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Does anyone have good data on comparing deaths per mile driven between various auto brands?

This data, https://www.tesladeaths.com/, doesn't tell us much if accurate, other than Tesla crashes don't seem to be any kind of real problem in an absolute sense.

Since Tesla is a very young and upscale brand deaths per mile would be very misleading. You need to also account for price range, car type, and age of the vehicle.

There is quite the difference getting into an accident with a 20 year old Honda Accord and a 3 year old Model 3.

And also road setting. Highways (where self driving tech is most commonly used) are the safest per mile.
Ok, still, try to compare it to equivalent brands and socio-economic groups.

My point is that anti Tesla self driving sentiment is almost exclusively driven by emotion, not hard data.

Show me the data that justifies why I need to be afraid of public FSD.

It’s a new technology which no one else is testing in the real world with actual drivers at such a scale. Onus is on Tesla to provide data for others to verify the claim that it’s safe.
I don't think this is a good faith answer; feels more like "I don't have a good answer for why this is a problem, so I'm going to punt it onto you to convince me"
The only ones who have the hard data are Tesla and you are expecting somebody else to provide it. Are you serious?
Disagree. It is a good faith answer which states standard practice for safety standards.

Burden of proof is on Tesla to show that FSD is safe, not on the DMV to prove that it isn't.

You are welcome to argue that this principle is in need of reform. People may or may not agree with you. The discussion might be interesting.

But like it or not, the underlying principle for an exception to an established safety principle is that the burden of proof is on Tesla.

Isn't it a catch 22? How do you provide the data that it is safe without testing it to collect the data?
It would be but Tesla charged ahead and put its vehicles on the road.
Well yes, that is my point. How else would they ever acquire that data if they didn't charge ahead? You are asking them to accomplish an impossible task to release the data without having a way to acquire it.
On an absolute basis, Tesla has more self-driving-related deaths than every other automaker in the world, combined. That doesn't scare you?

On a relative basis, it's even scarier: scaled up to Toyota or GM numbers (in terms of vehicles sold), hundreds of people would be dying each year from self-driving crashes.

But aren’t 10s of thousands of people dying from self-driving crashes?
That sounds a lot better than the tens of thousands that die with humans at the wheel.
Not if you start comparing against miles driven it doesn't.
So far FSD beta has killed 0 people, and other FSD software has killed 1 person. So they seem to be ahead.
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A few hundred people have died on a 5km stretch of road near me in the last couple of years. None of them driving Teslas. Most of them drunk or driving far too fast (50km/h is safe, people often drive 150km/h because shortcut and the stretch literally drives like a race course).
3000 people die every day from Human Driven Cars
Until teslas don't require constant human attention and frequent interventions, this comparison doesn't matter. A human is still technically in control of the car.
So they should work on doing that as soon as possible?
It is well-known that Teslas auto-brake-check cars at highway speeds (not with that intention of course, but same outcome). This is behavior for which non-AI drivers get arrested, for good reason.

That's enough reason to be very wary of Teslas on the road. There are others, but even one is enough.

> Show me the data that justifies why I need to be afraid of public FSD.
AFAIK they have mostly resolved the 'phantom braking' issue now.
Absolute data points like this are pretty much useless, what would be more helpful is a percentage of deaths compared to Teslas out on the road vs. other automakers' cars. Still though, there's so many confounders (weather, types/subsets of customers, etc) that would make it nearly impossible to use this data to judge whether Teslas are safer or more dangerous than Car X or Car Y.
> what would be more helpful is a percentage of deaths compared to Teslas out on the road vs. other automakers' cars

...yeah, that's exactly what I asked for in the first sentence.

Right, but what I'm saying is that that still wouldn't paint the entire picture, there's too many overlapping variables and too few Tesla vehicles relative to market share of other brands to make any sort of sound or critical judgment of their safety.

I'm not defending Tesla here, just stating the obvious. Not a fan of their cars for quite a few reasons

> Does human life have intrinsic value?

Yes? I don't understand your point.

We have limited problem solving resources, which means we need to be smart about how we use those resources to solve the problems that legitimately have the biggest impact on human suffering.

Getting bogged down on issues that are negligible in a relativistic sense, but trigger greater emotional response, is a recipe for failure. See the anti nuclear power movement for example, https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

> We have limited problem solving resources, which means we need to be smart about how we use those resources to solve the problems that legitimately have the biggest impact on human suffering.

