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Every incident is obviously tragic, but statistically with the number of Teslas on the road is self-driving roughly on par with the number of expected deadly ac

Every incident is obviously tragic, but statistically with the number of Teslas on the road is self-driving roughly on par with the number of expected deadly accidents with manually driven cars? This is still a nascent technology with a lot of promise and it is naive to expect that there will never be a fatality or issue.

mikepurvis 7y ago
Of course. But there obviously is a real issue with overhanging obstacles, since there have been multiple of these crashes now. Do we really accept a known flaw just because it's still better than the alternative?
- esyir 7y ago
  Honestly? Yes. We take the best option available at current time, and simultaneously work on improvements.
  - jakeogh 7y ago
    So... human drivers.
- cjbprime 7y ago
  .. yes? I mean, it depends on what you mean by "accept", but yes we choose the option that has the least risk of killing people, even if it has "issues", because those issues are already encapsulated in the relative risk estimates. Airline flying is safer than driving even though planes have known issues too. Really struggling to find a logical point in here. Maybe some nuance I'm missing?
  - mikepurvis 7y ago
    Interesting that you would bring up airplanes. Because when the Max 8 is suspected to have a systemic problem which may repeatably cause crashes, the entire worldwide fleet of them gets grounded. No one makes the argument that a Max 8 with a faulty AOA sensor is still safer than driving your car so whatever.
- taneq 7y ago
  > Do we really accept a known flaw just because it's still better than the alternative? Would you really choose an overall-worse alternative because the better option has a single known flaw? If you're that worried about Autopilot, just don't buy or use it. The rest of the car is still best in class. Edit: Be less inflammatory.
- sangnoir 7y ago
  Adding Lidar is an alternative - but Tesla/Musk keep ragging on it as their cars keep slamming into objects
flukus 7y ago
Statistics don't include situations where Tesla went wrong and the driver manually intervened to avoid an accident. One is just human drivers and the other is a team effort between human drivers and AI, if the results are the same then that's quite condemning of the AI.
- solveit 7y ago
  At the moment the relevant choice is between human and human+AI, not human vs only AI. And I believe human+AI outperforms in what rough statistics we do have.
  - ranbumo 7y ago
    We'll have 'full self-driving' in a year, so option 3 is on the table very soon, according to Tesla's marketing. I assume that this is mostly pr in terms of how autonomous the ai will be once again, but many people may buy it and then get blamed for it when accidents happen.
notahacker 7y ago
Statistically, Teslas are much, much more dangerous than other new cars in the same price bracket.[1] To be fair, I suspect the driver demographics skew younger, maler and more urban than most luxury cars and that has at least as much impact as any actual driving characteristics, but the statistics really don't bear out the people killed by glitches or systematic flaws in Tesla's software pale into comparison compared with those saved by it line of defence. I find it truly remarkable how on the one hand HN can rage for days over Boeing introducing software with flaws that killed people and on the other hand when it's Tesla's software flaws killing people in a similarly repeatable manner, the general consensus veers towards deaths from poor software implementation not mattering nearly as much as the potential of the technology... [1]https://medium.com/@MidwesternHedgi/teslas-driver-fatality-rate-is-more-than-triple-that-of-luxury-cars-and-likely-even-higher-433670ddde17 https://medium.com/@MidwesternHedgi/teslas-driver-fatality-r...
- navigatesol 7y ago
  >I find it truly remarkable how on the one hand HN can rage for days over Boeing introducing software with flaws that killed people and on the other hand when it's Tesla's software flaws killing people in a similarly repeatable manner, the general consensus veers towards deaths from poor software implementation not mattering nearly as much as the potential of the technology And you can replace Boeing with banks, car companies, oil companies or any other legacy company. Fraud, worker exploitation, shoddy product...these things are acceptable to some here, as long as the company has come from Silicon Valley.
- loudmax 7y ago
  The Medium article referenced points out the difficulties in getting accurate up to date information out of the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) database. The survey described in the article include data about the Model 3. Also, they're shorting Tesla. They say that their position on Tesla is due to their research (as opposed to the outcome of their research being driven by their attitude), and that's fair. Nonetheless, I'd be as skeptical of their claim that Teslas are significantly more dangerous than average as I am of Musk's claim that full autonomy will be available and safe before 2020.

