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Man Says Tesla Autopilot Saved His Life By Driving Him To the Hospital (cnbc.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Last month a man sent an email to Elon Musk explaining how his Tesla Model S with Autopilot activated may have saved a pedestrian's life. Now, it appears Autopilot may have saved the life of a Tesla Model X driver. CNBC reports: "A Missouri man says his Tesla helped saved his life by driving him to the hospital during a life-threatening emergency. Joshua Neally is a lawyer and Tesla owner from Springfield, Missouri, who often uses the semi-autonomous driving system called Autopilot on his Tesla Model X. The system has come under fire after it was involved in a fatal Florida crash in May, but Neally told online magazine Slate that Autopilot drove him 20 miles down a freeway to a hospital, while Neally suffered a potentially fatal blood vessel blockage in his lung, known as a pulmonary embolism. The hospital was right off the freeway exit, and Neally was able to steer the car the last few meters and check himself into the emergency room, the report said."
Pedantic: No, he was presented with a risk-reward trade off and he made a successful call. We don't know enough to properly judge if it was a correct call, it just worked in this instance.
Still. Let's say you're playing Blackjack and you're dealt a 19, while the dealer has an 8 showing. If you double down and wind up with 21, and the dealer ends up at 20, you may have made a winning decision--but that doesn't mean it was a smart decision, just lucky.
Not that someone suffering a pulmonary embolism is in a great situation to weigh their options very well. I think the ideal might be calling 911 to say "I'm going northbound on I-Whatever at exit 100, if an ambulance can catch up with me I'll have my hazard lights on and be laying on the horn; I'll pull over when I see the ambulance so you can save my ass. Either that or you can drag my unconscious body out when my car stops".
It's also a lot cheaper to drive yourself than call an ambulance, but someone with a Tesla is probably not very worried about that.