Sounds great in principle, but how do self-driving cars fit into that picture?

It fits because humans are objectively shit drives who cause massive amounts of death, suffering, and property damage through car crashes all the time.

Unless there's hard data that FSD is worse than the status quo, attempts to curtail it's use is not only a waste of time, but potentially actively contributing to unnecessary suffering if in fact it's contributing to fewer accidents.

Why should the burden of proof be on the critics? Carmakers shouldn't be able to unleash experimental technology that jeopardizes the lives of pedestrians without credible evidence that it is at least as safe as human drivers
Whatever Tesla is offering, it's not even remotely full self driving. It can't handle much beyond a highway on a sunny day, and even then, they have an unfortunate habit of crashing into stopped emergency vehicles.

Reduction of total cars on the road, in favor of competent mass transit, would do much more to actually reduce suffering. But Musk wants money, not improved quality of life for those who can't afford Teslas. This isn't some rinkydink charity, it's a fat slice of a trillion dollar industry.

>It fits because humans are objectively shit drives who cause massive amounts of death,

Why not maybe don't allow bad drivers to drive at all? Like don't give a license without 40 hours of driving school with a professor, have a test with traffic rules, then have a final test with an official. Have the drivers provide medical proof they are capable, Each time a driver does something dangerous like speeding remove his driving license for a few months, etc. Btw don't give driving licenses to kids could also work.

It is not like we the ONLY solution is AI driven cars, there are a lot of more cheaper solutions, even tech ones like identifying drunk drivers, speed limiting cars to match the road limits etc.

The trouble is it's still quite hard to model who will have a collision next, because collisions each year are still far fewer than the number of drivers. Although from a social standpoint they are too frequent, from a purely statistical point of view they are rare - in the sense of being the sort of event you might model with a poisson distribution. Sure, driving history can give an indication, but ultimately anyone could have one.

This is why when I had over 15 years of perfect driving record I still had to pay £350 in insurance. And the following year I caused a collision (fortunately without injuries). We are all human and fallible.

Sure but statistics show some things, like drunk driving is bad so is AI the ONLY solution to drunk driving? Speeding is also aproblem is AI the ONLy solution to speeding? Texting or losing focus is a problem is Ai driving the ONLY solution?

No, there is more then 1 solution , tech can be used to help with preventing drunk driving, speeding and losing focus. Tech could be used for drive assist to help on tricky situation. Reducing the mass of cars could also help,

IMO the idea that AI driving is the only solution and we shouyld

1 do nothing else and wait for AI

2 rush the AI deployment be

is really bad because

1 we should implement other solutions too

2 we should not rush AI deployment , Tesla fanboys will hate it when some non-Tesla would beta test on their roads and keep the stats secret.

Ah right, I think we're kind of on the same page. Full AI control of driving is likely 20 years away, and we should plan to have human drivers on the roads still for 30+ years. Anything we can do in the interim to improve our societal safety/utility tradeoff is good.
Cars are the primary cause of death for certain age groups! Technologies that meaningfully change the fatality rate (up or down) are of extreme importance to reducing human suffering
> Does anyone have good data on comparing deaths per mile driven between various auto brands?

Not really. Most of the data is based on comparing all sorts of cars against all sorts of other cars.

Even ignoring how many years other brands have been making cars compared to Tesla, car models have very specific demographics they cater to.

Take the Corvette for example, one of the highest deaths per mile, and it's not because the car is inherently unsafe... it just attracts a very specific type of buyer with a very specific purpose in driving.

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Adding in Autopilot makes the comparison even more hopeless since it works best in the absolute easiest situation (basic highways) doesn't work in the hardest ("stroads") and limits speeding.

You could try comparing only cars that have AEB/LKA/etc. but no one seems to have done that (Tesla certainly won't since it doesn't sell their narrative)

FSD would be slightly more interesting, but again, will work best on highways (so people will enable it there more) and also Tesla hasn't shared FSD numbers separately

Tesla has to provide data that its technology works, not the other way around. Public doesn't have to prove or provide data for shit.

Just like drug companies have to prove that their medicines work before FDA approves them to be provided to patients, similarly Tesla has to provide data and prove that it works before it should have been unleashed on public roads since both, drugs and FSD/autopilot, have the capacity to kill if they don't work as designed/promised.

>Does anyone have good data on comparing deaths per mile driven between various auto brands?

