Sorry Elon Musk, There's No Clear Evidence Autopilot Saves Lives (arstechnica.com)
Timothy B. Lee writes for Ars Technica: A few days after the Mountain View crash, Tesla published a blog post acknowledging that Autopilot was active at the time of the crash. But the company argued that the technology improved safety overall, pointing to a 2017 report by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). "Over a year ago, our first iteration of Autopilot was found by the U.S. government to reduce crash rates by as much as 40 percent," the company wrote. It was the second time Tesla had cited that study in the context of the Mountain View crash -- another blog post three days earlier had made the same point. Unfortunately, there are some big problems with that finding. Indeed, the flaws are so significant that NHTSA put out a remarkable statement this week distancing itself from its own finding.
"NHTSA's safety defect investigation of MY2014-2016 Tesla Model S and Model X did not assess the effectiveness of this technology," the agency said in an email to Ars on Wednesday afternoon. "NHTSA performed this cursory comparison of the rates before and after installation of the feature to determine whether models equipped with Autosteer were associated with higher crash rates, which could have indicated that further investigation was necessary." Tesla has also claimed that its cars have a crash rate 3.7 times lower than average, but as we'll see there's little reason to think that has anything to do with Autopilot. This week, we've talked to several automotive safety experts, and none has been able to point us to clear evidence that Autopilot's semi-autonomous features improve safety. And that's why news sites like ours haven't written stories "about how autonomous cars are really safe." Maybe that will prove true in the future, but right now the data just isn't there. Musk has promised to publish regular safety reports in the future -- perhaps those will give us the data needed to establish whether Autopilot actually improves safety.
UPDATE (2/16/19): The study's underlying data reveals serious flaws in the methodology that undermine its credibility, according to new analysis from a research and consulting firm.
"NHTSA's safety defect investigation of MY2014-2016 Tesla Model S and Model X did not assess the effectiveness of this technology," the agency said in an email to Ars on Wednesday afternoon. "NHTSA performed this cursory comparison of the rates before and after installation of the feature to determine whether models equipped with Autosteer were associated with higher crash rates, which could have indicated that further investigation was necessary." Tesla has also claimed that its cars have a crash rate 3.7 times lower than average, but as we'll see there's little reason to think that has anything to do with Autopilot. This week, we've talked to several automotive safety experts, and none has been able to point us to clear evidence that Autopilot's semi-autonomous features improve safety. And that's why news sites like ours haven't written stories "about how autonomous cars are really safe." Maybe that will prove true in the future, but right now the data just isn't there. Musk has promised to publish regular safety reports in the future -- perhaps those will give us the data needed to establish whether Autopilot actually improves safety.
UPDATE (2/16/19): The study's underlying data reveals serious flaws in the methodology that undermine its credibility, according to new analysis from a research and consulting firm.
While Timothy normally does excellent articles, his reasoning and logic were severely flawed this time.
First off the NHTSA report focused on autosteer, not autobraking. Hence his attributing the reduction in accidents to autobraking is bizarre. What the NHTSA was disavowing was that they had not examined the entirety of Autopilot (which includes autosteer, autobraking, lane keeping, etc.). Timothy mistakenly thinks they were stating that they hadn't verified the effectiveness of autosteer installation in accident reduction (they didn't verify the actual usage, but drivers with autosteer installed use it about 50% of their driving time).
Secondly the Tesla's prior to the FSD update already had autobraking, so the 40% reduction in accidents after enabling FSD can't be attributed to the autobraking.
Unless the autopilot feature is actively instigating accidents, it's impossible for it not to be safer. Anything above and beyond relying solely on driver's response is an improvement, even if only minimally.
What the fuck does that even mean?
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2018/05/04/google-self-driving-van-involved-crash-arizona-driver-injured/582446002/
The system is flawed because it has to rely on a lazy, distracted driver who really doesnâ(TM)t want to drive his own car to begin with.
38 percent of the population supports Treasonous Trump. How is this possible? It is simple really. Imagine the stupidity of the average American. 50 percent of the population is even dumber than that. Thus the support for Herr Trump is easily explained. A large percent of our population is uneducated and outright fucking stupid.
What the hell are they trying to convey here?
If value A is "2 times less" than value B, does that mean A is 1/2 B? So "3.7 times lower" means a factor of 1/3.7 ?
While I'm on the subject, there is no unit for "coldness" or "slowness", so please stop saying nonsense like "twice as cold" or "ten times slower" and stick to "half the temperature" and "one-tenth the speed". FFS
"Sorry Elon Musk"? That's the most asswipy headline I've read in a long time. Was this mistakenly submitted to Slashdot instead of Jezebel or Salon?
lucm, indeed.
In for a new match of Musk cheer-leading fans against the world ....
His performance on the earnings call was Enron like. He needs to step down.
New technology, less than perfect results, total fail
Sorry for our really fucking lame attempt at writing clickbait headlines..
