, if the miles driven are actually based on some additional length of time, then the picture gets even worse for Tesla, as the denominator for those 9 incidents gets smaller.

The analysis indeed doesn't distinguish between the types of accidents, but this is irrelevant. The human driver estimates for miles driven without incident also don't distinguish between the types of incidents, so the comparison is still very fair (unless you believe people intentionally tried to get the Tesla cars to crash, which makes little sense).

The comparison to Waymo is also done based on incidents reported by both companies under the same reporting requirements, to the same federal agency. The crash definitions and reporting practices are already harmonized, at least to a good extent, through this.

Overall there is no way to look at this data and draw a conclusion that is significantly different from the article: Tesla is bad at autonomous driving, and has a long way to go until it can be considered safe on public roads. We should also remember that robotaxis are not even autonomous, in fact! Each car has a human safety monitor that is ready to step in and take control of the vehicle at any time to avoid incidents - so the real incident rate, if the safety monitor weren't there, would certainly be even worse than this.

I'd also mention that 5 months of data is not that small a sample size, despite you trying to make it sound so (only 9 crashes).

Re: Tesla’s autonomous vehicles are crashing at a rate much higher tha human drivers

#154

Post by sejje »

serf wrote: post #33
rich_sasha wrote: post #17

As much as I'd love to pile in on Tesla, it's unclear to me the severity of the incidents (I know they are listed) and if human drivers would report such things. "Rear collision while backing" could mean they tapped a bollard. Doesn't sound like a crash. A human driver might never even report this. What does "Incident at 18 mph" even mean? By my own subjective count, only three descriptions sound unambiguously bad, a…

>they tapped a bollard If a human had eyes on every angle of their car and they still did that it would represent a lapse in focus or control -- humans don't have the same advantages here. With that said : i would be more concerned about what it represents when my sensor covered auto-car makes an error like that, it would make me presume there was an error in detection -- a big problem.

I wonder if slow speeds affect the detection?

A bollard at three feet might look like a grain silo at 400 yards. I could see angles getting to where the camera sees "beige rectangle (wall), red cylinder (bollard)" and it's basically an abstract modern art piece.

I see things on security cameras a lot that in low resolution are nearly impossible for me to decipher.

Re: Tesla’s autonomous vehicles are crashing at a rate much higher tha human drivers

#155

Post by _ea1k »

z7 wrote: post #7

The comparison isn't really like-for-like. NHTSA SGO AV reports can include very minor, low-speed contact events that would often never show up as police-reported crashes for human drivers, meaning the Tesla crash count may be drawing from a broader category than the human baseline it's being compared to. There's also a denominator problem. The mileage figure appears to be cumulative miles "as of November," while the…

Good analysis. Just over a month ago, Electrek was posted here claiming that Teslas with humans were crashing 10x more than with humans alone.

That was based on a sample size of 9 crashes. In the month following that, they've added one more crash while also increasing the miles driven per month.

The headline could just as easily be about the dramatic decline in their crash rate! Or perhaps the data is just too small to analyze like this, and Electrek authors being their usual overly dramatic selves.

Re: Tesla’s autonomous vehicles are crashing at a rate much higher tha human drivers

#156

Post by mcpar-land »

SJMG wrote: post #128
ryandvm wrote: post #81

Tesla has completely fumbled a spectacular lead in EVs and managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. And instead of turning it around, we're supposed to believe they are going to completely pivot and then take over a market with far more developed competitors (e.g. Boston Dynamics). That Elon is riding this wave amidst the transparency of the whole thing is the funniest part. It's like watching people lose m…

I'm not sure how defensible the lead was. The only reason BYD isn't the only game in town is tariffs. The pivot to Optimus is ridiculous though. They can't get a car to drive truly autonomously after more than a decade and they want to expand the degrees of freedom?

I'm glad Tesla is pivoting to a product that can drop your bag of groceries in the worst case, instead of one that can slam you into a concrete divider at 75mph.

Re: Tesla’s autonomous vehicles are crashing at a rate much higher tha human drivers

#157

Post by tsimionescu »

thegreatpeter wrote: post #56
adriand wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would call strong opposition to Musk a democratic responsibility, not a derangement. We are talking about a guy with a fondness for the far right and throwing Nazi salutes, and whose destruction of USAID had, by November 2025, resulted in “hundreds of thousands of deaths”. [1] Those, of course, are just a couple of examples. If strong opposition to that kind of evil makes me deranged, count me in. 1: https://hsph.h…

Did you even read the article you sent? It’s all based on estimates. It is consensus seeking derangement at best

An article about a counterfactual (how many people would have survived had aid continued as before) can only be based on estimates, not real world data, yes, by its very nature. You can say the estimates are wrong, or that the source isn't trustworthy, maybe. But providing estimates for counterfactuals is not in any way illegitimate.