Hopefully this evaluation will force Tesla to share the data as the other companies, hopefully the army of fanboys have nothing against transparency.

USA drives 3.225 trillion miles per year, and kills 38000 people, that's about 1 death per 100 million miles. According to the anti Tesla site above, Tesla cars kill 1 person per 200 million miles. That's not accounting for deaths from pollution though
That's....honestly bad.
1 death in 100 million miles driven? that's amazingly good!
It is easy to use statistics bad. For example you can compare all kind of drivers vs Tesla drivers , you don't have teens driving Teslas so stats are not the same.

You can compare all cars vs Tesla and you still have bad stats since Tesla are new and expensive cars, you can't compare with old cheap cars.

You can compare autopilot vs human drivers and is still bad stats because most of autopilot miles are on good conditions on big hihgways so you would need to compare on the exact same roads.

TL:DR you need stats for the similar driver population, similar car prices and age and drive assist, similar roads. The TFA asks for more transparency so we would get more data and maybe we get better stats or more bad statistics, that we need to debug.

Do all the other car companies provide those stats?
They do not sell a self-drivibg feature
No because:

1 they are not alpha/beta testing on public roads

2 not all cars track you, my brother Ford won't call to the homebase with crash info when he hit a dog.

So what's the relevance of the site, that's for non self driving Teslas.

Why would the model/price/class of the car affect the crash rate of a self driving car?

There's data on the other parts of the website. Use the links.
The problem is deaths are so infrequent that it takes many years to get a statistically representative sample. Perhaps at-fault collisions per mile would be a better metric?
In other news, coming to your local bar, high school, and nursing home parking lots: The 2022 Hummer EV with 1,000hp capable of propelling its 9,000+ pounds to 60 mph in 3 seconds or less. Legally operable by anyone with a pulse[0].

I'm not sure its the AI drivers of the future that worry me.

[0]Just about. https://www.gmc.com/electric/hummer-ev

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Given the rate that non China/Tesla companies make EVs I wouldn't worry, they'll have sold about 12 by 2025
Sure took long enough, do your jobs already. The general public shouldn't be forced to share roads with FSD Beta vehicles having a tendency to veer into oncoming traffic among other unpredictable and dangerous behaviors shown in various twitter videos. Nevermind the autopilot failures smashing into stopped emergency vehicles and semi trailers.

I'm pro-EV but Tesla is a reckless shit show.

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When you say "having a tendency to," how often exactly does that happen?

Have you been able to watch Twitter videos of all driving situations FSD is exposed to, or was your research biased to "videos that get a lot of views," itself a subset of "FSD driving that was caught on camera"?

I think it's fair to view Telsa's FSD as a single (very prolific) driver.

If there were multiple viral videos of a single person veering into oncoming traffic, I wouldn't care how many hours of video there was of them NOT veering into oncoming traffic there was tbh, I would still like to see some intervention.

No, that's not how you make reasonable policy. That's just listening to your gut reaction to such a video. Gut reactions do not work at this scale because this "single prolific driver" drives far more than a human in their lifetime. Therefore even rare events become common. Put a different way, as driven distances goes up the probability of having some scary event approaches 1. What we want to know at which rate it approaches 1. Twitter videos don't tell us that.
And are you advocating that the public policy be to allow these self driving tests without knowing how reckless they are?
No, I'm saying we should look at the actual data to make a decision to see if they're worse than human drivers and whether potential future payoffs of improved self-drivings are not worth running the experiment any further without modifications. Additionally we should also look at the first derivative, even if the numbers are bad today they might be on a trajectory where they'll be great soon.
So why does Tesla not release the actual data?

That would likely convince the DMV, and opponents. Just think of the win in terms of PR.

They should, no disagreement there. But as outlined above people should also look at such data carefully.
I am Elon fanboy number 987689. I’m a major in the Elon fanboy army, bootlicker division. I’m a mindless idiot who has no thoughts of his own. I am here to report to you from the scripted list of thoughts I am allowed to have from Tesla HQ. According to the Tesla chip in my brain, a real driver who drove as many miles as FSD would probably have many accidents too given the miles. FSD isn’t one driver because it’s constantly changing and updating, and not appreciating this is why people get it wrong so often — FSD of just a few months ago was night and day different and much worse. For each twitter video of FSD making a mistake there are 1000 videos of it demonstrating the fact that it is bar none the most advanced self driving system in the world by a mile. It’s just a fact and readily apparent if you simply watch the videos of the various systems. As long as your hand is kept on the wheel then FSD seems to be very safe even in the event of an intervention, most twitter videos they are doing it wrong frankly. It’s a fact that if they decide to destroy FSD with regulation that it will be a massive setback to self driving and also one of the coolest projects in the world right now. I would rather they didn’t.
Analogies often mislead. A single driver even a "very prolific" one is not driving hundreds of millions of miles a year.

