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.

Comments

Errors

[LetterRip]

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.

Re:Errors

[Mr D from 63]

Anybody who read the NHTSA report should clearly understand that the Autopilot safety data comparison was not done to demonstrate the safety of Autopilot, but rather to decide if there was indication that AP caused an increase. Also, 2/3 of the cars in the study didn't have any pre-AP data at all. It was entirely useless for the purpose of making any kind of safety claim. The NHTSA should not have had to clarify, but too many idiots made stupid claims based on that information. The media in general can be really stupid with statistics.

Re:Errors

[Eloking]

Anybody who read the NHTSA report should clearly understand that the Autopilot safety data comparison was not done to demonstrate the safety of Autopilot, but rather to decide if there was indication that AP caused an increase. Also, 2/3 of the cars in the study didn't have any pre-AP data at all. It was entirely useless for the purpose of making any kind of safety claim. The NHTSA should not have had to clarify, but too many idiots made stupid claims based on that information. The media in general can be really stupid with statistics.

One thing though,

I thought those number were about Tesla autopilot on *almost ideal condition* VS people on *all condition* no?

Re:Errors

[Mr D from 63]

Anybody who read the NHTSA report should clearly understand that the Autopilot safety data comparison was not done to demonstrate the safety of Autopilot, but rather to decide if there was indication that AP caused an increase. Also, 2/3 of the cars in the study didn't have any pre-AP data at all. It was entirely useless for the purpose of making any kind of safety claim. The NHTSA should not have had to clarify, but too many idiots made stupid claims based on that information. The media in general can be really stupid with statistics.

One thing though,

I thought those number were about Tesla autopilot on *almost ideal condition* VS people on *all condition* no?

https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/i...

Re:Errors

[mrclevesque]

"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."

No. Not sure what you find bizarre. He simply mentioned that a large part of the reduction could be due to autobraking :

Tesla shipped with Autopilot hardware starting in October 2014. Tesla activated automatic emergency braking and front collision in March 2015. Tesla then activated Autosteer functionality in October 2015. NHTSA compared crash rates before and after the Auto steer addition in October 2015. So Timothy was right: the March 2015 activation is a confound if you want to use the NHTSA study as Musk tried to do.

"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."

Again. He didn't say that autobraking had to account for all the discrepency, he simply pointed out that Tesla had autobraking for a little less than half the time covered before the FSD update, and therefore Musk was wrong to use numbers comparing accidents before and after the FSD update without taking into account the large autobreaking confound.

How can it not be safer?

[Xenx]

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.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[Balial]

A Tesla will happily drive you into a stopped fire truck, or a turning semi trailer, or a freeway divider while you're driving at full speed. So yes, it's actively instigating accidents that humans are pretty good at avoiding. See google.

I'm a huge fan of Tesla, but their autopilot scheme is a farce.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[olsmeister]

happily drive

What kind of messed up AI have they developed over there?

Re:How can it not be safer?

[Xenx]

Autopilot requires the driver to be attentive. The driver should be stopping the vehicle in those cases. The car didn't actively seek out hitting the fire truck, it just didn't detect it and stop. Absolute worst case, autopilot never detects anything ever and we're no worse off than just having a driver behind the wheel. As soon as the autopilot detects and prevents any potential accident, we're now safer with than without.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[cascadingstylesheet]

and we're no worse off than just having a driver behind the wheel.

That's demonstrably untrue. Humans are terrible at partial attention. Partial automation (like Tesla's misnamed Autopilot) lulls humans into a state of inattentiveness.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[Austerity Empowers]

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.

If drivers attempt to use it as "hands free" driving, it probably would be more unsafe than a human driver alone. It is an assist. If huge numbers of driver are somehow ignoring the training they received when they picked up the car, ignoring the cars warnings about keeping hands on the wheel, and ignoring its request to take over and just totally giving autopilot free reign, yeah, it definitely could be more unsafe.

With a reasonably attentive driver, I do see a few ways, having used it, that it could be more unsafe. On ideal roads that are well painted and well marked, it does sometimes get confused about whether it should follow the paint for an exit, or follow the lane. It tends to do what the car in front of it does. Again if you are on the ball as a driver, you will make sure it stays on the path you wish to take. If you are not alert and see it doing the wrong thing, you might jerk the wheel or otherwise make an unsafe and unexpected move other drivers will misinterpret. One could argue this isn't a problem in a fully self-driving car that knows where it wants to go, but as a human assist, it has some weakness. If the paint is no good, it is good about telling the driver to take over, but again there's a handoff there and a reaction time check.

