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Elon Musk: Tesla's Autopilot Software Could Save Half a Million Lives Every Year (fortune.com)
An anonymous reader writes: In the wake of a deadly crash involving a Model S that was driving with its Autopilot software turned on, Tesla CEO Elon Musk issued a few interesting remarks on the technology to Fortune. Notably, the publication recently ran a piece attempting to portray Tesla in a bad light by noting that Musk sold more than $2 billion worth of Tesla stock just 11 days after the aforementioned May, 2016 accident. And all the while, shareholders were kept in the dark up until recently. "Indeed, if anyone bothered to do the math (obviously, you did not) they would realize that of the over 1M auto deaths per year worldwide, approximately half a million people would have been saved if the Tesla autopilot was universally available. Please, take 5 mins and do the bloody math before you write an article that misleads the public.
How many years will it take for the automated car to be affordable for the common person? I can't afford a car with even the most minimal of automation right now save for standard cruise control. Did anyone catch the article on how the average family can't afford most cars as it is? Most people don't even see the point of buying a new car, much less an automated new car. Saving lives with automation is a pipe dream until there is a plan to make these something that everyone can buy which isn't going to happen any time soon. Stop making it an excuse to kill people with experimentation.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
It's all marketing hype and mere armchair statistics.
Fortune doesn't know how to do the math, I don't know how to do the math, Musk doesn't know how to do the math, but perhaps a few readers of this comment could do the math.
It would take 275 million miles of autonomous driving to have any confidence at all that an autonomous car is safer than a human driver.
Ars Technica reported on it, and if you want to see the math, the RAND corporation, who are kind of experts at the math, have a detailed report available, which explains the math.
Basically, while the marketing engine can claim that autonomous driving is safer, it's not even possible to have any proof of it within any reasonable level of statistical confidence.
I mean, sure, we try to make driving safer, and assisted driving may help, but please, let's be realistic about where we're at.
Why would he suspend trials - the current version is already safer than a human. The US average death rate when driving on a freeway is 1.08 deaths per 100,000,000 miles. Tesla autopilot's current death rate is 0.769 per 100,000,000 miles.
Autopilot is actually an accurate name for it.
Autopilot was primarily invented for aircraft and even today, autopilot will still happily fly an aircraft into terrain without human interaction if you let it. There have been numerous CFIT fatal crashes of aircraft with over 9000 deaths. Each of these incidences brought more knowledge of how to improve technology to help prevent future occurrences (I expect the same to happen with autonomous vehicle technology). Autopilot was never intended to replace the human pilot or alleviate the responsibility of the human pilot to maintain constant situational awareness. Likewise, autopilot in the Tesla was never intended to alleviate the driver of the responsibility to maintain continuous situational awareness. The driver actually has to agree to this when using it.
I think Hollywood may have warped people's perception of what autopilot actually is and its limitations.