Re: Tesla’s autonomous vehicles are crashing at a rate much higher tha human drivers

#158

Post by smoovb »

electrek.co recent Tesla headline summary with sentiment:

  (negative) Tesla to stop selling Full Self-Driving package, moves to subscription-only

  (negative) Elon Musk says Tesla 'almost done' with AI5 design, 6 months after saying it was 'finished'

  (negative) Tesla's full 2025 data from Europe is in, and it is a total bloodbath

  (neutral)  Tesla updates 2026 Model Y with new features, launches tiny third row in the US

  (positive) Tesla launches US-made solar panel, a rare sign of life for its solar business

  (negative) Elon Musk moves goalpost again: admits Tesla needs 10 billion miles for 'safe unsupervised' FSD

  (negative) Are Tesla Gigafactory Berlin's days numbered?

  (negative) Elon Musk shows total ignorance of Tesla's current falling sales trajectory

  (negative) Tesla rolls out 0% financing to boost declining sales

  (negative) Tesla (TSLA) releases Q4 delivery results: confirms decline in sales is accelerating

  (negative) Tesla Cybercabs spotted testing, unsurprisingly with steering wheels

  (negative) Elon Musk's top 5 Tesla predictions for 2025 that didn't happen

  (negative) Tesla (TSLA) does something unusual ahead of Q4 delivery results

  (negative) Elon Musk drops 'sustainable' from Tesla's mission

  (negative) Tesla's Robotaxi project in Austin is much smaller than Musk claims

  (neutral)  Tesla Robotaxi spotted without a safety driver in Austin; Musk confirms testing begins

  (negative) Tesla US sales drop to under 40,000 units following tax credit expiration

  (neutral)  Tesla CEO Elon Musk claims driverless Robotaxis coming to Austin in 3 weeks

  (positive) Tesla announces 2025 holiday update with a few cool features

  (negative) Tesla (TSLA) sales keep crashing in Europe with a single market temporarily saving it

Re: Tesla’s autonomous vehicles are crashing at a rate much higher tha human drivers

#159

Post by parineum »

tsimionescu wrote: post #152
z7 wrote: post #7

The comparison isn't really like-for-like. NHTSA SGO AV reports can include very minor, low-speed contact events that would often never show up as police-reported crashes for human drivers, meaning the Tesla crash count may be drawing from a broader category than the human baseline it's being compared to. There's also a denominator problem. The mileage figure appears to be cumulative miles "as of November," while the…

All of your arguments are expounded upon in the article itself, and their conclusions still hold, based on the publicly available data. The 3x figure in the title is based on a comparison of the Tesla reports with estimated average human driver miles without an incident, not based on police report data. The comparison with police-report data would lead to a 9x figure instead, which the article presents but quickly di…

> The 3x figure in the title is based on a comparison of the Tesla reports with estimated average human driver miles without an incident, not based on police report data. The comparison with police-report data would lead to a 9x figure instead, which the article presents but quickly dismisses.

I think OP's point still stands here. Who are people reporting minor incidents to that would be publicly available that isn't the police? This data had to come from somewhere and police reports is the only thing that makes sense to me.

If I bump my car into a post, I'm not telling any government office about it.

Re: Tesla’s autonomous vehicles are crashing at a rate much higher tha human drivers

#160

Post by epistasis »

_ea1k wrote: post #155
z7 wrote: post #7

The comparison isn't really like-for-like. NHTSA SGO AV reports can include very minor, low-speed contact events that would often never show up as police-reported crashes for human drivers, meaning the Tesla crash count may be drawing from a broader category than the human baseline it's being compared to. There's also a denominator problem. The mileage figure appears to be cumulative miles "as of November," while the…

Good analysis. Just over a month ago, Electrek was posted here claiming that Teslas with humans were crashing 10x more than with humans alone. That was based on a sample size of 9 crashes. In the month following that, they've added one more crash while also increasing the miles driven per month. The headline could just as easily be about the dramatic decline in their crash rate! Or perhaps the data is just too small…

That is an overly optimistic way to phrase an apparent decrease in crashes, when Tesla is not being upfront about data that at best looks like it's worse than human crash rates.

Unless one was a Tesla insider, or had a huge interest in Tesla over other people on the road, such spin would not be a normal thing to propose saying.

Media outlets, even ones devoted to EVs, should not adopt the very biased framing you propose.

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