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Are Tesla Crashes Balanced Out By The Lives That They Save? (eetimes.com)
Friday EE Times shared the story of a Tesla crash that occurred during a test drive. "The salesperson suggested that my friend not brake, letting the system do the work. It didn't..." One Oregon news site even argues autopiloted Tesla's may actually have a higher crash rate.
But there's also been stories about Teslas that have saved lives -- like the grateful driver whose Model S slammed on the brakes to prevent a collision with a pedestrian, and another man whose Tesla drove him 20 miles to a hospital after he'd suddenly experienced a pulmonary embolism. (Slate wrote a story about the incident titled "Code is My Co-Pilot".) Now an anonymous Slashdot reader asks: How many successes has the autopilot had in saving life and reducing damage to property? What is the ratio of these successes to the very public failures?
I'd be curious to hear what Slashdot readers think. If you add it all up, are self-driving cars keeping us safer -- or just making us drive more recklessly?
But there's also been stories about Teslas that have saved lives -- like the grateful driver whose Model S slammed on the brakes to prevent a collision with a pedestrian, and another man whose Tesla drove him 20 miles to a hospital after he'd suddenly experienced a pulmonary embolism. (Slate wrote a story about the incident titled "Code is My Co-Pilot".) Now an anonymous Slashdot reader asks: How many successes has the autopilot had in saving life and reducing damage to property? What is the ratio of these successes to the very public failures?
I'd be curious to hear what Slashdot readers think. If you add it all up, are self-driving cars keeping us safer -- or just making us drive more recklessly?
Who cares what Slashdot readers think? This isn't something where opinions or anecdotes matter. Do (or read) a study, collect data. Then you'll have an answer.
Eventually it'll save countless.
Trusting it to save people at this stage is foolish.
Demand something that's a plus on both sides. Anything else is defective.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
As a mere sack of meat and juice, I accept that my role in the world is to labor, spend, consume, and while away the rest of my day being bombarded with advertisements while staring dumbly at a phone or laptop. I am here to earn the money that will trickle up into the accounts of our tech masters.
If in my life I can earn and spend enough money to buy Elon Musk just one square of gold-inlaid toilet paper, then I will die knowing my life had meaning.
This is something that can be easily figured out with statistics. Accident rates and serious injuries per miles driven in autopilot vs human. Unfortunately most people make decisions with gut feelings not detailed statistical analysis and politicians take advantage are very eager to score easy points with the mindless masses
Without being subsidized would Tesla be a viable company? On a complete cycle basis does driving a Tesla actually put less CO2 into the atmosphere?
No.
What people think makes no difference. In fact, I think how many lives are saved vs. lost makes no difference. No body, not Tesla, not government regulatory bodies, not programmers, no one is claming the software is perfect. Some people are claiming it saves lives in aggregate vs human miles driven, but only data can tell us that. And even then, it determines on how you look at things. Do they save lives vs the average vehicle? How about lives vs other vehicles in the same price range, or vs other autonomous vehicles. Or even vehicles in similar weather conditions, etc... etc...
What really matters is how much potential there is for improvement. The chips these systems run on will follow a Moore's law trajectory, and the amount of data these vehicles learn from each other with every mile is even more insane. We can not possibly make human drivers 2X, 4X, or 10X better, but we can make these systems that much better. All it takes is learning with data, with next gen sensors, with better networking tech, better algorithms derived from it all, and lastly, better vehicle coordination from infrastructure. In 20 years, the answer to this question will become painfully obvious. We just have to let the technology carry us there, and listen to everyone on the way: be vigilant when the system is in use today. Be aware of what your vehicle is doing. You are still responsible.
Nothing. We know nothing about how self-driving cars interact with each other. And even less about how millions of self-driving cars interact with each other. And even less than that about a mix of millions of self-driving and human-driving cars. We know nothing. So predictions about long term safety balance are meaningless. Wait until we know something; until then do nothing.