Thought experiment: view all cars as a single imperfect product that kills 1.3 million people and injures tens of millions every year - vast majority due to poor driving. What's you solution? And make it fast - another 1.3 million will die this year.

How many of the 10000ish FSD beta cars have crashed?
This topic aside, I guess I just feel like if the Hacker community is saying “don’t build things! It’s dangerous! What if someone gets hurt! Go DMV! Put a stop to that!”, then maybe I don’t want to be a Hacker anymore.
There's good and bad ways to develop new technologies. It is our responsibility to champion the good and call out the bad. If not us, the people who actually understand and build the technology - then who?

[edit] I'm pro EPA too btw, its nice that rivers don't catch fire.

If EPA regulations stood in the way of saving a million lives a year, yeah it would be a bad way to develop new technologies. We know humans are terrible drivers leading to countless tragedies. Tesla FSD is far from working at the moment, nobody is claiming otherwise. But it requires a human supervisor, and this is enforced by a driver facing camera. That combination likely makes it safer than the average driver already today.

What I'm seeing is that Tesla's appraoch, fleet learning, is likely to accelerate the advent of L4. If Tesla can solve this using the existing cheap camera sensors, they can scale this out incredibly fast. This year they are likely to produce upwards of 2 million vehicles, and by 2025 it's likely close to 6-7 million. Even if other self-driving solutions get there first, they have no way of reaching Tesla's scale as they need specialized sensors and partnerships with OEMs etc.

Consider the possibility that I'm right. By stoking fears and getting FSD banned or delayed, many lives would be lost in the name of safety, when there has been no fatality recorded on FSD.

If saving lives were paramount would we not just be advocating for more trains?

I think this is simply a cost-saving measure. They have not developed a sufficiently reliable system, they are marketing it as though it is, and putting it on the road. I strongly suspect that they do not in fact require more data to perfect this system - I suspect they need more sensors. If they do need more data, they're free to obtain it otherwise.

Autopilot has tried to murder me a few times lol.

> What I'm seeing is that Tesla's appraoch, fleet learning

I don't want to see that experimental learning happening on public roads which are shared by people who are not willing participants in the experiment.

Every time a Tesla crashes into a barrier killing the driver that is sad, but at least they chose that fate so ok.

When Teslas cause damage to other cars or humans who didn't want to be part of the alpha program, that's criminal.

Can you point me to a time where $BIGCORP leveraging mass public testing of 5,000 lb heavy machinery to get around actually having to pay for testers was considered part of the hacker ethos?
What percentage of cars is enough for you to say "mass public testing"?
Why on earth is it supposed to be a percentage of all cars on the road?

If I say I just ate a lot of rice, do I define how much rice I ate by the percentage of global rice consumption I accounted for?

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Please, 2,000 cars is mass testing.

I didn't realise part of being a hacker was being okay with endangering lives.
We all endanger lives every time we get behind the wheel of a manually driven car.
We individually endanger lives, presumably the people who made your car have not added it to an army of self-endangering cars.

It's not like there's nothing between 0 safety features and FSD. We could just have passive safety features like AEB and LKA and get a ton of benefit over nothing...

If you endanger lives every time you get behind the wheel of a car, you shouldn't be driving.

Millions of people are able to drive safely, and do, every minute of every day.

Millions of people think they are able to drive safely. But 9 of 10 crashes are still caused by human error.

73 per cent of American drivers consider themselves above average [0].

[0] https://www.insurancejournal.com/magazines/mag-editorsnote/2...

I don't doubt that there are many safe drivers out there, but probably fewer than we think. With modern cars, you can risk a lot before having an accident.

There was some interesting comment a few months ago about the "human error" aspect of crashes.

Basically saying that the quoted statistic (90% or whatever) is a way to NOT look at how road design contributes to the error.