mikepurvis 7y ago

Of course. But there obviously is a real issue with overhanging obstacles, since there have been multiple of these crashes now. Do we really accept a known flaw just because it's still better than the alternative?

esyir 7y ago
Honestly? Yes. We take the best option available at current time, and simultaneously work on improvements.
- jakeogh 7y ago
  So... human drivers.
cjbprime 7y ago
.. yes? I mean, it depends on what you mean by "accept", but yes we choose the option that has the least risk of killing people, even if it has "issues", because those issues are already encapsulated in the relative risk estimates. Airline flying is safer than driving even though planes have known issues too. Really struggling to find a logical point in here. Maybe some nuance I'm missing?
- mikepurvis 7y ago
  Interesting that you would bring up airplanes. Because when the Max 8 is suspected to have a systemic problem which may repeatably cause crashes, the entire worldwide fleet of them gets grounded. No one makes the argument that a Max 8 with a faulty AOA sensor is still safer than driving your car so whatever.
taneq 7y ago
> Do we really accept a known flaw just because it's still better than the alternative? Would you really choose an overall-worse alternative because the better option has a single known flaw? If you're that worried about Autopilot, just don't buy or use it. The rest of the car is still best in class. Edit: Be less inflammatory.
sangnoir 7y ago
Adding Lidar is an alternative - but Tesla/Musk keep ragging on it as their cars keep slamming into objects

flukus 7y ago

Statistics don't include situations where Tesla went wrong and the driver manually intervened to avoid an accident. One is just human drivers and the other is a team effort between human drivers and AI, if the results are the same then that's quite condemning of the AI.

solveit 7y ago
At the moment the relevant choice is between human and human+AI, not human vs only AI. And I believe human+AI outperforms in what rough statistics we do have.
- ranbumo 7y ago
  We'll have 'full self-driving' in a year, so option 3 is on the table very soon, according to Tesla's marketing. I assume that this is mostly pr in terms of how autonomous the ai will be once again, but many people may buy it and then get blamed for it when accidents happen.

notahacker 7y ago

Statistically, Teslas are much, much more dangerous than other new cars in the same price bracket.[1] To be fair, I suspect the driver demographics skew younger, maler and more urban than most luxury cars and that has at least as much impact as any actual driving characteristics, but the statistics really don't bear out the people killed by glitches or systematic flaws in Tesla's software pale into comparison compared with those saved by it line of defence. I find it truly remarkable how on the one hand HN can rage for days over Boeing introducing software with flaws that killed people and on the other hand when it's Tesla's software flaws killing people in a similarly repeatable manner, the general consensus veers towards deaths from poor software implementation not mattering nearly as much as the potential of the technology... [1]https://medium.com/@MidwesternHedgi/teslas-driver-fatality-rate-is-more-than-triple-that-of-luxury-cars-and-likely-even-higher-433670ddde17 https://medium.com/@MidwesternHedgi/teslas-driver-fatality-r...

navigatesol 7y ago
>I find it truly remarkable how on the one hand HN can rage for days over Boeing introducing software with flaws that killed people and on the other hand when it's Tesla's software flaws killing people in a similarly repeatable manner, the general consensus veers towards deaths from poor software implementation not mattering nearly as much as the potential of the technology And you can replace Boeing with banks, car companies, oil companies or any other legacy company. Fraud, worker exploitation, shoddy product...these things are acceptable to some here, as long as the company has come from Silicon Valley.
loudmax 7y ago
The Medium article referenced points out the difficulties in getting accurate up to date information out of the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) database. The survey described in the article include data about the Model 3. Also, they're shorting Tesla. They say that their position on Tesla is due to their research (as opposed to the outcome of their research being driven by their attitude), and that's fair. Nonetheless, I'd be as skeptical of their claim that Teslas are significantly more dangerous than average as I am of Musk's claim that full autonomy will be available and safe before 2020.