Either Teslas have a higher crash rate than similarly priced and aged luxury cars or they don't. Should be pretty simple to figure out. WTF is with this shitastic article?
The biggest problem with Tesla is not their technology, but their communication. They call their system "Autopilot", but backpedal that statement in their legalese and fine print. They say their car is safer, but only acknowledge accidents after investigative reporters uncover them (the attached article is a perfect example). Further, they always shift as much blame on to the driver as possible, while giving as few details about the crash as possible. This is poor communication. Tesla should be transparent about how well they're doing. It's to their benefit, as many people (myself included) would be more open to trying out potentially unsafe technology if the risks are clearly explained and can be mitigated.
Back to the original point of the question, "Are Tesla Crashes Balanced Out By The Lives That They Save", Tesla could easily answer that question if they wanted to, they have the data. Unfortunately, due to their secretiveness and poor communication, they only share self-serving pieces of what they know, and no one gets the full picture. Based on the way Tesla has conducted itself, we have to assume that these vehicles are unsafe unless proven otherwise.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
Yes
On the one hand, for many Slashdotters - Elon Musk can do no wrong.
On the other hand, this is Slashdot - and Betteridge dictates that the answer to the question has to be no.
#DeleteChrome
subject. Try telling me something. "Could it be' clickbate is weak.
A few score may die now to save hundreds of thousands later. Have you driven on the freeways of America lately? People drift into your lane, they don't stay centered in their own lane. Drivers are looking at their phones while they're driving, no matter what the laws say. People are NOT as qualified to drive a car as a computer which checks its sensors hundreds of times per second.
Autonomous cars are the future, and Tesla is pushing that forward. There are going to be mistakes in the beginning, and people will die and be injured.
Driving is dangerous, but we don't outlaw cars because their utility outweighs the risk. Same here.
Tesla software is highly proprietary. You pay for every perk such as performance upgrades or autopilot and much like an iPhone youre entrusted to assume it "just works." the major difference being that when your iphone crashes, it doesnt kill a car full of people in front of you.
unless you can see this software, test it, review it and make your own modifications to it you're essentially assuming the marketing department at tesla is correct. We had this argument in computing for 20 years, we still have it today. Without knowing what the source code is, you just have to reboot, retry, and hope the problem goes away or gets patched.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Dang, we've been found out. We thought we'd covered our tracks so well, despite all of us mysteriously being absent for the day -- we were worried that would kinda be a big clue, but till you came along no-one figured it out -- your brilliant investigations and whip-smart deductive powers have found us out. Foiled again! We'll just have to be more cunning next time. But I fear that with people with your remarkable qualities around, our plans for world domination can never come to pass.
You don't see a news story every time a Mazda is crashed during a test drive. Stop giving clicks to this drivel.
But there's also been stories about Teslas that have saved lives -- like the grateful driver whose Model S slammed on the brakes to prevent a collision with a pedestrian, and another man whose Tesla drove him 20 miles to a hospital after he'd suddenly experienced a pulmonary embolism. (Slate wrote a story about the incident titled "Code is My Co-Pilot".)
That's one incident of a dangerous situation where the Tesla acted appropriately, and another where a user in a medical crisis chose a course of action based on the Tesla's abilities.
In neither case do we know what would have happened without the autopilot.
Even some of the accidents have the same ambiguity. I'm personally a skeptic that the Tesla is saving lives, but it's a fundamentally difficult thing to measure.
I stole this Sig
Well, even if people figure out the 9/11 connection, there's still the old consipracy to control the world's money supply through Hollywood.
