That's going to be a whole bunch of smug rich people pissed off.

Doubt it would be a hardware recall...

True, but there is the possibility it is hw related. Say a fault in a sensor.

The only hardware that's at fault is the sales literature that started with it being called "Full Self Drive" and "Autopilot".

While terms like autopilot are being used people will treat it like an autopilot, aka not paying sufficient attention

Their 'Dear Leader' will soon be running for Congress. Then he'll follow the path of No 45 and ban all comments that are critical of Tesla, Space X and of Emperor Elon the merciful.

Now that he's joined the GQP, he has lost a lot of cred with my Tesla owning friends.

Yes, I am not a fan of his badly made cars and yes, i owned one, a 2019 Model S

A - Advanced

D - Driver

A - Accident

S - System

Just saying.

Absolutely

Disastrous

Accident

System?

Another Day, Another Smash

On pure numbers alone, any comparison needs to be based upon *Miles Driven* not per vehicle. A vehicle that's seldom driven with an ADAS system is not comparable to one that is driven long distances under varying conditions.

Only Tesla has automatic reporting of crash data, for everyone else it's voluntary and annocdotal.

An analysis of data is a good thing and should be done, I applaud that.

A bad analysis with faulty data is nothing more than a hit piece.

as well as graduated by driving environment and conditions.

It's easier to not prang into other objects if those are by and large moving at the same speed and in the same direction compared to getting around in a city, and bright sunny days take less effort to deal with than dark rainy/foggy nights.

It would also be interesting to know how many are multiple accidents with the same human 'driver', or if any accidents are with two or more Teslas with engaged 'autopilot'. And, indeed whether any of the collisions involved drivers using the software correctly (i.e., keeping alert, watching the road and keeping both hands on the steering wheel) rather than, in one case, sitting on the rear seat.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/tesla-backseat-param-sharma-san-francisco-b1847445.html

And it would be equally useful/interesting to see how many accidents were avoided due to "autopilot" being more aware of the surroundings than the "driver".

I'm sure Tesla have those numbers too. Or at least numbers on how many times the car took over before the meatbag behind the wheel could react.

A number of other manufacturers have automatic breaking. As far as I am aware none of them "took over" from a driver and performed an action like swerving to avoid something.

"Accidents Avoided" is literally impossible to measure, thus any such attempted statistics must be filed under "unsubstantiated marketing"

I avoided thousands of accidents today by leaving the car parked.

The only useful measures are based on miles driven per "road type" and preferably speed range - freeway driving is safer per mile by design, as there's fewer hazards.

The emergency breaking and lane keeping features can tell when there was lane incursion or stoppage that was avoided. (Car detected lane hazard, car applied breaks instead of airbags=avoided accident). The cameras can catch a lot too, but would need a ton of post processing to tease stuff out of it. In some of the systems these incidents were uploading back to the manufacturer to provide feedback. Not sure to what degree that is still the case with non fleet vehicles now that the features are not considered a private beta. Privacy issues with grabbing info from private owned cars are a dumpster fire in their own right.

So while it's a messy data set, it's not an empty one. You can also look at the differences between average and severity of accidents per road mile vs human drivers to get a different estimate by an alternate measurement. That would require a lot of clean data though, and currently to get an unbiased comparison between manufacturers.

And this was covered in TFA. Car makers aren't coughing up that info, so they can't do an analysis on data they don't have. However, TFA also notes how a spokeshole was actually pointing out these shortcomings in the data and telling people to be careful drawing conclusions.

Yeah, at least the Reg's version of this include more of those caveats and details. When the person giving the presentation calls out how people shouldn't jump to conclusions based on the data, the press should probably listen to them. This report has had the wider media in full arm flapping mode, and most of the version of this story cut out all of those details.

None of them mentioned the broader human-drive accident rate either. How many of those not-quite million Teslas would have been crashed if the Autopilot system didn't exist, and how many had it and crashed under manual drive anyway?

Seems like too many of the people covering this went out of their way to avoid giving people the information to make a reasonable comparison.

and thats about it

100 teslas driven 100 miles per day will have more crashes than 5 fords driven 10 miles once a week. its the law of averages.

We need better figures... say a tesla will crash every 10 000 miles driven and a ford will crash every 100 miles driven (dont get your panties in a twist this is an EXAMPLE)

However both will crash if the dumb ass 'driving' it enguages the drive assist, then climbs into the passenger seat to read a book (after cable trying the safety switches on the steering wheel.....)

Tesla's crash rate per 1,000 vehicles was still substantially higher

It's hardly 100 Tesla's vs 5 Ford's

TESLA, Terribly Exciting Software Launches Again vs FORD, Fixed Or Repaired Daily.

Tesla's most recent crash report gives a little insight:

In the 4th quarter, we recorded one crash for every 4.31 million miles driven in which drivers were using Autopilot technology (Autosteer and active safety features). For drivers who were not using Autopilot technology (no Autosteer and active safety features), we recorded one crash for every 1.59 million miles driven. By comparison, NHTSA’s most recent data shows that in the United States there is an automobile crash every 484,000 miles.

