"NHTSA's Flawed Autopilot Safety Study Unmasked (2019) - The safety regulator's claim that Autopilot reduces crashes by 40% was based on flawed data and analysis, which it attempted to keep secret.":
https://www.thedrive.com/tech/26455/nhtsas-flawed-autopilot-...
1. NHTSA has reiterated that its data came from Tesla, and has not been verified by an independent party (as it noted in a footnote in the report).
2. Second, it says its investigators did not consider whether the driver was using Autopilot at the time of each crash. (Reminder: Drivers are only supposed to use Autopilot in very specific contexts.)
3. And third, airbag deployments are an inexact proxy for crashes.
... which all sound like really flimsy reasons to conclude "doesn't stack up." A more honest summary based on those would be something like "hasn't been verified by a 3rd party yet."
It's incredible how openly the media makes things up about Tesla, likely just to generate page impressions.
The primary issue is that the data doesn't adjust for road classification in any way. Highway driving, where autopilot is used, has considerably fewer crashes per mile than city driving. Tesla compared Autopilot's rates against all driving rather than just highway driving which would be the relevant metric.
That adjustment alone almost completely eliminates any safety advantage of Autopilot before you get into any of the other adjustments like age.
Tesla’s data shows autopilot is safer (crashes less) than not on autopilot. The only question mark I’ve seen in this discussion is on NHTSAs data regarding Tesla.
Could you explain the flaw in Tesla data? How is crashes/mile not a good proxy for safety?
