It's an incredibly low standard, sure, but more lives are saved, and it only to get better from then on.
The only problem is the public's perceived unwillingness to accept such risks in using autopilot.
Not to mention, there's only one datapoint for Autopilot fatalities, which makes any attempt to use it as a statistically significant point useless. Just one more death in the coming months this year would make the number jump significantly above the averages reported in this article. And with the number of potentially deadly autopilot wrecks reported lately, it's inevitable.
Given the number of Autopilot miles driven, you'd only expect one death so far, so that we have one doesn't really tell us anything.
However, injuries from car crashes are (fortunately!) much more common - roughly 60 times as likely. So you'd expect to have about 60 Autopilot incidents resulting in injury by now. I don't really keep up with Tesla news but, based on the reaction to the previous story (where the guy wasn't even injured), I'm going to assume the actual number of injuries is tiny.
I disagree with the "single lane" though: if Autopilot enforces driving in a single lane, and that turns out to be safer, then that's all that counts.
If you don't have a proper control group, the Tesla autopilot will be significantly biased for success because it is dealing with much simpler driving conditions than "in all conditions" human driving.
It's really telling when it is expected that the Autopilot will kill someone.
What is the current death toll of Google's tech?
The Google tech that is driven by professional drivers who take over when required, hasn't killed anyone yet. Do you honestly think there will be zero deaths in a Google vehicle when it's released to the public?
I would not expect an Autopilot to kill me.
You can't claim you have a driverless car (autopilot) when it is expected of the driver to keep their eyes on the road, hands on the wheel and a foot near the brake. That is so over-promising.
You've never flown in a pilotless airplane. Autopilot is not AI.
I think the only thing tesla has over the competition is the willingness to upgrade their cars after they're sold. With everyone else it's basically always going to be how it was when you drove it off the lot.
I imagine VW could also tighten up lane assist to not be as slot car and pick the middle of the lane rather than whatever side of the car is closest to the line.
The system gives multiple warnings that it's in Beta.
>I'm not sure there's much to be gained.
There's miles and miles of data to be gained.
We're now in the world of software and users. "Multiple warnings" aren't enough. Chernobyl had multiple warnings. The car should quit if the driver doesn't have his hands on the wheel during a beta test.
There's also some sort of bias against negative events that are (more) out of your control, I think.
If only the drivers of the test cars were at risk, I would have no objection to what Tesla is doing - in fact, I would try it myself, given the opportunity.
Because it's not actually better than a human driver. It's worse. Much worse.
The statistics cited in the article are for a HUMAN plus autopilot. Not autopilot alone.
Autopilot alone has a very poor track record.
Because it's not. comparing highway death rates to all-roads-and-conditions death rate is completely disingenuous.