Re:The Cancelled Comma One Would Have Embarrassed the Car In...
by Fricken on Tuesday November 01, 2016 @12:45AM
(#12843481)
It's true that there's too little data to draw conclusions. A Toyota spokesperson claimed we'd need about 8 billion km of autonomous driving to draw statidtically relevant data. and of course, by the time a single company, or even all companies combined have gathered that many miles the technology will have progressed and the early data will be irrelevant.
Safety arguments are only meaningful in these sorts of abstract discusssions, though. Keep in mind that when we decided to place the automobile at the centre of American life in the early postwar era, fatalities per vehicle mile travelled were 10x what they are today. We didn't do it because it was safe, we did it because cars are cool, and some big companies stood to make a lot of money.
Statistically speaking, Tesla's autopilot is more dangerous than regular driving. They spun bad statistics to claim otherwise. They ignored the difference between highway driving (which is safer) and all driving, and ignored demographics (most Tesla drivers are older and affluent).
It is too early to really draw many conclusions about autopilot, because there is actually very little data. Comparing the number of miles driven by Tesla to the number of miles driven by all other cars in one year is a difference of several orders of magnitude. But they are under investigation, and as more time passes the more damning it seems for Tesla.