> Autopilot will refuse to engage in a wide variety of situations. It will only engage in the easiest, safest scenarios.

Do you have any proof of this? I can enable it on a dirt road if there are visible enough edges of the road.

But yes, obviously, they're being a bit misleading by aggregating all miles together. In aggregate, it is overall safer on the highway, and I don't think you can argue in good faith that the safety report is wrong about that.

Will you accept Tesla's word for it?

https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_us/GUID-101D1BF...

> In addition, these features may not work as intended when: The road has sharp curves or significant changes in elevation.; Road signs and signals are unclear, ambiguous, or poorly maintained.; Visibility is poor (due to heavy rain, snow, hail, etc. or poorly lit roadways at night); You are driving in a tunnel or next to a highway divider that interferes with the view of the camera(s); Bright light (such as from oncoming headlights or direct sunlight) interferes with the view of the camera(s).

https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_us/GUID-E5FF5E8...

> Full Self-Driving (Beta) and its associated functions may not operate as intended and there are numerous situations in which driver intervention may be needed. Examples include (but are not limited to): Interactions with pedestrians, bicyclists, and other road users.; Unprotected turns with high-speed cross traffic.; Multi-lane turns.; Simultaneous lane changes.; Narrow roads with oncoming cars or double-parked vehicles.; Rare objects such as trailers, ramps, cargo, open doors, etc. protruding from vehicles.; Merges onto high-traffic, high-speed roads.; Debris in the road.; Construction zones.; High curvature roads, particularly at fast driving speeds.

This is basically my point at the bottom of my original post. It isn't supposed to be used in those scenarios. That doesn't change the reality that my car's Autopilot can and does work on dirt roads, when the sun is directly in the middle of its FOV, on the curvy suburban roads of Georgia, in heavy rain, etc.

Sure, but that's not the argument being made here. The data that Tesla uses is obviously massaged to make their product have the illusion of superior safety. To what extent is unclear, but it is clear that this data has an agenda. It doesn't compare like with like and can't be piecemeal interpreted to make an unbiased observation. To bring it up at all is just marketing.

Normalizing the data to make a direct comparison is a hard problem. Do you know of any research done to try to do that?

It's a lot easier to tease out the impact of individual safety features.

For example, there's quite a bit of evidence that lane departure warnings/assistance helps: https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/lane-departure-wa...

Less indication backup cameras do anything: https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-back-up-cameras-20...

Tesla's non-autopilot numbers likely reflect the fact that they're exclusively newer vehicles with safety features that aren't yet widely standard. You'd probably see similarly nice numbers for other $50k+ luxury vehicles with similar bells-and-whistles.

> Tesla's non-autopilot numbers likely reflect the fact that they're exclusively newer vehicles with safety features that aren't yet widely standard. You'd probably see similarly nice numbers for other $50k+ luxury vehicles with similar bells-and-whistles.

This is probably not possible since those automakers don't do constant data collection in the same way Tesla does. Tesla's telemetry logs actual data for the distance their cars are driving and whether AP is enabled. All we have for other brands is NHTSA's approximations.