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Report That Tesla Autopilot Cuts Crashes By 40% Called 'Bogus' (arstechnica.com)
Remember when America's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported Tesla's Autopilot reduced crashes by 40%? Two years later the small research and consulting firm Quality Control Systems (QCS) finally obtained the underlying data -- and found flaws in the methodology "serious enough to completely discredit the 40 percent figure," reports Ars Technica, "which Tesla has cited multiple times over the last two years."
The majority of the vehicles in the Tesla data set suffered from missing data or other problems that made it impossible to say whether the activation of Autosteer increased or decreased the crash rate. But when QCS focused on 5,714 vehicles whose data didn't suffer from these problems, it found that the activation of Autosteer actually increased crash rates by 59 percent...
NHTSA undertook its study of Autopilot safety in the wake of the fatal crash of Tesla owner Josh Brown in 2016. Autopilot -- more specifically Tesla's lane-keeping function called Autosteer -- was active at the time of the crash, and Brown ignored multiple warnings to put his hands back on the wheel. Critics questioned whether Autopilot actually made Tesla owners less safe by encouraging them to pay less attention to the road. NHTSA's 2017 finding that Autosteer reduced crash rates by 40 percent seemed to put that concern to rest. When another Tesla customer, Walter Huang, died in an Autosteer-related crash last March, Tesla cited NHTSA's 40 percent figure in a blog post defending the technology. A few weeks later, Tesla CEO Elon Musk berated reporters for focusing on stories about crashes instead of touting the safety benefits of Autopilot....
[T]hese new findings are relevant to a larger debate about how the federal government oversees driver-assistance systems like Autopilot. By publishing that 40 percent figure, NHTSA conferred unwarranted legitimacy on Tesla's Autopilot technology. NHTSA then fought to prevent the public release of data that could help the public independently evaluate these findings, allowing Tesla to continue citing the figure for another year.... NHTSA fought QCS' FOIA request after Tesla indicated that the data was confidential and would cause Tesla competitive harm if it was released.
Last May the NHTSA finally clarified that their study "did not assess the effectiveness of this technology." Ars Technica also points out that the data focused on version 1 of Autopilot, "which Tesla hasn't sold since 2016."
The majority of the vehicles in the Tesla data set suffered from missing data or other problems that made it impossible to say whether the activation of Autosteer increased or decreased the crash rate. But when QCS focused on 5,714 vehicles whose data didn't suffer from these problems, it found that the activation of Autosteer actually increased crash rates by 59 percent...
NHTSA undertook its study of Autopilot safety in the wake of the fatal crash of Tesla owner Josh Brown in 2016. Autopilot -- more specifically Tesla's lane-keeping function called Autosteer -- was active at the time of the crash, and Brown ignored multiple warnings to put his hands back on the wheel. Critics questioned whether Autopilot actually made Tesla owners less safe by encouraging them to pay less attention to the road. NHTSA's 2017 finding that Autosteer reduced crash rates by 40 percent seemed to put that concern to rest. When another Tesla customer, Walter Huang, died in an Autosteer-related crash last March, Tesla cited NHTSA's 40 percent figure in a blog post defending the technology. A few weeks later, Tesla CEO Elon Musk berated reporters for focusing on stories about crashes instead of touting the safety benefits of Autopilot....
[T]hese new findings are relevant to a larger debate about how the federal government oversees driver-assistance systems like Autopilot. By publishing that 40 percent figure, NHTSA conferred unwarranted legitimacy on Tesla's Autopilot technology. NHTSA then fought to prevent the public release of data that could help the public independently evaluate these findings, allowing Tesla to continue citing the figure for another year.... NHTSA fought QCS' FOIA request after Tesla indicated that the data was confidential and would cause Tesla competitive harm if it was released.
Last May the NHTSA finally clarified that their study "did not assess the effectiveness of this technology." Ars Technica also points out that the data focused on version 1 of Autopilot, "which Tesla hasn't sold since 2016."
So the new number crunching by QCS ignores 18 crashes that happened before Autosteer was rolled out, because the total mileage of those vehicles prior to the crash was not known. Yet... those crashes most certainly occurred. In fact, it's quite possible that the crash itself resulted in enough destruction to the vehicle that the odometer could not be read and thus the exact mileage is not known and reported in the data.
With Autosteer enabled, more data is collected about the vehicle, so the exact mileage is known. QCS, in totally throwing out 18 crashes that definitely occurred to Teslas before Autosteer is as bad or worse than including them when the mileage was not known, again, because the crash could be the cause of the exact mileage not being known in a non-Autosteer state. If the crash was the cause of the missing data, and QCS uses missing data as filter to not include the crash in the statistics, then quite obviously they are going to see different results because of ignoring more than 20% of all the pre autosteer crashes that occurred.
Better known as 318230.
I read Slashdot at the time, and that was pretty much the consensus back then.
Aside from people named Rei or had mod points.
Clearly Elon stole the Reality Distortion Field Steve Jobs pioneered.
Now we have
1. The NSA really is spying on everyone.
2. Bitcoin is an nonviable ponzi scheme.
3. Tesla autopilot is neither autopilot nor safe.
Anyone care to take bets on what is next? Mine is that solar and wind are cheaper than fossil fuel. We have heard it many times, but the numbers don't match quite yet.
I've only fallen asleep while driving on open roads. It's actually quite refreshing to get a cat nap. It took me awhile to build enough trust in the system to actually doze off (real sleep, not just groggy, eyes half closed).
The system works. Plain and simple. The petrol interests like to push bullshit like this article to try and control the narrative. I won't work. Don't fall for it.