Speaking of which, could you clue me in on who to call about that one? As a Jew, I'm dismayed that I haven't gotten any slice of that sweet, sweet pie. Here I go developing an advanced education and nuturing a growing career and salary over the course of 20 years, and all along I could have just been doing the whole worlds-money-supply-Hollywood-conspiracy thing. Which banker do I call?
if you are a car, you cant save people if you are not driving, and every time they crash they say "the car doesnt drive itself" so obviously those cars have never, and will never, ever, save anyone, by their own definition of their capabilities, until they drive themselves, then they might save some people and kill some others, but right now they havent saved a single person
I find it curious that AI-guided vehicles appear to be held to a standard- perfection- that is never expected of humans. This is especially important given that driving is the kind of task that humans do especially poorly: it requires extended attention to something that is, for the most part, repetitive and boring. Given those kinds of tasks, humans easily lose focus, where computers do not.
Given that the US has averaged 35480 deaths on the road over the last 10 year (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year) I have a hard time seeing how AI *couldn't* make the roads safer.
-Z
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We spend far more attempting to avert air crashes than car crashes. The regulators of both form of transportation have struggled with why they are pushed by political forces above them to have such different levels of concern for the same lives. People doing polls and focus groups, professors doing anthropological studies, say, have formed the opinion that it relates to control.
We chafe at having our autonomy restricted in cars - speed limits, four-way stops, seat belt laws, helmet laws, all unpopular, though such restrictions seem small prices to pay for your life. The cost of a highway interchange, at $50 million plus a million or more a year to maintain and replace, can be controversial though it would save a life per year in perpetuity, a couple or three million per life. We feel a death is a lot less anybody else's fault if we were in control of the vehicle at the time. On the other hand, a death in air traffic is just being tossed into the ground at 600 MPH by somebody else who screwed up. We really hate that a lot more.
So, yeah, autopilots are always going to have to do twice as well to be half as appreciated. It's a glitch in human nature. Sorry.
It would be hard to determine what it prevented when no one is reporting it. Some of the drivers may not have even been aware of the incident the car avoided.
It would be hard to determine what it prevented when no one is reporting it.
Tesla certainly knows. The fact that they're not sharing it does not bode well.
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Is the OP really asking us to weigh in on a subject that can only be answered with data none of us possess?
tone
The lawyers will answer this question. Will automated driving be able to survive the slew of lawsuits that will occur when people die because they used the product in a way that they wouldn't otherwise have?
Since there is no realistic plan for how we get automation into the hands of everyone and not just the wealthy to achieve these "lives saved", we can't accept this as an excuse.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Are you serious? 'The lives that they save' is conjecture. We already know they kill people. I love how Silicon Valley adores projecting itself into the future and trusting oh-so bulletproof data, then making decisions based on that imaginary time and made-up people. Sort of like the data that predicted the outcome of the election, or the bullet proof weather algorithms, or stock algos, or the Facebook bot that thinks that as a man I'd be interested in purchasing tampons, or, or, or. Pfffttt!
They are spying on their customers?
I am fed up with the "lesser evil" solution of killing the less amount of people by self driving cars. i.e. the proposition is that if there''s one passenger in the car and three people are crossing the street and the car options are to ram the pedestrians or fall to a cliff killing the passenger, then the second option should be taken because it preserves more lives. Wrong. The system should choose to kill the dumbest. If the three people are jay walking on a highway and should not have been there, then there's your answer. Summon Darwin and ram the pedestrians.
Apparently they are. Teslas send back driving info at all times regardless of whether Autopilot is activated or not.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
In the very grand scheme of things, autonomous driving technology has the potential to save hundreds of thousands of lives every year.
The idea is that while autonomous driving can advance, become better and actually learn from past experience... human drivers cannot.
Things have been getting slightly better in recent years, but if you take overall statistics ranging from the 70s or 80s 'till today, the number is pretty constant. I mean, the number of accidents, and the number of deaths in crashes. Too many people die every year in car crashes, and a whole lot of them comes from problems we are tired of knowing about. Driving under the influence, speeding, not paying attention to road signs, underestimating the severity of handling a x tons metal box at high speeds. Ramping up fines, making it harder to get a license, educational efforts, changes in law, among several other measures might have helped a bit, but not enough. And there doesn't seem to be much better solutions for human drivers.
