That humans get distracted and often make mistakes is no surprise, it should also be obvious that the amount of risky behavior is correlated to the amount of _perceived_ risk in any given situation, which is probably why so many are "a simple crash."
It is, however, somewhat scary that a machine that has nothing else to do other than to drive the car as safely as possible still makes these "dumb" mistakes.
Cruise control makes dumb mistakes.
I know people who think automatic transmissions makes people worse drivers.
Well, it's certainly a bit trickier to to respond to texts or browse instagram when you need two hands to operate the vehicle.
Well, thats half of the problematic drivers, and i suspect texters as well. /s
Humans get inattentive and distracted, and humans follow too close for current conditions and speed. There's no excuse for either of those factors to apply to an autopilot system. If they do, it's badly designed.
> Except humans crash into stationary vehicles in lane all the damn time.
And Tesla's argument is that Autopilot is far safer than humans.
In the 2nd quarter, we registered one accident for every 3.27 million miles driven in which drivers had Autopilot engaged. For those driving without Autopilot but with our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 2.19 million miles driven. For those driving without Autopilot and without our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 1.41 million miles driven. By comparison, NHTSA’s most recent data shows that in the United States there is an automobile crash every 498,000 miles.*
*Note: Since we released our last quarterly safety report, NHTSA has released new data, which we’ve referenced in this quarter’s report.
Whatever is the reason (may it be better road conditions) when you use Autopilot you are less likely to crash.
To wit, if Autopilot is unavailable or disengaged because of poor weather/road conditions, a human still has to drive those miles. Autopilot gets the _best_ conditions to show its abilities. Humans get all conditions to show their abilities.
The question is "how did human drivers do driving the same miles, at the same times, as Autopilot", which is impossible to calculate.
The question is: Are you willing to accept only 33% less likely hood of an accident with autopilot engaged as compared to when you drive on your own in not Autopilot safe conditions?
Do you use Uber knowing that their average driver will be ... well ... average, or just somewhat better than average? Knowing that the average driver baseline is 500 000 miles per accident?
https://www.technologyreview.com/f/612346/uber-and-lyft-are-...
None of which changes the difficulty in detecting a stationary vehicle, that's in your path, as quickly as you would like.
You see the brake lights up, and as long as you're alert and keep some distance you're going to be alright. If you're not alert and/or driving too close you hit it.
A vehicle coming from a side road has a lot of movement within your field of vision. When driving on a highway we're well used to the fact and expectation that stuff isn't stopped. When the vehicle ahead emergency brakes or stops you have the growth of size of the target to gauge by. That's not much movement, until the last moment when it's far too late to evade. Some stationary debris is much easier - it's not meant to be there at all - you transition to evasion right from the get go.
For a human in a car, the dangerous highway case is the stationary vehicle in the fast lane, maybe one or two vehicles ahead. When flying it's the other aircraft that's on a collision course. Neither will move within your field of vision. Neither is easy to detect as problem, until it's very late.
FWIW 4 year old humans often run into things. :)