>Although the ages of drivers in Tesla’s crash rate data are unknown, their ages could be estimated from a 2018 demographic survey of 424 Tesla owners (Hardman et al., 2019).
Seriously? you trying to claim your method is more fair using 424 people in 2019, when Tesla has demographics of millions cars across the globe?
My conclusion:
Author is saying it's not fair to compare with some old car. Tesla was one of the first brands to mass adopt this safety features in every Telsa. This is the only brand that include camera, collision warnings in every, even cheapest modification. And they were the first to introduce many of these features. The rest are catching up. Why Tesla can't be proud of that? They give safety to every customer, no matter if it's the cheapest option or $150k+ car. Only volvo invest on par with tesla in testing facilities, in house extended crash tests ets.
Autopilot and similar system is safer compares to any car on the highway with old cruise control because they have features that force you to be focused. They can stop you on a traffic light, they can react faster on animal running across the road etc. And Yes all measures like collision warnings, notifications, makes your driving safe. Yes, you can use it without autopilot, but I as a consumer don't care. If I'm buying a car, fact that this car is much safer compares to 10 years old ford makes me more confident in purchase.
You can debate a lot on how easy is to avoid some of this safety measures. But if you an idiot you can fall asleep in cruise controlled car as well. Tesla will at least try to wake you up. And will stop on a traffic light.
FSD is a good example of an extension of this rational vs emotional thinking. FSD Beta has a very strict focus control. You look not on a road few times you're blocked. You don't hold a wheel few times you blocked. Etc.
So even FSD beta in it's current state is a complete garbage that quite often literally drives you into accident the way they enforce your attention fixes everything.
FSD beta with this limitations has 60k cars on a road. And 0 major incidents that lead to a major injury or death. Not counting few scratched rims and one time driver got off the road because he over reacted on some maneuver.
It's bizarre how much money legacy auto is poring into efforts to make tesla look bad. Before it was infamous data of burning EV's. But if you look at data a single car brand BMW has so 100 times more risk of fire compares to tesla. You don't see paid articles on Times square how dangerous is BMW.
Right now all major brands invest in EV and suddenly all this fire incidents disappear. And they switched to Autopilot and FSD.
Is there a room for improvement yes. Is the car that can stop on a traffic light, after some fixes for a cop's car, notify about potential collision, avoid automatically some collisions safer. Definitely yes. The rest is just hype, speculations and quite often corruption and paid articles.