I refuse to participate in this discussion because of this shit. What's wrong with "There's No Clear Evidence That Autopilot Saves Lives"? Seriously, I want an answer.
This is a prime example of doing something because we can, not because there is a problem statement.
Tesla is the most shorted company on the market. About 1/3 of total shares are committed to short positions. This works tremendously to their benefit, as when shorts come due, their holders are forced to buy stock at the prevailing price in order to fulfill their short commitment. And this has previously kited the stock value to its present astronomical value.
What if Elon Musk were out to create the world's biggest short crunch and further kite the value of Tesla? He might downplay good news, and act like a flake, just to lure more people into shorting the stock.
Bruce Perens.
like walkways, bridges, trains, etc, eliminates human error, will 'self driving' or 'auto pilot' cars be "safer".. infrastructure must be built to support the automation. it is IMPOSSIBLE (with current or near-future tech) to build the automation to fit our chaotic infrastructure and unpredictable actions.
Stop, for gawd fucking sake, calling the damn thing "autopilot".
If it can't even *moderately* be relied upon to do the right thing without driver intevention, then it's not "auto" anything... because "auto" means "by itself".
Call it "driving assist" or something like that... don't put a misleading term in the very name that will suggest to people that it does something it does not.
While you can go ahead and blame the people for their own foolishness at trusting a technology that by its own admission is not yet perfect, people are still dying because the very name that is being used for it misleads people into thinking that it is something that it is not. Stop effing calling it that, and maybe people might start wising up about using it correctly.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Just back from Vietnam, I thought to myself that auto pilot would NEVER work there. I also thought that many westerners should head there before getting their license in their home country.
http://lavishhotelsandresorts.com/
Autopilot if followed exactly as Tesla recommends is a system that keeps the car in the lane and brakes when it sees a hazard. It requires the driver to be paying attention. So it doesn't save lives...
Does that mean that we should remove all the lane assist features and auto braking features of all the other cars as well or is Tesla somehow special in that only Tesla's implementation gets criticised while every other car company gets a free pass?
Side note: My friend owes his life to his Nissan Qashqai's Intelligent Emergency Braking feature. But I don't hear the media raging against this car manufacturer despite effectively doing exactly the same thing as Autopilot. I haven't used the Intelligent Breaking but the lane assist works really well especially when travelling from a right driving country to a left driving country and picking it up as a rental.
> Stop, for gawd fucking sake, calling the damn thing "autopilot".
Why? It was named that to reference to aerocraft autopilots, which require that the pilot remain mentally engaged, monitor the situation, and pay attention. They must be ready to take over at any time from the autopilot, and in fact that happens somewhat often.
This name was chosen to indicate that, like with aerocraft autopilots, the driver must remain attentative and is still responsible for safe operation of the vehicle while using the labour saving assistor. Also the buyers of the car are given instructions so they all know.
And so long as Tesla's autopilot requires that hands still be on the wheel while it is engaged on the basis that the technology cannot be relied upon in in even a trivially avoidable accident to do the right thing, then it saves precisely *ZERO* of the labor associated with driving, because almost 100% of the labour associated with driving is in paying enough attention to your surroundings that you can act and react appropriately.
Musk wants to blame the driver for not having his hands on the wheel because he would have been clearly able to see the concrete barrier, but the question I have is why didn't the car's alleged collision avoidance system see it, and fucking just stop the car, or at least slow down?
"Oh, but the technology isn't perfect" is about the lamest excuse I can imagine. I'm not saying that Musk's answer isn't necessarily technically true, but it's still bullshit.... if the technology can't even be relied upon things that are plain-as-day visible to absolutely anyone who was not otherwise doing anything special, then that's just too much of a limitation in the technology to call it "autopilot" in the first place. Yeah, it's the driver's own fault for not paying attention, I get that... but if they cant' identify specific deficiencies in the technology right now that could have prevented the accident, and can be applied to future iterations of the tech so that it won't happen again, then the truth of the matter is that the tech isn't ready for production use in the first place. People are *DYING* here.... blaming the accidents on the driver's own choices instead of using any information obtained by the accidents to improve the technology in the future doesn't do anything to save lives.
And "auto", as I said, means "by itself", and that suggests that at least it will be able to do *MOST* things that a driver can do without attendance. Not hitting things that anyone can easily see and adjust their speed for is something anyone who has gotten so far as getting their driver's license in the first place will be able to do. If it can't do that literally 100% of the time, barring some sort of traceable failure in the system that itself can be identified and corrected in future iterations of the technology so that it won't happen again, then it's not any kind of fucking autopilot at all.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
https://youtu.be/5sicOh6LPBw Youtube gets new evidence daily. Nothing beats eyewitness accounts, documented on video. Gone are the days when journalist had any integrity at all, now they just want to get published and paid theyâ(TM)re worse than lawyers.
Dave Rand is my name and your site is a lie.