GM, who owns Cruise, paid out claims for 124 deaths due to their ignition recall that they were aware of, did not disclose to regulators at the time, and had to forfeit $900 million to the United States government in 2014 [1]. Tesla's Autopilot has been attributed to 12 deaths [2].

Let they who is without engineering sin cast the first stone. Intent and risk appetite is a spectrum.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_ignition_switch...

[2] https://tesladeaths.com/

When quoting those 12 deaths, don't forget that 1) Autopilot is a driver assist feature (like cruise control, driver is always in control and at fault) 2) The majority of those incidents had a driver under the influence

Classic whataboutism. GM's irresponsible behavior doesn't excuse Tesla's irresponsible behavior.

I don’t believe Autopilot, a robust driver assist system with substantial safeguards, is irresponsible (as someone who has used it for ~60k miles of travel). I do believe allowing people to die because you don’t want to replace a defective ignition switch is. That’s not whataboutism, it’s pointing out hypocrisy. NHTSA believes Autopilot is safe enough to continue to allow its use on public roads. What makes a random HN participant a superior authority on the topic than them? Is it materially unsafe because someone here asserts so without backing up their claim? These are not rhetorical questions. 3700 people die per day from auto accidents that are ~95% human error caused and 12 deaths total while Autopilot was active is irresponsible?

Death is unavoidable, only preventable short term on a scale. To expect zero deaths is unreasonable.

The big problem with Autopilot is the sleazy way it’s been marketed and sold to customers and regulators versus what the system really is. Charging folks $10k for an option with the CEO insisting that “full self driving” is shipping next year is borderline fraud.

I won’t buy a GM product and I won’t buy a Tesla product either, happy?

It's worth being precise about the terminology: Autopilot comes with the car (autosteer), FSD is what costs $10k extra.

Conflating the two makes it harder to have a conversation about what either actually is or does.

But, they are both scams.

Autopilot (name aside) does the same exact thing that most car manufacturers offer in luxury cars. So I'm not sure what part you think is a scam.

You just have answered your own question :)

It's not whataboutism.

- Autopilot has been "on" during 12 fatal crashes. It's a level 2 driver assist so it isn't "responsible" for those deaths, the driver is. Autopilot data shows it improves safety. Could you explain the unethical part?

- The ignition recall, GM knew it was a problem, and it was. The unethical part is super clear.

These aren't equivalent at all. Actually this highlights the bad faith attacks on Tesla. There are reasonable controversial decisions to be discussed with Tesla's approach. But safety isn't one of them, they have the safest cars on the roads and the lowest crash/fatality rate.

I think they’re referring to the “rolling stop” code Tesla added - which is technically an illegal maneuver but not one resulting in death as far as I know.

Autodrive is going to force the actual law and the theoretical law to come into sync, otherwise automatic driving cars will cause other issues by sticking to the letter of the law when normal drivers do not.

It is definitely not "unethical" to have an AV drive just like a human does... Unlawful, perhaps.

When programming an AV to drive like a human does, are the programmers including all the contextual human judgement that goes along with the human decisions, or just throwing away the letter of the law because it's too much trouble? I have a hard time explaining to a human teenager the etiquette that goes along with something like merging onto a highway, and it varies by region.