Autonomous driving has the potential to drastically reduce numbers when it eliminates the human factor. There will always be crashes, accidents will still happen, and I don't think autonomous driving can ever reach a point of perfection... but if done right, it could eliminate a whole lot of erratic and problematic behavior behind wheels.
But this is about the overall technology, not about Tesla in particular. It's a huge and drastic change, and if I'm honest about it, I think Tesla is rushing things out, not taking lots of stuff in consideration, and turning the whole thing into hype and selling point - with big risks of making it a step back instead. It doesn't take many car crashes while using the autonomous thing for people to start avoiding the technology altogether.
Tesla is selling it as if they had the complete solution already, but it's really the first steps into the technology, which is a really questionable strategy. It's skipping ahead using consumers as testers, quality assurance and research and development, instead of doing it like other manufacturers are doing it - in controlled environments, by employees.
So no, if a Tesla car crashes and kills the driver because the technology isn't working as it should, it's their responsibility. Nothing balances out. Saving the lives of others won't bring back the lives of those who were killed, it won't fix things for the families of those who were lost, and it's no excuse for putting out a technology prematurely. But the technology itself is worth investing and worth insisting on.
I don't think the technology is advanced to the point where the serious accident avoidance tech can be missed. The accident avoidance stuff is drastic. However, drivers make errors. More road hours, statistically, means more errors. The computer probably makes a much smaller number of errors (we don't know that for certain, but it seems likely). More hours driven by the computer means less errors total and less accidents.
Our Tesla MS is a 2013, so we do not have the hardware for AP. However, a number of other owners have told me that AP save them from crashes. Apparently with other cars, it is primitive and just does simple braking. These folks mention that it detects others coming in their lanes esp. in blindspots; warns them of going too fast; etc. These folks have sold there Mercedes, Audis, BMWs, caddies, etc. They tell me they are inferior. We are keeping our old highlander with 160k miles. Will try to keep it going until MY hits market in 2019. But wife wants to trade the MS for an MX with today's HW.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Repeat after me: "a Tesla on Autopilot is NOT a self-driving car." Do not take your hands off the wheel. Be ready to hit the breaks when necessary. I'm sure it's there in the manual: read it.
It's probably time for Tesla to publicly announce that they're changing the name of this feature since it's the public (and sales staff) perception of its capabilities that is causing problems. Didn't the German government demand this change recently too?
Are there any dash cams or CGI reconstructions of those accidents available? Without them it's all just random speculation, would be interesting to see in what situations the cars actually crashed.
Forbes article is lying with statistics.
Christian Science Monitor did a more comprehensive analysis and found the opposite.
One of many problems with the naive analysis is that the 1 per 94M miles includes all forms of transpo - motorcycles, 18-wheelers, buses, etc.
In fact, only 58% of traffic fatalities were occupants of passenger vehicles like cars and SUVs.
Another problem is demographics. They are typically driven by wealthy middle-aged males, a group with a better than average driving record. Generally not drunks and not teenagers who have the highest crash rate.
If you compare like cars to like - luxury sedans and SUVs then the IHS numbers are 1 fatality per 428M miles. Significantly worse than the Tesla's number.
But Tesla's number is also from a very small sample size so its so noisy you can't really do much of a comparison at all.
Make that Significantly better than Tesla's number.
High speed greenhouse hits. If you've been watching Final Destination, you'd know that these are all pretty much lethal by default and have no mitigation strategy.
So in other words the only lethal accidents we've been seeing in Teslas are accidents that would have killed anyone driving a sedan at that speed and ride height.
...the driver was texting on his Samsung Galaxy Notes 7. It is still unknown if the crash caused the smartphone to catch fire, or if the burning Galaxy actually caused the crash.
"Balance" is usually a nonsensical idea, only ever meaningful in determining or pointing out an equilibrium state of something measurable.
The only "balance" to be had, is juxtaposing one number up against some other equal large number, and that is it.