In terms of lane management, I personally find it a bit uncomfortable. I tend to follow the left line (closest to me, thus most easily guaged by my limited depth perception). The car however will seek a position exactly in the middle (and if it can't figure that out, gives control back). This has made me feel uncomfortable and my inclination is to grab the wheel and relocate, particularly when someone's bigass ford pickup is also left justified in his lane to the right of me. The problem is mine, it's purely comfort from experience. There is an amount of trust I am learning to place in it, but that trust may be reducing my reaction times if/when needed. I have to "think" more rather than simply react, and that might be costing fractions of a second. That said, I've never had to put this to a real test, and I've never seen it come even close to hitting anything. This is where the statistics would be interesting.

The autobraking and following distance mechanics I can't find any fault with. It surely must be more safe than an unaided human, and in stop and go traffic I really love it. When you're tired and people are driving like the dicks they usually are, it's way better than a human. I would love to see examples where this is less reliable than a human, it seems really unlikely to me for anything short of equipment failure.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[Xenx]

It's designed to operate in conjunction with the driver, at this point in time. The old adage, the whole greater than the sum of its parts, applies. Between you and autopilot, less mistakes are bound to happen.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[Xenx]

Your complaints are pretty much what I would expect to see. They're not without merit, but as you say an attentive driver does cover the weaknesses. In its current stages, as long as the driver is doing what they're supposed to be doing behind the wheel it can only be an improvement. We know people are misusing the feature, but we also know people do a number of dangerous things behind the wheel without it as well.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[fluffernutter]

But why would the driver stop of he/she bought the car so that the car does it for them?

Re:How can it not be safer?

[Xenx]

Well, if they bought the car they know they should... It's up to them if they want to cause an accident or not. You can't stop people from choosing to be dumb.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[quantaman]

Autopilot requires the driver to be attentive.

Humans are far worse at being attentive to passive tasks than they are at driving.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[MichaelSmith]

Its human nature to be less attentive when automation is doing part of the job for you.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[MichaelSmith]

more or less does what the feature it's named after does for airplanes

But without the extensive training given to aircrew who operate autopilots. In most cases the autopilot is operated by a person who's job it is to fly the aircraft properly.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[Xenx]

Driving is supposed to be an active task, even with autopilot. And yes, I'm fully aware not everyone will see it that way. It doesn't make it any less true. The same concerns could be made for brake assist and cruise control. In the end, good drivers will be good drivers with or without autopilot. The same will be true of bad drivers.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[Xenx]

It's the driver's job to drive their car properly as well. It also requires them to be trained and licensed, though the hurdle isn't nearly as tall.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[quantaman]

Driving is supposed to be an active task, even with autopilot.

People are also supposed to avoid having traffic accidents.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[MichaelSmith]

Hardly, do Tesla require any training at all to use their autopilot?

Re:How can it not be safer?

[Xenx]

.... to be able to drive a car.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[Xenx]

Are you trying to counter my point with a somewhat related, but contextually irrelevant statement? I said people should be actively involved in the driving process, and you said they should also avoid having accidents. I can only assume you mean people don't avoid having accidents, and so they will not be an active participant in the driving process with autopilot. However, most drivers do in fact avoid having accidents most of the time. I would also venture that most people that use autopilot are also competent drivers.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[quantaman]

Are you trying to counter my point with a somewhat related, but contextually irrelevant statement? I said people should be actively involved in the driving process, and you said they should also avoid having accidents. I can only assume you mean people don't avoid having accidents, and so they will not be an active participant in the driving process with autopilot. However, most drivers do in fact avoid having accidents most of the time. I would also venture that most people that use autopilot are also competent drivers.

I think it's a very relevant statement.

Your argument relies on the assumption that people will be just as attentive while supervising the auto-pilot as they are while performing unassisted driving, but that's a false assumption.

Asking someone to pay attention while the auto-pilot is driving is a very difficult task, a far more difficult task than driving. If the auto-pilot makes a mistake there is a strong possibility the human will not be paying close enough attention to catch it. Telling them they're supposed to be paying attention is no more a solution than telling them they're not supposed to have traffic accidents. Humans are fallible, it's just a question of how fallible they are at a particular task.

