Tesla in autopilot mode crashes into parked Laguna Beach police cruiser

Re:Tesla in autopilot mode crashes into parked Laguna Beach ... by dbasedweeb on Tuesday May 29, 2018 @11:56PM (#17184937)

Tesla is shipping systems in the absolute infancy of this technology that are already statistically indistinguishable from human drivers as far as safety goes.

That’s a hell of a claim, I’d love to see some serious citations on it.

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Re:Tesla in autopilot mode crashes into parked Laguna Beach ... by slg on Wednesday May 30, 2018 @02:09AM (#17185465)

There is no conclusive study either way. The only real data we have is the two confirmed deaths in Autopilot accidents in over a billion miles driven with Autopilot. That is not enough data to draw a definitive conclusion, but it at the very least shows that there is not a huge problem that makes it dramatically more dangerous.

For comparison the overall casualty rate for the average car in the US is somewhere near 12 deaths per 1 billion miles driven.

I wouldn't say that Tesla's have proven safer, but I think saying they are "statistically indistinguishable" from human drivers is relatively fair at this point.

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Re:Tesla in autopilot mode crashes into parked Laguna Beach ... by pdonis on Wednesday May 30, 2018 @02:25AM (#17185515)

> over a billion miles driven with Autopilot

No, it's over a billion miles driven by Tesla cars that have the sensor hardware that Autopilot uses. The number of miles driven with Autopilot actually engaged is about 300 million, at least according to the data Tesla has released.

https://electrek.co/2016/11/13/tesla-autopilot-billion-miles...

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Re:Tesla in autopilot mode crashes into parked Laguna Beach ... by slg on Wednesday May 30, 2018 @02:32AM (#17185543)

Look at the date on that article. It is from 2016. Tesla has sold a lot of cars and those cars have driven a lot of miles in the last year and a half. Tesla is certainly over a billion miles in Autopilot driving by now.

EDIT: Here is a Tweet from April 2016 saying 47m miles. [1] Your linked article is from November 2016 and shows 300m miles. That is 250m miles in 7 months. Projecting that forward with zero growth, Tesla would have accumulated roughly 950m miles in Autopilot usage. That isn't including the over 100,000 cars Tesla has sold since November of 2016 or the miles those cars have accumulated in that time. I stand by my statement that Teslas have recorded over a billion miles while using Autopilot.

[1] - https://twitter.com/Tesla/status/718845153318834176

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Re:Tesla in autopilot mode crashes into parked Laguna Beach ... by wang_li on Wednesday May 30, 2018 @02:37AM (#17185563)

There are other factors that influence fatalities in automobile accidents. You can't legitimately use deaths per miles driven as a proxy for how good a driver Tesla's autopilot feature is.

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Re:Tesla in autopilot mode crashes into parked Laguna Beach ... by slg on Wednesday May 30, 2018 @03:02AM (#17185684)

Sure, which is why I said we had no conclusive data. However, at the very least no red flags have popped up in the statistics. Think of it like flipping a coin 3 times and we got heads all three times. That is not nearly enough to judge whether the coin is fair, but we are probably getting close to concluding that the coin isn't weighted heavily in favor of tails. The sample size is still small but nothing in the statistics is screaming out that Autopilot is a big danger when compared with driving manually.

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Re:Tesla in autopilot mode crashes into parked Laguna Beach ... by wang_li on Wednesday May 30, 2018 @12:35PM (#17189140)

But we don't need statistics to know that Autopilot isn't as good a driver as a human. By Tesla's own statements Autopilot can't autonomously operate a car, it requires a person to be at the wheel and engaged with driving. By definition this means that autopilot is a worse driver than a human driver as it cannot drive at all.

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Re:Tesla in autopilot mode crashes into parked Laguna Beach ... by abalone on Wednesday May 30, 2018 @12:27AM (#17185069)

You’re conflating two systems. Tesla rolled out Collision Avoidance Assist and Autopilot around the same time. Collision avoidance is undoubtably a great feature that’s contributed to a decline in accident rates. That’s primarily what helps you in cases where you “fail to remain alert.”

But here I am asking about the other feature, autopilot, i.e. autosteering. The TOS requires you to remain fully alert when using the feature. So even if it were pitched as a safety benefit that keeps you from lane drifting when you’re not paying attention — you’d be violating the TOS.

So what is the benefit that doesn’t violate TOS? Clearly the implication is — and most Tesla users agree — it lowers the cognitive load while driving. But this would seem to undermine Tesla’s defense that drivers must remain vigilant and attentive at all times when using it.

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Re:Tesla in autopilot mode crashes into parked Laguna Beach ... by dbasedweeb on Wednesday May 30, 2018 @12:06AM (#17184987)

Filtering out the noise, you’re not willing or able to cite, and I don’t blame you, since you’d probably try to start with the discredited Tesla numbers. Then I’d post the reasons why they’re crap, and you’d grope for some more apples and oranges numbers. I like how you’ve just skipped past all of that and gone straight to the personal attacks, it saves a lot of time. Since you’ve made your claim without a hint of support, here’s my equally unsupported counter-claim: Tesla autopilot is much less safe than a human who wouldn’t accelerate into a cop car, fire truck, or gaurd rail unless dead, or drunk.

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