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17 fatalities, 736 crashes: The shocking toll of Tesla’s Autopilot (web.archive.org)

submitted 1 year ago by 0x815@feddit.de to c/news@beehaw.org

29 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said that cars operating in Tesla’s Autopilot mode are safer than those piloted solely by human drivers, citing crash rates when the modes of driving are compared. He has pushed the carmaker to develop and deploy features programmed to maneuver the roads, arguing that the technology will usher in a safer, virtually accident-free future. While it’s impossible to say how many crashes may have been averted, the data shows clear flaws in the technology being tested in real time on America’s highways.

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[–] cosmic_skillet@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, the article reads like a hit piece. Why didn't they even try to do an apples to apples comparison? Same thing when they compared Tesla to Subaru, just raw total numbers. Not normalized to cars sold or miles driven or anything. The raw data is pretty meaningless.

[–] 0x815@feddit.de 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

@comic_skillset

Why didn't they even try to do an apples to apples comparison?

Maybe because the data released by Tesla is incomplete and biased as it appears to serve its sales rather than safety?

It's the company and Elon Musk himself that are frequently making bold statements while it seems that not even the authorities have the data to verify the claims. As the article says:

In a March presentation, Tesla claimed Full Self-Driving crashes at a rate at least five times lower than vehicles in normal driving, in a comparison of miles driven per collision. That claim, and Musk’s characterization of Autopilot as “unequivocally safer,” is impossible to test without access to the detailed data that Tesla possesses.

[–] cosmic_skillet@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

I'm quite sure you're right and the data Tesla releases is biased. Which makes it all the more important to make unbiased analyses. Unfortunately raw accident numbers that aren't normalized to anything are useless.