This isn't something that really applies to cruise control or bake assist. Cruise control removes some attention from speed control, but you're arguably more engaged in steering, it's possible you end up safer. As for brake assist... do you mean collision avoidance? Either way it's only a fallback system so it's not going to divert any attention from driving.

Now, just because the human with the autopilot is less attentive and able to respond to emergencies doesn't necessarily mean they have more accidents. The autopilot could be good enough even with the inattentive human it's still safer, but that's far from an obvious conclusion.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[aix tom]

but you'd expect a lane assist feature to work as advertised.

When I have learned one thing in the last few years, it's that almost nothing works as advertises. Aside maybe toilet paper (if you are able to use it right)

If you are lucky it might work as described in an independent review, if the review wasn't bought behind the scenes.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[Waccoon]

#1 reason why I own a manual transmission and never use cruise control. I don't trust myself. It may be decidedly un-American to have a compact car with few gadgets and gizmos, but I always know how fast I'm going in my car with a manual transmission. When I drive automatics, I speed, and when I use cruise control, I zone out.

Emergency response features sound useful, but I don't want a car with half-assed automation. If they car is supposed to drive itself, either do it completely and properly, or not at all.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[grumbel]

The problem with a lot of safety measures is they make people behave less safe. Thus the benefit of the safety measure gets eaten up by people getting into more accidents. In the case of autopilot you don't just augment an attentive driver with additional features, you turn him into an inattentive driver when you give him autopilot abilities. See the recent Uber self-driving death, driver wasn't paying attention to the road and fumbling around with the phone, we can blame the driver, but that's ignoring the fact that that's just how humans behave when they get bored. So the technology doesn't just need to catch a few dangerous situations, it has to be able to fully replace an attentive driver. Furthermore people like to overestimate what the capabilities of the technology, a Tesla car is not a fully self driving vehicle, but many people treat it like one and go hands-free, despite the technology not being able to handle that.

All that said, the biggest issue in judging self-driving cars is the lack of data points. Not just in actual crashes, but also in what the self driving technology is actually capable off. We have a few videos of the technology behaving correctly, but hardly anything that explores the limits of their abilities. I'd much prefer it if those car companies would just stuff their self-driving software into a simulation and have the public have some fun with trying to exploit it, than slowly collecting data points by the means of dead people on the road. So far there also doesn't even seem to be an official driving test for self-driving cars, we just trust the manufacturer's to do the testing themselves.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[goose-incarnated]

Unless the autopilot feature is actively instigating accidents, it's impossible for it not to be safer.

The autopilot is actively encouraging inattentiveness, so yes, it is possible for the addition of autopilot to increase the accident rate.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[goose-incarnated]

Autopilot requires the driver to be attentive.

Unless you've been stuck in a vacuuum your entire life, you'd know that simply specifying something as a requirement does not mean that the requirement is any good.

Monotony and tedium leads to less attentiveness. We've known this for literally decades from studies of factory workers. Turning on the autopilot can reduce the drivers attentiveness. Blaming the resulting inattentiveness on the driver is stupid.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[goose-incarnated]

It's not misnamed, regardless of what you want to think. It's very aptly named. As in, it more or less does what the feature it's named after does for airplanes.

You think airplane autopilots need the pilot to take control in a matter of seconds to avoid a crash?

Re:How can it not be safer?

[Megol]

Did that sound logical to yourself before you posted? It obviously isn't.

If the presence of autopilot makes the driver worse in any way, even reducing reaction time in the order of tenth of a second, it can absolutely be more dangerous.

And we know from Tesla's own released data that the reaction time in many people is increased, in some to extreme levels (the fellow deciding sitting in the passenger seat while the autopilot controlled the car).

Re:How can it not be safer?

[vtcodger]

The AP technology seems basically fine. It'll surely help rational drivers drive safely. The problem, to the extent there is one, would seem to be Tesla's marketing which seems loath to acknowledge that AP is just a collection of simple tools that (usually) make driving a bit safer and are neither intended to, nor capable of, driving the car safely by themselves.

I suppose that if you are trying to sell an odd, expensive, vehicle to people with more money than sense, you are likely find that some customers are ... well ... not all that sensible.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[MrL0G1C]

Do Tesla's vehicles fly? No? Then it's misnamed.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[Cederic]

Absolute worst case, autopilot never detects anything ever and we're no worse off than just having a driver behind the wheel.

Except that this is not true, and you've stated why yourself:

Autopilot requires the driver to be attentive.

