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

electrek.co

11–20 of 286 posts

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

#11
post #9

All these self driving and "drivers assistance" features like lane keeping exist to satisfy consumer demand for a way to multitask when driving. Tesla's is particularly cancerous, but all of them should be banned. I don't care how good you think your lane keeping in whatever car you have is, you won't need it if you keep your hands on the wheel, eyes on the road, and don't drive when drowsy. Turn it off and stop tryi…

We made drunk driving super illegal and that still doesn't stop people. I would rather they didn't in the first place, but since they're going to anyway, I'd really rather they have a computer that does it better than they do. FSD will pull over and stop if the driver has passed out.

If we could ensure that only drunk people use driver assistance features, I'd be all for that. The reality is that 90% of the sober public are now driving like chronic drunks because they think their car has assumed the responsibility of watching the road. Ban it ALL.

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

#12
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…

I think it's fair to put the burden of proof here on Tesla. They should convince people that their Robotaxis are safe. If they redact the details about all incidents so that you cannot figure out who's at fault, that's on Tesla alone.

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

#13

All these self driving and "drivers assistance" features like lane keeping exist to satisfy consumer demand for a way to multitask when driving. Tesla's is particularly cancerous, but all of them should be banned. I don't care how good you think your lane keeping in whatever car you have is, you won't need it if you keep your hands on the wheel, eyes on the road, and don't drive when drowsy. Turn it off and stop tryi…

But this is why people bought Tesla. Musk promised that the car is automatic.

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

#14
post #6

As long as there are still safety drivers, the data doesn't really tell you if the AI is any good. Unless you had reliable data about the number of interventions by the driver, which I assume Tesla doesn't provide. Still damning that the data is so bad even then. Good data wouldn't tell us anything, the bad data likely means the AI is bad unless they were spectacularly unlucky. But since Tesla redacts all information…

> As long as there are still safety drivers, the data doesn't really tell you if the AI is any good. Unless you had reliable data about the number of interventions by the driver, which I assume Tesla doesn't provide. Sorry that does not compute. It tells you exactly if the AI is any good, as, despite the fact that there were safety drivers on board, 9 crashes happened. Which implies that more crashes would have happe…

I'm a bit hesitant to draw strong conclusions here because there is so little data. I would personally assume that it means the AI isn't ready at all, but without knowing any details at all about the crashes this is hard to state for sure.

But if the number of crashes had been lower than for human drivers, this would tell us nothing at all.

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

#15

All these self driving and "drivers assistance" features like lane keeping exist to satisfy consumer demand for a way to multitask when driving. Tesla's is particularly cancerous, but all of them should be banned. I don't care how good you think your lane keeping in whatever car you have is, you won't need it if you keep your hands on the wheel, eyes on the road, and don't drive when drowsy. Turn it off and stop tryi…

I think it’s unfair to group all those features into “things for people who want to multitask while driving”.

I’m a decent driver, I never use my phone while driving and actively avoid distractions (sometimes I have to tell everyone in the car to stop talking), and yet features like lane assist and automatic braking have helped me avoid possible collisions simply because I’m human and I’m not perfect. Sometimes a random thought takes my attention away for a moment, or I’m distracted by sudden movement in my peripheral vision, or any number of things. I can drive very safely, but I can not drive perfectly all the time. No one can.

These features make safe drivers even safer. They even make the dangerous drivers (relatively) safer.

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

#16

To be honest I think the true story here is: > the fleet has traveled approximately 500,000 miles Let's say they average 10mph, and say they operate 10 hours a day, that's 5,000 car-days of travel, or to put it another way about 30 cars over 6 months. That's tiny! That's a robotaxi company that is literally smaller than a lot of taxi companies. One crash in this context is going to just completely blow out their stat…

> The real take away is that the Robotaxis don't really exist

More accurately, the real takeaway is that Tesla's robo-taxis don't really exist.

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

#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, and only one mentions a "minor injury".

I'm not saying it's great, and I can imagine Tesla being selective in publishing, but based on this I wouldn't say it seems dire.

For example, roundabouts in cities (in Europe anyway) tend to increase the number of crashes, but they are overall of lower severity, leading to an overall improvement of safety. Judging by TFA alone I can't tell this isn't the case here. I can imagine a robotaxi having a different distribution of frequency and severity of accidents than a human driver.

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

#18
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…

"insurance-reported" or "damage/repair-needed" would be a better criteria for problematic events than "police-reported".

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

#20
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We made drunk driving super illegal and that still doesn't stop people. I would rather they didn't in the first place, but since they're going to anyway, I'd really rather they have a computer that does it better than they do. FSD will pull over and stop if the driver has passed out.

If we could ensure that only drunk people use driver assistance features, I'd be all for that. The reality is that 90% of the sober public are now driving like chronic drunks because they think their car has assumed the responsibility of watching the road. Ban it ALL.

What I'm hearing here is anecdotal and largely based on feelings. The facts are that automatic emergency braking (which should not activate under normal driving circumstances as it is highly uncomfortable) and lane-keeping are basic safety features that have objectively improved safety on the roads. Everything you've said is merely conjecture.
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