seems pointless if you can’t take your eyes off the road....these systems allow you to do almost nothing.


I think the disclaimer should read: “Autopilot does not make your full-self-driving purchase option full-self-driving”

 

This statistic is a bit disingenuous. The stat is including all other cars on the road, from cars made in 1900s to 2021. I have no proof but I am confident if you take cars made in the last 10 years with basic safety systems (blind spot monitor, lane departure warning, etc) vs Tesla's the statistic would be similar.

 

I don't see what in both articles make supercruise "terrible" and the one about Autopilot not terrible. If you think supercruise is terrible based on Car and Driver Article then you should think AutoPilot is terrible as well.


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Contrary to what the Full Self-Driving package is called, Autopilot doesn't drive the car. The driver operates a car that is equipped with Autopilot. Autopilot is meant to assist the human driver. Since Autopilot doesn't replace the human driver, it can't be better.

"All US vehicles" is a very wide range of vehicles. They don't specify, but this figure likely includes vehicles that don't even have driver assistance systems, or even ABS. It's an engineered statistic that provides some "ooh" and "ahh" responses until you actually think about the comparison.

As Blaze876 mentioned, it would be better to compare statistics from those driving Autopilot-equipped Teslas with statistics from those driving cars equipped with EyeSight, Super Cruise, Safety Sense 2.0, SmartSense, etc.

 

As usual I post hard numbers people counter with nothing but opinion.

 

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind, that Autopilot makes driving safer if used appropriately. The human being has to be aware and monitor the situation to be used effectively. In many instances, it easily helps with fatigue and general safety. The horror stories we hear about are the outliers that have too much trust in the system and play video games or crawl in the back or sleep during autopilot. Its only a level 2 system and Tesla owners for the most part know this as its constantly nagging you for input in the steering wheel. Try to trick the system and bad things happen...

 

Is there something wrong with questioning the "hard numbers" you provided? Do you really think it's fair to compare an Autopilot-equipped Tesla to a base-model 1997 Honda Accord? Of course the Tesla would be safer to drive in that comparison.

No doubt Autopilot makes driving safer. The same can be said about other driving assistance systems. To find out how much better Autopilot is, it should be compared against other vehicles equipped with driving assistance systems.

 

No, but saying they are BS without any counter numbers is not an argument.
How many 1997 Honda's on the road, enough to move the stat in a meaningful way? Do you think so?
Then compare, post the numbers. If you can't we work with the numbers we have. As for it not being fair to compare to all other cars on the road why not? If you start cherry picking you could probably make Tesla look even better since some cars get in way more crashes. Or you could make Tesla not look as good by cherry picking. So comparing to all other cars on the road is reasonable. BTW ABS has been mandatory for all cars since 2004 the average age of a car in the United States is 11.8 this largely invalidates the ABS argument.

 

I never said it was a BS statistic. It's just a heavily biased statistic, and I explained why.


I think the 1997 Honda was just an example meant to represent all of the vehicles that do not have driver assistance systems. That should have been obvious, sorry if it wasn't.

Yes, I think that number might be enough to influence the statistic. That's why I brought it up.


I don't have the numbers because I didn't conduct the study. I think the stat is disingenuous (and I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks so). It's a statistic, sure, but it has an inherent bias towards Tesla because, as explained previously, it compares Autopilot-equipped Teslas with all other US vehicles on the road. I don't know how to make my point more clear, so I'll just leave it at that.

 

Bottom line is a Tesla using autopilot is much better than other cars on average, there has been no attempt to hide underlying numbers so what's the problem? A win is a win especially when it comes to safety. If other driver assistance tech is as good or better than Tesla then fantastic.

 

Wonder if they figured out yet if the guy in the most recent Tesla Autopilot crash a week ago or so was in the driver's seat or if he crawled out of it trying to escape.

 

For clarity:
This is a year old but should be about the same now (probably better since autopilot keeps improving).

Not only is Tesla better than other cars on average but autopilot in a Tesla is safer than not using it.

 

agree, a statistical comparison to all cars on average isn’t really a useful comparison when used to claim Tesla safety superiority.

Have there been any studies specifically comparing Tesla safety to modern cars with modern safety systems built the same era? That would be a more compelling discussion and proof point.

 

Then compare Tesla to Tesla if you chose to discount any comparison to other cars.

 

The problem is too many people are too stupid to use autopilot appropriately, and will try to shift blame when they get into a crash.