We know that the drive is not going to be attentive, so we're already worse off than just having a driver behind the wheel.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[Cederic]

If used properly

If you used your brain properly you'd understand the fallacy here.

Re: How can it not be safer?

[Type44Q]

Let's see... how about when your hands are on the wheel, and you're paying attention... and it "decides" to do something stupid anyhow??

Re:How can it not be safer?

[Rob Y.]

Airplanes don't have to deal with a constant stream of nearby obstacles. So, while it may be appropriate to have an autopilot system in which the pilot needs to remain attentive - their attention is rarely required, and they will almost always be given ample time to get back into the game and avoid a disaster. That is simply not true in a car. So, yeah, it's misleadingly named.

And regardless, the problem with any self-driving technology is that legal liability only comes into effect when it fails. And those failures have been spectacular enough to render the systems legal and public relations nightmares. No number of prevented accidents will ever make up for that, because they're simply not in the legal and public relations mix.

The elephant in the room is that these systems are being designed for the likes of Uber and UPS. To provide labor-free transportation businesses. Any system that requires an attentive driver with the ability to intervene in a split second nullifies that use case. And hubristic nerds driving their 100K trophies shouldn't get a pass when their toys crash into things. There is no point to 'driverless' cars until true artificial intelligence allows them to be driven by robots that understand what they're doing - not just robots armed with detailed maps attempting to play a video game they have no understanding of.

Re: How can it not be safer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just stop. You're well beyond idiot fan boy now.

If drivers have trouble staying alive because auto pilot does weird and unexpected shit it is Tesla's fault, not the drivers.

The responsibility falls on the seller and creator of this cutesy and horribly misnamed broken technology.

Re: How can it not be safer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, exactly. Agreed. And 99.999% of car buyers have never piloted a plane and know almost nothing about how airplane auto pilot works.

Thank you for inadvertent making the point of all the sane anti-auto pilot people who understand that getting killed by a computer is still getting killed. It is not a glitch we'll fix in the next release. Tesla murdered someone. They -know- auto pilot is fucking broken and kills people and don't care.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[tomtomtom]

In some ways, driving with Autopilot (and it will get worse as these systems become more advanced) is like supervising a learner driver. Most of the time (in the limited scenarios it can be fully engaged) it will act like a normal fully-qualified driver but every so often it will fail to react properly or just do something really erratic. If you're the human in charge of the vehicle in those situations, then the role you are fulfilling is more akin to that of a driving instructor than to that of a regular driver. Except actually its worse because you can't communicate with the "actual driver" like a human would and you may well be driving down roads you've never seen in your life before so don't know where the "danger spots" might be which people tend to get wrong.

There are very good reasons why most countries require full time driving instructors to pass additional tests and re-certify relatively frequently. I think it's worth considering whether we ought to apply the same standards to some types of semi-autonomous driving tecnnology.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[Xenx]

Obviously I didn't state why myself. Bad drivers will be bad drivers... autopilot has nothing to do with that. Someone not paying attention when using autopilot is the cause of the problem, not the autopilot itself. The problem isn't the autopilot.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[Xenx]

So, your point is that you're a pedant?

Re:How can it not be safer?

[Xenx]

Their own materials state it's not a complete autonomous solution at this time. It just has the hardware to be fully autonomous when(if) the software is ready.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[Xenx]

And that has anything to do with how the feature is named, how?

Re:How can it not be safer?

[Xenx]

No, blaming the driver for not paying attention to the fucking road is common fucking sense.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[Xenx]

Bad drivers are bad drivers, autopilot has nothing to do with a persons driving habits.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[Xenx]

You don't turn him into an inattentive driver though. Some people are bad drivers, and will try to abuse the system. They would still be a bad driver without autopilot.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[Xenx]

You would think wrong. You made a statement. One that is only related to mine in regards to automobiles and accidents. You don't make any point with it at all, you just made the statement. Further, I say that drivers should be attentive. That is a fact regardless of what features the vehicle has. An inattentive driver with autopilot is safer than an inattentive driver without autopilot.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[quantaman]

You would think wrong. You made a statement. One that is only related to mine in regards to automobiles and accidents. You don't make any point with it at all, you just made the statement. Further, I say that drivers should be attentive. That is a fact regardless of what features the vehicle has. An inattentive driver with autopilot is safer than an inattentive driver without autopilot.

You keep dodging the point I'm making.