There is NO implied balance to be had between a number of people perishing and a number of people being saved. Any notion of balance this way is purely imaginary, and thus fake and wishful thinking, because an equilibrium is not real.
Well, shouldn't it? Isn't it always learning about objects in its surroundings and reporting back to HQ so that the collective gains more data about stationary object in the area? I thought I read this somewhere...
Yep, a good outcome isn't headline news. I use this very point whenever a conversation steers towards someone mentioning that they don't want to fly because it's "unsafe" based on crash reports in the news. I ask people if they still drive, despite hearing about 10+ accidents every morning and another 10+ in the evening on the radio traffic reports and they say sure. Then ask how often a plane crash makes the news. Certainly not every day, right? Then, if possible I show them this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx7_yzypm5w
Which shows a timelapse of every major flight on the planet from a day in 2009. Most people are astounded that there are *that many* flights and generally flying seems a lot safer once they consider that.
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That's a failure.
The system requires that the driver is always aware. It beeps and eventually comes to a stop if they are not. If the driver doesn't notice things that might have caused an accident but were avoided, then the system has failed to keep them alert and ready to take over in the event that it can't handle those things itself.
So what you are saying is we have an unknown number of very difficult to detect failures that Tesla gets a free pass on.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
People always care about something or other, without understanding.
For example Wind-Generators are blasted because they kill almost as many birds as a tenth of a glass building or a third of a cat, but nonetheless there are people denouncing this as a 'problem'.
As a 25+ year veteran of the tech industry who has written a lot of code as well as someone who bought a Model X just a few months ago, and then wrecked it after just three weeks, I can say Tesla's Autopilot is not safer - for now - mostly because it gives the driver a false sense of confidence that allows them to take their eyes off the road for short periods of time. And while it's ends up being safe to do so 99.9% of the time because nothing bad happens, it means there is a small but statistically significant amount of time that it is not safe to do so. And I just happened to find one of those moments.
Luckily I was not injured from the accident, but the outcome could have been very different, as I was driving 65mph on a freeway when I sideswiped a flatbed car carrying trailer being towed by a pickup truck, causing my 22" left front wheel to commit Hara-kiri on the left front of my vehicle after it came into contact with the right wheel fender guard on this trailer. I went a little sideways at first mashing the left front of my aluminum vehicle pretty good into the trailer, then the entire left side of the vehicle basically bounced off the trailer before I fully gained back control. The car remained fully operational and I was able to pull over to the side of the freeway and stop before the left front wheel completely broke off. And I managed to not hit anyone else or have them hit me. But my Model X did receive significant damage - $60,000 in damage to a $149,000 P90D. Mostly from the aluminum left front of the car being ripped to shreds by my 22" wheel that had mostly broken off but stayed attached just enough to break everything it could touch.
I then learned that aluminum vehicles tend to shred into thousands of pieces and are very difficult to fix and parts from Tesla are hard to come by and that it will take at least two months for the repair to be completed. In my city only two body shops are even authorized to do body work on Teslas. Damage to the trailer that was hit? The right wheel fender was bent upwards about one inch - something the trailer owner didn't even really consider to be damage worth repairing. Solid steel appears to win out over aluminum in a significant way. Those looking at the left front of the Model X were surprised by all the damage and surprised I was not injured. For those curious, no airbag activated. Something I'm very happy did not occur since this was basically a sideswipe, even if it looks worse than a typical sideswipe because of how easily aluminum crumples and tears away.
Ultimately the problem with Autopilot in today's Tesla hardware is that it is just a really good implementation of ranged cruise control with assisted steering added on that basically says if it can see the white lines on each side of the road, it will keep you in the middle of the lines 99% of the time. It does this white line watching with one forward facing camera. And sometimes it gets confused. Usually it beeps and gives up control, but sometimes it makes small but sudden adjustments in steering if it feels the need to keep you safely between the lines. And this is the problem. Sometimes those lines can lie.
