[Roodgorf]

Do you have the numbers on how many miles Tesla's level 2 cars have actually been driven while using the feature? I see this sort of argument a lot in regards to Google's self-driving tests, and while it seems convincing to me, it doesn't seem realistic to me that's there a big enough pool of data to make that claim definitively.

[slg]

From Wikipedia [1]

>According to Tesla there is a fatality every 94 million miles (150 million km) among all type of vehicles in the U.S.

>By November 2016, Autopilot had operated actively on hardware version 1 vehicles for 300 million miles (500 million km) and 1.3 billion miles (2 billion km) in shadow mode.

Those numbers are 9 months old and only apply to Autopilot v1 and not the Autopilot v2+ introduced late last year. I wouldn't be surprised if the current number is in the 500+ million mile range with only a single fatality. The sample size is obviously small, but there seems to be a clear improvement over manual control.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Autopilot

EDIT: With chc's and my post we have 3 numbers and dates for reported Autopilot miles. Projecting that forward at a linear rate (which is conservative given Tesla's growth) would put us at roughly 750 million miles today.

[kdoherty]

It's great seeing that more and more data is being collected about this all the time. I'm a huge proponent of this tech.

What I wonder when I see these statistics, though, is whether all miles are really equal? For example, are Tesla drivers more comfortable using Autopilot in "easy" driving situations? Is there really a one-to-one correspondence in the distribution of the kinds of miles driven with Autopilot on vs. normal cars?

Furthermore, the metric commonly cited is "fatalities ever N miles." Are there fewer fatalities because Autopilot is great, or because Teslas are safer in general? Has there been a comparison between fatalities with/without Autopilot strictly on Teslas? Even then, it seems to me we are subject to this potentially biased notion of "miles" I mentioned previously. The Wikipedia article you mentioned cites a 50% reduction in accidents with Autopilot, but the citation is to an Elon Musk interview. I haven't yet seen anything official to back this up, but if anyone has any information on this, I'd love to see it!

[ricardobeat]

Isn't that easily countered by comparing Tesla Model S' overall rate of accidents vs another similar vehicle, with similar safety rating, including all self-driven and human-driven miles? There should be a proportional reduction.

[kdoherty]

Yeah, I think so! That's exactly why I mentioned the accident rate reduction cited in the Wikipedia article shared above.

I'd love to see official work that explores that angle (rather than a claim from an interview, which is what the Wikipedia article refers to), I just haven't seen any document/study about it yet.

[frgtpsswrdlame]

Yes but Autopilot can only be activated in the safest of conditions, the 94 million miles number takes in all types of driving factors. The comparison doesn't work because Autopilot usage self-selects for the miles where a human driver would also be much less likely to crash.

[chc]

It was 140 million a year ago[1], and 222 million last October[2], so I guess a conservative estimate would be 600 million miles on autopilot (assuming that's about two months of change and usage remained steady).

[1]: https://www.wired.com/2016/08/how-tesla-autopilot-works/

[2]: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/784487348562198529