07-01-2016, 12:16 AM
Paul F. wrote:
Facts don't matter to people reading these stories... it's going to be "Tesla's system sucks! It doesn't work! They're killing people! Elon Musk is nuts if the thinks people will accept this crappy system!" and Tesla's stock will go down by ten bucks... (whereupon I may buy another share or two... have to think about that).
[quote=space-time]
even if their system failed, it was still more reliable than human drivers, by quite a large margin.
We learned yesterday evening that NHTSA is opening a preliminary evaluation into the performance of Autopilot during a recent fatal crash that occurred in a Model S. This is the first known fatality in just over 130 million miles where Autopilot was activated. Among all vehicles in the US, there is a fatality every 94 million miles. Worldwide, there is a fatality approximately every 60 million miles. It is important to emphasize that the NHTSA action is simply a preliminary evaluation to determine whether the system worked according to expectations.
I agree, but for the family of the victim facts do make a big difference. if one dies because they did a mistake, well, they are a victim of their own mistakes and they paid the ultimate price. But if a car on autopilot makes such a mistake, the family feels their loved one was a victim of some software/hardware failure and they're not going to let it go.
that being said, I would like to see autonomous cars being an order or magnitude safer than humans, as a minimum goal.