Earlier on this threat, someone commented that a road marked as 50 mph often has cars driving 150 mph on it, because it is a shortcut which is build like a racetrack. Obviously 150mph in a 50mph zone is human error, but a few simple changes to road design could take away the 150mph attractiveness of this road.

Or see some of the articles on stroads, or badly placed left turns, etc.

FSD might be a step to better road safety, but a focus on designing roads for safety might also be a good step.

Sure, and since we're part of the hacker community, we're doing some biohacking on ourselves before getting behind the wheel, right? You know, thc and microdosing LSD for creativity. A few shots of alcohol for easing social situations and anxiety. All while wearing a special VR headset that gives us a 360 degree view from the top of the car, of course. That's safe and not frowned upon when on public roads.
many people who build computer systems build systems that endanger lives. It's a tradeoff in modern society.
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How does revisiting approach to regulate public self-driving test translate to dont build things in your opinion? To me if looks like no one has issues with building or testing, its just the public testing that there are concerns about.
Sure, why do we even need DMV and driver's license. Anyone and of any age should be allowed to drive, since who cares it's dangerous since hackers want it that way. Who is DMV to tell someone whether they can or cannot drive.

While we're at it, let's argue that FDA shouldn't worry about drug/vaccine trials? Perhaps as soon as a company makes something, it should be given to the people, since hackers. I'm sure pharma companies will love that, human lives be damned.

It would actually be nice if the FDA just published an opinion and let me make the choice whether I wanted to use the drug or not.
Wholeheartedly agree. I don't give much weight to the negativity on HN anymore. VR bad, crypto bad, Tesla bad, autonomous vehicles bad, billionaires in space bad.

To me it's pretty clear that Tesla's audatiousness in pushing FSD could move up the advent of L4 by years, possibly saving hundreds of thousands of lives, for very little downside. In fact, I believe human+FSD is already safer on average, just due to the fact that FSD requires the driver to watch the road.

> In fact, I believe human+FSD is already safer on average, just due to the fact that FSD requires the driver to watch the road.

Are you saying that 'Full Self Driving' is safer because it is not full self driving?

Yes, the combination of FSD and human may be safer. Deploying it at scale allows Tesla to accelerate the progress towards true FSD, at which point humans would not have to pay attention.
> To me it's pretty clear that Tesla's audatiousness in pushing FSD could move up the advent of L4 by years, possibly saving hundreds of thousands of lives, for very little downside. In fact, I believe human+FSD is already safer on average, just due to the fact that FSD requires the driver to watch the road.

I have no idea why that's clear to you. Seems to me from the FSD Beta videos that not only Tesla isn't in the same ballpark yet as the companies that are going for offering geofenced L4, but it doesn't seem to be improving much. Then there's the fact they've handcuffed themselves by widely promising/releasing the product with the hardware customers already have.

It’s genuinely some new form of conservatism. Imagine if the phone phreakers had stopped and given up “because someone might get hurt”. Imagine a hacker forum in the 80s cheering on the FCC. To be clear I don’t care about Tesla here - just the attitude of my peers.

I want my culture back.

Yes, if.

If that is what the community is saying.

May I suggest an alternate "if", based not just on your statement, but on the general tone of this whole article?

I just feel like if the Hacker community is saying "react emotionally based on if we like Tesla or not and just yell at each other without trying to communicate", then maybe I don't want to be a Hacker anymore.

This is such a sad take - "move fast and break things" becomes a bad approach when you are breaking bones. It's always a risk reward tradeoff and in this case it's up to Tesla to demonstrate that the risk is manageable.
Move fast and break your own things, not my things. I don't have equity.
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Also you dont seem to realize that the corrupt CA Air Resources Board calls the shots because they need Tesla to stay afloat to sell carbon credits to the rest of the car industry otherwise there is no electric car in the US.
good. Tesla owners have been complaining about phantom braking for a while now with the new update. I would hate to be behind a Tesla that phantom brakes in the middle of the highway even if I come to a complete stop, the person behind me may not stop in time.
Why doesn't the government force Tesla to do a randomised controlled trial? You get in a Tesla and ask it to drive you to your destination. The Tesla flips a digital coin and either agrees to drive you, or tells you to drive yourself. After 10 million such trips you can see who is the better driver - Tesla or human?
Because it's in beta.

Once self driving is a thing the government should make the cars do a billion mile driving test in a simulation they design, with all possible crazy things happening