Tesla Justifies Autopilot Use As Safer Than A Human Driver

The announcement that Tesla is now equipping every car coming off its assembly line with what the automaker believes to be the necessary hardware to enable full self-driving capability has been met with skepticism among industry watchers and left the market mostly unimpressed.

Tesla’s stock price fell by 2% after the announcement, which indicates that the market either has doubts about Tesla achieving level 5 full autonomy with the new hardware or it doesn’t understand the implications of having full autonomous capabilities. The latter is unlikely considering the value of self-driving technology for automakers has been mostly understood for the past few years now.
 

vdiv - 10/25/2016 1:50:16 PM

-3 Boost

...if they are looking/paying attention, which often is not.

runninglogan1 - 10/25/2016 2:55:29 PM

-1 Boost

These systems will eventually be safer than human drivers. It won't take long.

SanJoseDriver - 10/25/2016 3:38:28 PM

-4 Boost

It's already the case. On freeways without cross-traffic, using Autopilot reduces your chances of getting into an accident. Also, so far 0 deaths in 300 million miles for people using Autopilot on freeways where Autopilot is designed to be used. Even though the system can technically handle crosstraffic now and that death would have been prevented with V8.0, RTFM.

MDarringer - 10/25/2016 6:48:10 PM

+1 Boost

but that does not make the current technological fail from Tesla virtuous.

TheSteve - 10/25/2016 4:06:32 PM

+4 Boost

As history documents well, Mr. Musk has made a number of statements and claims that turned out to be less than factual.

SanJoseDriver - 10/26/2016 12:37:12 AM

-4 Boost

Except the safety of autopilot is factual and can easily be backed up by looking at the number of serious accidents with autopilot on and off. It is difficult to argue with hard numbers.

MDarringer - 10/26/2016 8:49:45 AM

+1 Boost

The hard numbers that Tesla's Autokiller is a menace?

SanJoseDriver - 10/27/2016 8:54:21 PM

+1 Boost

If it is statistically less likely to kill you or get you in a serious injury, I'm not following the logic that it is a menace.

MDarringer - 10/27/2016 9:30:07 PM

0 Boost

So when Tesla's Autokill ends the life of someone you love, you're going to be OK with it because it was statistically less likely?

SanJoseDriver - 10/28/2016 2:16:47 PM

+1 Boost

Considering it has happened ZERO TIMES on people using the system correctly and continues to become more idiotproof each day for those not using the system correctly, I would rather my loved ones use autopilot when available than not. That is the real question, do you want your loved ones to have a HIGHER or LOWER chances of dying in a car crash? My answer is LOWER, so I'm going to go with logic and say they should enable autopilot as frequently as possible in places where it is allowed to be used and use it per the directions. The same goes for full self-driving technology when it is verified to be safer than manual driving.