kirkbauer

I agree that the fatality rate does not allow for any comparisons. Autopilot could cause significantly more or fewer fatalities than humans.

On the other hand, one also needs to consider accident rate. From what I understand, based on US averages, we should have had 50+ accidents out of 100+ million miles driven on AP, but we had about three.

In order to enable autopilot you must agree to the terms right on the display screen. Again it is possible for people to not read them (although they are pretty brief).

I can see how the name could be misleading to some people. However, I think the term is quite accurate. In an aircraft, Autopilot takes care of the basics of flying the plane while the pilot is fully responsible for what is happening, watching out for traffic, and ready to take over if necessary. This is exactly what it means for Tesla as well.

In any case, as somebody who has used it off and on for 6 months in all kinds of situations it is clear that it has limitations but it is also easy to know when to be worried. Its best use is in stop-and-go freeway traffic. Its worse use is on smaller curvy surface streets. It is also really nice for distance driving on freeways.

My understanding is that most of Google's cars are limited to around 30mph. Seems unlikely to kill an occupant at least.

That is exactly what it does; apparently the accident happened before it could complete its "slow down and stop with the hazard lights on" process.

Isn't that one of the reasons there is still a driver? Cruise control will drive you right off of the road until you crash with no awareness of the shoulder or other traffic or anything. But it is all over the place.

I wonder if the dead driver hit the accelerator?

How can autopilot know if it is safe to steer into the shoulder? It won't even change lanes without driver input.

I can't imagine that every road in the world can be determined to be "safe" or "not safe" via GPS coordinates alone.

That's stupid. Autopilot doesn't have the ability to determine if it is safe to pull over. It has a fallback mode; eventually it will come to a complete stop in the middle of the road and turn the hazards on. But since this is also dangerous it makes sense to give the driver time to stop it from happening.

Autopilot is not autonomous driving. It is fancy cruise control. Just like cruise control can't handle every situation neither can autopilot. Just like autopilot in an aircraft it requires a human paying attention and ready to take over.

The system works as intended and advertised. Obviously it isn't perfect but with the fatality rate roughly equal to human drivers and the accident rate seemingly much lower it seems at least as good as a human.