Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said that cars operating in Tesla’s Autopilot mode are safer than those piloted solely by human drivers, citing crash rates when the modes of driving are compared. He has pushed the carmaker to develop and deploy features programmed to maneuver the roads, arguing that the technology will usher in a safer, virtually accident-free future. While it’s impossible to say how many crashes may have been averted, the data shows clear flaws in the technology being tested in real time on America’s highways.
Oh, I wasn’t stating that as fact, or ever intending to. The fact of the matter though is that more than 90% of car accidents are caused by human error. If we can eliminate the human error, then we’ll have far fewer people hurt on the roads, even though that means that self-driving cars are going to hurt people. This is merely my point, that we can’t expect self-driving cars to have 0 accidents, but once the tech is good enough (and I acknowledge that it’s not even close yet), we need to be ok with that hard truth.
What makes you think that the tech is already good enough for being tested in the public? The fact is that the incidents revealed by the investigation is much higher than what Tesla has published, Tesla is holding back a lot of relevant data, no one (except Tesla) can say how safe this tech is and whether or not it should be allowed to be tested on the streets.
The fact that many or most car accidents are caused by human error and a lot of other critical points here simply don’t matter here as they have nothing to do with the issue. This is not some application on your smartphone that you can test at your own risk while it is still in beta. This is a car. It kills people, and Tesla is obviously unwilling to disclose the data even to the authorities. As long as this is the case, this tech should not be allowed to be tested in the public space.