So is the conclusion that rich people are simply better drivers? Or are people with new cars more careful? Or do more Tesla owners live outside the US and are just better drivers than their American counterparts?

Either way, the numbers suggest Teslas are simply safer with autopilot switched on.

The Tesla report seems subject to the spin effect of the now-reported "autopilot turns itself off seconds before a collision" information.

If the Autopilot had done that, and it get's reported as a "non autopilot" collision, that's going to significantly skew Tesla's reported numbers.

We'd have to have data that was based on "autopilot engaged for N seconds before the crash". The NHTSA data seems to be using 30 seconds. We don't know what the Tesla report is based on.

You mention spin if reference to this, but not what you think is being spun.

All the companies driver assists will warn the driver to take control if the vehicle detects a problem or hazard that is outside of the parameters it can handle. People have started making an unthinking talking point out of this 1 second vs 30 seconds thing. 30 seconds at highway speeds is more than half a mile. So in terms of accidents, which you rarely see coming half a mile away, that window isn't very relevant. 1 second is only about 100 feet, which is pretty short in terms of both distance and reactions. But that 1 second window isn't the whole picture either, as the self drive system may have already started warning the driver before it kicked out, as well as decelerating or taking other actions.

That said I agree the devil is in the details. The NHTSA has more of that data then they released here, and most of what they have on the Teslas, came from Tesla. So while(as Hill who the article mentioned) they warned us not to jump to conclusions based on this report, it looks like they have the data and may address these questions in the future.

Tesla loves to promote those numbers and try to claim its autopilot is safer than human driving. The problem is that people are most likely to enable autopilot in the simplest driving situations - like on an expressway. They are least likely to enable it (if it is even possible to do so, hopefully not) on a windy two lane highway at night during rutting season while it is raining. So of course those numbers for autopilot vs human accidents are apples vs oranges to the extreme.

There is one situation where all automakers' level 2 driving aids such as autopilot may (and I have no data to back this up either way, this is just a guess) do better than humans. Stop and go driving, like during rush hour! It is easy for people who become distracted for a half second to not notice the car in front has slammed on their brakes, or someone from an adjoining lane has cut their way into the two car lengths you had in front of you, until it is too late. Presumably Tesla and the other level 2 driving systems would fare better, as even if they aren't entirely bug free at least there is no risk of them becoming distracted by a noisy kid in the back seat or a taking a quick look at a phone to see who is calling/texting.

Either way, the numbers suggest Teslas are simply safer with autopilot switched on.

These numbers suggest that Tesla Marketing can make up unqualified numbers just like any other corporation, when no one independent has raw data to be able to verify it, because they have worked for years to keep it as secret as they can.

If Teslas were really so safe, the company would pay academics to analyse the data and publish credible papers proving it, and trumpet those results from the rootops.

That they don't, is clear proof that the numbers won't stand up to even paid analysis by shills.

Some people have pointed out that "miles driven per driver-assisted crash" would be a useful comparison for different brands of driver-assist systems. However, there is another comparison that should also be made: "miles driven per crash per driver-assisted crash versus miles driven per crash for non-driver-assisted crash".

As a hypothetical example, if it turns out that Tesla's driver-assist system is more crash-prone than other brands of driver-assist systems, then that would be be embarrassing for Tesla, but if it also turns out that Tesla's driver-assist system is less crash-prone than non-driver-assist vehicles, then Tesla's system should be applauded for the increase in safety it provides (and the other brands of driver assist systems should be applauded even more).

It is frustrating that the NHTSA has released a meaningless claim. This frustrating behaviour is also to be expected, not necessarily because the NHTSA is conducting a smear campaign against Tesla, but because such meaningless claims are commonplace among humans (and the NHTSA is staffed by humans).

Tesla have so far refused to publish any meaningful data, so all there is to go on are the anecdotes of "Autopilot" making dangerous moves - it has literally steered drivers into danger or even a crash more than once.

How often that occurs is unknown.

To be fair, nobody else publishes meaningful data either.

You would need to match like for like. If you enable autopilot for 200 miles on an expressway on a clear day, and then drive yourself for 200 miles at night in the rain on a country road, those are not comparable in any way.

Nor would 200 miles of rural expressway vs 200 miles of expressway passing through/around large cities, with tons of road construction lane closures.

Perhaps the names Crashpilot or CrashAssist may better reflect the outcome when the owners/drivers read the marketing material and not RTFM

So often tjhat the wrong statiskics are used for headlines. Obviously the only relevant figure for comparison is number of atuopilot incedents på unit of distance ( or possible hours driven). It is the same with the annual death toll ‘shock’ headlines that the number of people killed in road accidents is xx higher than last year. Which by itself, gives no meaning at all.

Like for instance how many times the autopilot drives head on into a parked police car, under ideal road and weather conditions.

Unless I am missing something, there are no links to the data released in the reg article.

Without the data how can we check that this article and the articles it links to are quoting the right figures or the relevance of those figures.

Please link to the source of the data.

While the NHTSA data is useful, the Federal Trade Commission needs to step in and declare that the term "Autopilot" is deceptive advertising and that all references to it in advertising or consumer facing materials (e.g. brochures, owners manuals,etc.) must be changed to Semiautopilot.