Tesla's Autopilot Reduced Crashes by 40 Percent, but Not Really

Megalith

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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released a report in 2017 claiming Tesla’s Autopilot technology reduced crashes by as much as 40 percent, but an investigation by research firm Quality Control Systems Corporation suggests otherwise. “The majority of the vehicles in the Tesla data set suffered from missing data or other problems that made it impossible to say whether the activation of Autosteer increased or decreased the crash rate.” Ars Technica alleges the NHTSA is more concerned with protecting Tesla from embarrassment than the public from “potentially unsafe” technologies.

…we discovered that the actual mileage at the time the Autosteer software was installed appears to have been reported for fewer than half the vehicles NHTSA studied. For those vehicles that do have apparently exact measurements of exposure mileage both before and after the software's installation, the change in crash rates associated with Autosteer is the opposite of that claimed by NHTSA - if these data are to be believed. For the remainder of the dataset, NHTSA ignored exposure mileage that could not be classified as either before or after the installation of Autosteer.
 
I will be the first to admit i do not often read statistical analysis. I tried reading this and what I go was they took a subset of data, transformed it, and spit it on a wall as saw what stuck...

The NHTSA data is also questionable as they took a subset of data as well - roughly 1% of total autopilot miles driven

Let's look at who actually writes these reports on QCS (website that's linked in this post). A single man named Randy Whitfield, who is an epidemiologist and statistician.

There's also Tesla's data for each quarter - https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport
 
Integrating all the tech into the car, including autopilot, is blamed for a 40% production shortfall.

QED. 40% fewer vehicles means 40% fewer accident.
 
The NHTSA is supposed to protect us. A few years back they said this tech would need a decade to mature then all of sudden we're good to go. I wonder if there are any gov orgs we can trust anymore. Oh and ars is a rag now, it happened sometime after conde nast bought it.
 
The statistical majority of vehicular collisions are due to human error. Auto pilot is for sure about reducing vehicular collisions. Ignoring this stat is akin to ignoring another big killer... Cancer.
 
The statistical majority of vehicular collisions are due to human error. Auto pilot is for sure about reducing vehicular collisions. Ignoring this stat is akin to ignoring another big killer... Cancer.

Well no shit, cars don't drive themselves. Maybe they need to for some people. I passed a dumbass on the freeway the other day driving with his knees, head down fumbling with his phone. Too bad they don't install rocket launchers on cars from the factory.
 
For all of Tesla's foibles, I laude the day fucking autopilot is standard on all cars... 99.9% of humans have no reason to be in control of a 4 ton death machine.
 
Well I see the problem right here. Dude is sitting on the wrong side. /s

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For all of Tesla's foibles, I laude the day fucking autopilot is standard on all cars... 99.9% of humans have no reason to be in control of a 4 ton death machine.

Then autopilot will be in control of a 4 ton death machine, I'm not certain there will be much of a difference except who or what is controlling the 4 ton death machine, death is always the outcome of a 4 ton machine made for death.
Also, 4 tons is quite a large car. We are talking plus size pickup trucks like Ford F250, Ford F350, Ram 2500, Large Vans, lot's of death in those. 2 tons is the sweet spot for 99.9% of humans.
 
Then autopilot will be in control of a 4 ton death machine, I'm not certain there will be much of a difference except who or what is controlling the 4 ton death machine, death is always the outcome of a 4 ton machine made for death.
Also, 4 tons is quite a large car. We are talking plus size pickup trucks like Ford F250, Ford F350, Ram 2500, Large Vans, lot's of death in those. 2 tons is the sweet spot for 99.9% of humans.

I meant, 5 ton death machine, of death ;)
 
The statistical majority of vehicular collisions are due to human error. Auto pilot is for sure about reducing vehicular collisions. Ignoring this stat is akin to ignoring another big killer... Cancer.

Spin it however you want, they cooked the data to reach the conclusion they wished for, not what it actually represented.

Eventually, when autopilots are perfect, your supposition will be true, it's certainly not true at this time.
 
Let's start with making this technology understand how to deal with stationary objects, as opposed to just assuming they don't exist... How about that?
 
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