Hacker News Reader

You'd really have to look at the number of accidents per mile where people were driving in a single lane on the highway, not the overall number of traffic accidents.

View on HN

If you have better numbers, feel free to mention them. The deaths per mile is for highway driving, and I assumed the deaths:injuries ratio is the same, but that could be wrong.

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.

We need "humans driving in a single lane on a highway" for a control group for the experiment - the number of miles driven by a human in equivalent situations as driven by the Tesla autopilot. It may be possible to "control for other factors" as they say, but I have not seen that done.

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.

I am saying that these aren't the best numbers we have. They just aren't sufficient to make absolute conclusions from. If all accidents happen while turning and autopilot never turns then autopilot would never make driving safer.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com