A driver is more likely to be inattentive with an autopilot.

And that was the point of my statement, that saying the driver is supposed to be attentive is as useless as saying the driver is supposed to not crash. In both cases human error is a prerequisite of a crash, the question is how circumstances change the likelihood of those errors.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[MrL0G1C]

It doesn't matter what auto-pilot means by some exact definition. What really matters is what people perceive it to mean and auto-pilot does not equal lane assist.

Auto to many people is short for automatic and when they hear 'auto-pilot' then think 'automatic driving'. It doesn't matter whether you're definition is the more correct one, what matters is that people think the car can drive itself when it clearly can't. Many people will assume that Tesla want them to be alert at all times just because they are covering their arses. Many people will assume after having used this automatic drive feature for 20k miles that it is safe and will drive the next 20k miles safely and this + the poorly chosen name gives them a false sense of security. It's not auto-anything, it's lane assist and it's not a very good one either.

2 people dead says they shouldn't be calling it auto-pilot.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[Xenx]

You're starting from a faulty assumption yourself. That a driver that is inattentive with autopilot, regardless of whether it's more likely or not, would be a safe driver otherwise.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[Xenx]

It is automatic, within the capabilities of the system. So, still a valid name. Further, the name itself does not matter at all. What matters is that the owners are told what the system is capable of when buying, so it could be called anything all and they should be aware of the limitations.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[Cederic]

The problem is that the way autopilot is designed, marketed and implemented it's guaranteed to result in inattentive drivers.

Thus the problem is indeed autopilot.

Errors the user is forced to make due to shit design is not user error. It's shit design.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[goose-incarnated]

No, blaming the driver for not paying attention to the fucking road is common fucking sense.

I really hate it when I accidentally respond to the anti-science crowd. Go read up on all the hundreds studies and trials in determining the correlation between engagement and inattentiveness.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[KingMotley]

A Tesla will happily drive you into a stopped fire truck, or a turning semi trailer, or a freeway divider while you're driving at full speed. So yes, it's actively instigating accidents that humans are pretty good at avoiding. See google.

Teslas are also pretty good at avoiding those things, but not perfect. Neither are humans. That's why they have those crumple zones on the freeway dividers because human were crashing into them already. Humans also hit fire trucks, police cars, and ambulances with their lights on or off.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[Xenx]

As are, apparently, cruise control... brake assist.. parking assist.. etc. They facilitate the driver being less attentive to what they're doing behind the wheel and thus deserve every bit as much flak as people like you seem to think autopilot deserves.... and yet they don't get it. Autopilot isn't an exception from any other driving convenience/safety feature. It's more advanced, but mostly just a combination of the other features.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[Cederic]

Plenty of people refuse to use cruise control exactly because it's dangerous.

Combining a number of features without assessing the usage and impact on the driver is shit design. People are dying because of this.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[Local ID10T]

But why would the driver stop of he/she bought the car so that the car does it for them?

Why wouldn't you eat your own feces?

Answer to both: Because that would be stupid.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[philmarcracken]

If i recall correctly, the turning semi crash had the brake fail. The system - or the human - would have resulted in the same accident. The fire truck can be squashed in a patch. The freeway divider was due to incredibly faded lane markings. These things can be fixed easily, unlike humans that still cause far more fatalities no matter how many 'patches' we apply to them.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[quantaman]

You're starting from a faulty assumption yourself. That a driver that is inattentive with autopilot, regardless of whether it's more likely or not, would be a safe driver otherwise.

What? I never said nor implied that. All I'm saying is that the auto-pilot leads a driver to be less attentive. I never said that the auto-pilot was necessarily less safe, in face, I explicitly said:
Now, just because the human with the autopilot is less attentive and able to respond to emergencies doesn't necessarily mean they have more accidents. The autopilot could be good enough even with the inattentive human it's still safer, but that's far from an obvious conclusion.

I'm just baffled by your resistance to acknowledging the obvious fact that a non-trivial portion of the drivers are less attentive with the auto-pilot enabled, and this potentially makes the auto-pilot less safe.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[MrL0G1C]

Can it fly?

Re:How can it not be safer?

[Austerity Empowers]

What I didn't say but is buried in there, is how attentive a human will remain for long periods on auto-pilot. Road hypnosis was a thing long before all these assists came about, and people did fall asleep at the wheel. I question if auto-pilot will only bore us more to the point where unattentive drivers become more common, even if we don't intend it. There are solutions to this too if it is real.

