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by Judgmentality 2609 days ago
> They demoed true autonomy, and I believe it's actually getting quite close.

No. No no no.

Elon Musk has done some amazing things, but I am adamant his stance on Autopilot has led to unnecessary deaths and when anyone takes his side that they are actually close to true autonomy, you are undermining how dangerous it is to rely on Autopilot as anything other than advanced cruise control. As more time goes on, we find out more evidence about how Autopilot has been misrepresented, and while the NHTSA study being flawed cannot currently be directly tied to Tesla I cannot imagine that a governing body could be so incompetent without a corrupting influence from Tesla [1]. Elon Musk himself talks about how Autopilot requires driver attention when asked by critics, however when demonstrating the technology himself on national television he has his hands off the wheel and regularly is not watching the road [2]. He goes to great lengths to hide any negative data against Autopilot, as already referenced in [1] where it took 2 years to overcome the legal blockade just to get the data provided in a publicly released study, as well as getting Twitter to suspend someone's account for providing this spreadsheet of problems (including deaths) with Autopilot [3]. I absolutely believe an investigation, at the bare minimum for false advertising and personally I believe negligent homicide, should be brought against him because of it (I am not saying he is guilty, but there is certainly a need to find out).

How many people may have died because Elizabeth Holmes misrepresented (and in that case, quite obviously committed fraud) the capability of their product? I am not saying Musk and Holmes are the same, but people would not stop talking about how amazing she was until they found out she was just lying about everything.

Elon Musk is absolutely wrong about Autopilot. When lives are at risk, it is not okay to suspend disbelief just because of the hype.

[1] https://www.thedrive.com/tech/26455/nhtsas-flawed-autopilot-...

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimmcpherson/2018/12/11/in-his-...

[3] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ESnyJ4b7m96OCjs3GSQ6...

1 comments

Tesla released their accident statistics, and their cars have a significantly lower rate of accidents when Autopilot is engaged.

To me, that seems to indicate Autopilot is a net safety gain, despite not being perfect.

Your response is not unreasonable, but rather than explain why their latest report is almost certainly misleading (it's complicated, and similar to the previous NHTSA study, data is missing so while I assume Tesla is misrepresenting the data as they have always done I cannot prove it today), I'll just say there is indisputable evidence that Teslas get into more fatal accidents than other cars.

https://medium.com/@MidwesternHedgi/teslas-driver-fatality-r...

> while I assume Tesla is misrepresenting the data as they have always done I cannot prove it today

Here's one way. Highway driving is already significantly safer per mile than local roads,

> The grim statistics provided by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also show that drivers on rural roads die at a rate 2.5 times higher per mile traveled than on urban highways. Urban drivers travel twice as many miles but suffer close to half the fatal accidents. [1]

That explains away Musk's "AP is twice as safe" comment. It's only twice as safe because people generally only activate it on the highway, which is already 2.5 times safer!

[1] https://www.npr.org/2009/11/29/120716625/the-deadliest-roads...

>Tesla released their accident statistics, and their cars have a significantly lower rate of accidents when Autopilot is engaged.

That has absolutely nothing to do with whether people have died due to false claims about the ability of Tesla's autopilot. The cars may be safer, but if 1 person died or 100 people died because Musk/Tesla lied about autopilot that is a problem. It doesn't matter how many other accidents their cars have or have not been in.

Probably has more to do with the fact that people preferentially engage Autopilot when road conditions are fair to good.