A Tesla mystery: Why didn't auto-braking stop these crashes?

[kj]

I think a lot of accidents people are involved in are quite WTF, so you look at which works out better generally. I don't think automated driving would have to work that well to beat out humans. Plus, you can improve the machines.

[ztirffritz]

I view Tesla's Autopilot like this joke from Scouts.

Steve and Mark are camping when a bear suddenly comes out and growls. Steve starts putting on his tennis shoes.
Mark says, “What are you doing? You can’t outrun a bear!”
Steve says, “I don’t have to outrun the bear—I just have to outrun you!”

Tesla just needs to build a system that's quantifiably as good or better than most drivers. That's a LOW bar in reality.

[sekker]

Do you know who knows Teslas are safe to drive? My insurance company. My rates on a new Tesla is far lower than I expected or other comparable cars.

In 3-5 years, the insurance companies will declare what’s working - or not. And my bet would be on Tesla to continue to reduce the total cost of ownership.

[davester]

I've driven Teslas over long distances and their autopilot system definitely makes driving safer, no question. It also requires the driver to engage with driving, otherwise it disables itself and forces you to drive manually. The only problem with the Tesla system is that people have figured out how to intentionally disable or hack their way around the safeguards built into the system. Those people are the problem, not the Tesla technology and they should be prosecuted for their irresponsibility and stupidity. I think that Tesla should make those safeguards less hackable, but the crashes that do occur are always the fault of the driver, not the system. For the forseeable future the driver is always the responsible party.

[sekker]

F/U: In my household, I am very pleased our insurance is not charging me a premium for our Tesla Model Y. It's only a little higher than our 2017 Volt, for example, with the Tesla primary driver not a perfect record (though clean last 5+ years); the Volt driver has a clean record for 25+.

But it looks like I am an outlier. Most of the data on the web is that Teslas are a little higher to insure than the average comparable ICE vehicle.

For example:

https://www.way.com/blog/cost-of-tesla-car-insurance/

I had also missed that Tesla is now running its own insurance company - but only works in CA at the moment.

The slightly higher insurance cost is a net balance of 1) much safer car in general so medical etc costs are lower and 2) higher cost of repairs due to only one source of parts, and many Teslas are moving to unibody etc construction that makes partial rebuilds harder.

[ztirffritz]

Tesla Insurance starts in TX next week. WA, NY and I think FL are next I think.

[Lux Interior]

I thought emergency braking only worked at low speeds?

My 2020 Murano has it, but it only works below something like 25 MPH. It;s not meant to brake down from high speed.

It will also brake for adaptive cruise, but that's not meant to stop at high speeds, just slow down.