Speaking for myself, I use it only during a 30 minute commute, it's not really an issue. But for people who are doing a lot of long distance driving, I think the numbers are worth looking at carefully.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[fluffernutter]

Best case, if they trust the AI *at all* then they will be hurting their reaction time compared to if they didn't. So they are better off not trusting it at all.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[Xenx]

So, we're back to you being a pedant asshole... ok...

Re:How can it not be safer?

[Xenx]

You're not talking any kind of anti-science crowd. I'm not denying, anywhere, that inattentiveness is a concern. The point you don't get is that the problem exists for most any car now a days... Cruise control has been a thing for decades. Pulling you foot away from the gas/brake because of cruise control can also lead to slow reaction times. This just furthers the automation, but the overall driver engagement isn't drastically reduced... unless they choose not to pay attention. A good driver would keep themselves engaged, just like when using cruise control. If they cannot maintain safe driving conditions with the feature, they should turn it off. It's still on the driver to understand what they're doing and be in control of the vehicle.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[MrL0G1C]

No, it's not a plane, it can't fly so auto-pilot is not the right name for it and I also stated why it is such a bad name. Nothing pedant asshole about that.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[Xenx]

Autopilot systems aren't exclusive to aircraft... so yeah.. you're being fucking pedantic.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[Riceballsan]

It's a good name, for those who actually have worked on a plane, it's a bad name, for the common folk. People in the aerospace industry understand that you have an autopilot, and not one, but 2 pilots watching everything. The common folk seem to think there's 1 pilot who takes a nap after takeoff.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[MrL0G1C]

I really don't care, I fully explained why calling it autopilot is a bad idea, I haven't heard any argument debating the points I made.

Re:How can it not be safer?

[Xenx]

Except I did, and you never bothered to argue against it. You just turned to fighting over the fact that the car isn't a fucking plane. Ultimately it still comes down to my point that the name is perfect valid for the functions it performs. It does not cause an unrealistic expectation of the feature set. The owners are also told how the feature operates, so there would be no confusion over the name vs the functionality. So, again.. You're arguing over the semantics of the name.. because you have no other valid argument.

Flaw

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

3.7 times lower

[gumpish]

3.7 times lower

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?

[lucm]

"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?

Re: Sorry?

[Type44Q]

You should see some of silly shit that "Tyler Durden" of Zerohedge constantly spews about Musk and Tesla. The desperation of the shorts seems to be building exponentially.

Sorry Elon Musk?

[Peter P Peters]

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.

If I could say just one think to Musk, it would be

[mark-t]

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.

Vietnam

[JeremyWH]

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.

Re:Musk needs to step down

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. I listened to that call. He cut off and mocked some bankers whinging about volatility. He's busy getting Model 3 production in hand and doesn't time to suffer bean counters and day-traders.

Re: Tesla's Current Stock Short Situation

[reg]

No, he's just collecting school fees for the life lesson he's about to teach them.

What is autopilot?

[thegarbz]

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.

Re:Tesla's Current Stock Short Situation

[110010001000]

You Tesla fanboys are hilarious. So many investors are short TSLA because it is a BAD INVESTMENT. The stock is falling currently because of the idiot he made of himself on the earnings call. His Enron like performance means that he will eventually have to step down. Tesla will need billions more in investment. By the way, intentionally tanking a stock would be illegal for Musk to do.

Re:If I could say just one think to Musk, it would

[mark-t]

Of course the first thing that comes to mind is that most people are not aircraft pilots, and the mental image that comes to most people's minds with the term autopilot with respect to aircraft is a device that can left largely *UNATTENDED* once the plane has reached a sufficient altitude. Obviously it requires that the pilot is ready to assume to control, but with an aircraft that is in flight, being quite far away from any thing it can hit, a human actually has multiple orders of magnitude more time to react to virtually any kind of situation than one does in a car on the ground, moving at speed, so in fact a pilot can get away with far less attention than a driver of a car with Tesla's so called "autopilot" would be.

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.

Re: Musk needs to step down

[Type44Q]

Bean-counters and daytraders are one thing; those fucks are bonafide parasites.

Re: Tesla's Current Stock Short Situation

[Type44Q]

Only if you say so...

Re:I'll just leave this here.

[dgatwood]

One car driven by a human swerves to avoid another car being driven by a human and happens to hit a self-driving car. Your point?