Now if you are watching the road and holding the steering wheel, you will have no problem keeping the car safe. But in my case I just happened to be getting my Taco Cabana meal sitting in the passenger seat out of its bag with my right hand while my left hand was still on the steering wheel. But my eyes at that moment were also turned to the bag for what was probably five seconds. Remember at this moment I had three weeks of the car making good decisions (about 3000 miles driven), which gave me the confidence to 1) eat in the car and 2) take my eyes off the road for five seconds. Unfortunately at that moment I also found the part of the freeway that had been restriped a couple times from previous construction and where they had done a poor job of removing all the old lines. And where four lanes of traffic were now making a jig right of a couple feet, but where a
An example that highlights the human element, when seat belts were introduced. They initially increased deaths because people felt safer behind driving, so they drove more dangerously. With time people learnt that a crash in a seat belt could still cause injury or death, and driving went back to normal and the death count of the roads reduced.
I expect we may see a similar issue with "autopilot" cars, which means due to the human element the statistics wont initially support "autopilot" cars.
The car cannot be said to be safe as it could and should be until it starts forcing the driver's attention. Allowing them to take their hands off the wheel for more than a few seconds is unacceptable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Human drivers won't improve much at all. Autonomous cars will improve continuously and there is no end to how much they can be improved. Tesla is already a very safe car and we can expect them to get better and better every year. Frankly we will soon get to the point where human input to a vehicle will probably be illegal. As usual this means vast, social change. For example motorcycles may have no place to exist as a computer can plan safe situations that would cause the driver of a motorcycle to freak out and crash. Passengers in autonomous cars may have great issues with fear as these cars will be capable of coming very close to other vehicles without wrecking. Imagine hundreds of arrows coming from all directions but each error being able to avoid the other by one inch. Now imagine an intersection in which cars only need to avoid T boning you by one inch.
It is the driver that has failed to follow the directions and be prepared to retake control of their vehicle at any moment. The one fatality was due to some idiot watching movies with a portable DVD player rather than watching the road in front of him.
This comparison misses the point. Whether or not Tesla cars "avert" more accidents than they cause, what matters is the paradigm of a system which learns from mistakes. ALL (Tesla or otherwise) self-driving cars learn from these early mistakes, whereas human minds continue to make the same stupid mistakes over and over again. I doubtless did much of the same stuff my father did when he was young, behind the wheel of a car. My son's robotic car will make NONE of today's mistakes.
If safety belts had the same criteria as the Tesla (zero accidents, zero deaths), they never would have been adopted.
Hey I guess if the Tesla customer signs on for it then fine, but I wouldn't be comfortable with it.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
What kind of idiot mistakes assistive technology for autonomous driving?
The Tesla Model S is no self-driving horseless carriage. It has an autopilot, yes, but it is a long way from picking you up when you call it on your Dick Tracey watch.
It doesn't drive for you. At best, it makes driving easier, like an automatic transmission or a cruise control, and maybe safer, like an anti-locking braking system.
It is not a self-driving car. If you are looking for one of those, you are at the wrong company, and should look at the Google car instead.
And I mean the real world of sensational news stories and public expectations.
Take, for example, air bags. I don't think anyone would argue that air bags have saved thousands of lives and prevented much more serious injury. But we have just seen defects that resulted in a small number of lost lives and injuries result in sensational press stories, CEOs getting grilled by Congress and massive recalls. The "we caused less damage" argument won't cut it in the long run. In the end, the argument that wins is "We've done everything we can do and we didn't make any mistakes".
Engineers working on autonomous driving cars had better start asking questions like this:
Are all of the critical sensors and computers doing three way voting so they can continue to work in the event of a failure?
Are the remaining systems at least two way voting or using some other sort of error detection?
Are all of the actuators fault tolerant? Braking systems should be fully duplicated. Steering actuators should be triple redundant so that even if one fails in a hard over mode the other two can compensate.
An engineer who ran for Congress. http://herbrobinson.us