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I ride a motorcycle and can pretty easily spot patterns of distracted driving, but after buying a truck with some ride height, it is amazing how many people are regularly on/touching their phone for something while driving. On the order of 50-75% in a city environment. After this recent revelation I'm almost more amazed at how few accidents there are given the sheer number of cell phone addicts.

This. Every study suggesting holding a cellphone is equally risky to drunk driving must be false.

I rode a commuter bus for years and saw the exact same thing you describe, and no one would seriously suggest 50-75% of drivers are (equivalently) drunk.

>Every study suggesting holding a cellphone is equally risky to drunk driving must be false.

Or drunk driving isn’t as dangerous as previously thought.

Or there’s many more drunk drivers than previously thought.

I don’t necessarily agree with either of those, but the point is there are many possible explanations and we should be careful about jumping to conclusions.

A better way of refuting those claims is to find flaws in their methodology

The flaw is obvious. People put their phones down when their semi-subconscious driving “algorithm” detect anything out of the ordinary. At that point, they bring their full attention to whatever weirdness is going on. This tends to happen with drivers no matter if they’re absorbed in the radio or just lost in their thoughts. I’d guess that the amount of driving time matters a great deal here.

Inebriated is much different. They are less likely to notice something in the first place because their senses are deadened. If they do notice, their full attention while intoxicated is much less as is their ability to rationally make decisions. There’s no way to un-distract if something gains.

The issue with drunk driving and texting is not that they can’t focus but can they when they have to. Unless someone’s slam dunk, they can. It’s the time to react when something happens that’s the problem.

With texting and driving there are other major daily hassles. A common scenario for me as I walk my dog is that I no longer assume a car will yield on a crosswalk - even the ones with a stop sign or a signal. May be the impact is that few people bike or walk? Or walk elsewhere like a trail or a park instead of sidewalk and neighborhoods? End of the day, it’s about what we want as a society. If we decide that people should be allowed to focus on their phone, we have to start redesigning the streets now.

Not just as a pedestrian, even as a driver I don’t assume I can go in green light anymore. People seem to miss red lights on the regular now

I don’t assume that a car is going to stop at a crosswalk or stop sign until I can see the driver’s eyes and tell that they are aware of me and are stopping. Otherwise I wait. I have done this since much before mobile phones were a problem.

It was new to me that cars even stop for me. But there was a brief period ‘12-‘16 may be, where I truly felt comfortable walking and biking. This was before Uber and lyft and also before smartphones where this addictive. Most people where still browsing Facebook on their computers.

Was this 1912? It'd be weird because that would make you very old, but it's even weirder to read someone saying cellphones were not very addictive in 2015.

This is true, but people can also judge ahead of time when problems are more likely to occur, letting them put down the cellphone and pay attention to the road when it is more likely they'll need to react quicker.

I'd also guess most people are not constantly on their phones as they are checking notifications/texts and that kind of thing, so you get more of an on-and-off effect rather than just being consistently drunk for the entire duration.

Not that it makes the practice any better, but it does seem like a complicating factor when trying to frame the problem in terms of drunk driving.

>People put their phones down when their semi-subconscious driving “algorithm” detect anything out of the ordinary.

I think this ignores the fact that people can’t actually pay attention to more than one thing at a time, generally. Meaning, they aren’t simultaneously looking at their phone and being vigilant of “weirdness” That switching overhead from one focus to the other may be enough to delay reactions to cause accidents.

So while they’re not offline, the sensory input cycle is slowed enough to be much less useful.

Is that what the comparison is saying or that being on the phone is just as not in controll as one thinks the same as if someone was drunk and thinks they are just tipsy. I never read it saying it was a percentage of drivers doing that was the same. I'd definitely be willing to say that >75% of drivers are at some point in a drive unattentive because they are looking/operating a device.

> it is amazing how many people are regularly on/touching their phone for something while driving

Yep. About 10 years ago, I took a bus from Boston to Hartford and I spent most of my time looking down into cars along the highway.

Aside from drivers looking at their phones, I saw people block their entire field of view by unwrapping burgers and lifting them up to eat, fixing their clothing, makeup, etc.

I’ve only driven a Tesla with Autopilot once, for ten minutes or so. By the end of it, I was struck by how much more time I was spending looking far ahead, or looking in the mirrors for longer. It felt like I switched to farther-field situational awareness once I was confident the car wouldn’t rear end the dude in front of me.

So if attentiveness is measured as “staring at the license plate in front of me”, my attentiveness went down. But I felt safer since I was looking hundreds of yards down the road for situations I might have to handle or avoid, at a longer timescale.

This is how I feel as well (having driven many miles with a Comma), but I have no idea if I represent an average driver or if my perceived attentiveness matches what is really happening.

I do think that it is very easy for me to spend longer looking at a screen or button when the autopilot is driving for me, since there is no immediate penalty (lane line, rumble strips, etc) for looking away.

You don’t need autopilot for that though - I do the same in my car with basic traffic adaptive cruise control.

Do people really stare at the license plate in front of them anyways, though? It was made quite clear during driver training courses many years ago not to do this and that your glance pattern should always start and return to near the horizon (whether that be hundreds of yards in a city, or miles away on a highway).

I've always had the opposite problem, if I'm not maintaining situational awareness to the horizon, I'll inevitably fall asleep after an hour or two out of sheer boredom. I prefer to drive long distances in manual-transmission vehicles (there's more to do!), and commercial vehicles with loads requiring careful management of engine RPM are even better. Those I can drive for 10-12 hours in a day without issue. I never saw myself as anything other than an ordinary driver.

In my case, a Tesla autopilot is the worst possible compromise. It removes enough attention requirements that it feels much harder to stay attentive, but without automating the process completely. Other people I've talked to that operate large pieces of mechanical equipment have often said similar things about automation that it's best to either be a) fully manual or b) fully automated for some duration of time.

"I felt safer since I was looking hundreds of yards down the road for situations I might have to handle or avoid, at a longer timescale."

I was taught to do this while driving. It was a basic lesson in "Driver's Ed".

Making it a habit though is a different thing. For me that was easier because it was one of the things that pro racers mentioned they did as well.

That is certainly a key to avoiding accidents. Others would be always keeping a safe distance between you and the cars in front of you and what's going on behind and around you.

I made a habit when I first started driving to always stay focused on the task of driving. I almost never turn on the radio or play music. That's because I want to hear what's going on around me.

The best advice I ever got was from a California Highway Patrol officer who told me "Drive like everyone is trying to crash into you".

Where I live now almost everywhere I drive it's on curvy two lane mountain roads. Most have a 55mph limit with curve signs as low as 25mph. We also have deer by the thousands here, and they forage at night. You really have to pay attention to just to stay on the road and not hit deer.

There is no way I'd trust a Tesla to drive me around here (or anywhere for that matter).

> "Drive like everyone is trying to crash into you"

That advice (for cyclists) was also in one of Neal Stephenson's early novels, Zodiac... I've found it useful. Now I just get annoyed when drivers insist on yielding to pedestrians and cyclists when they don't need to, it would be faster if they didn't and they aren't blocking any other traffic. The driver feels like they've helped, I guess, but the pedestrians are not safer.

"That should be the question."

No. That is NOT the question... because... Autopilot and FSD software suite users are required to remain attentive and ready to intervene in case o a software failure (often seen in many YouTube videos). But because they obviously, become inattentive, Autopilot usage is actually much more dangerous than having the drivers drive their cars by themselves.

It creates complacency because the moment a driver physically removes feet from the pedals and hands from the steering wheel, his or her mind cannot maintain focus on two things at the same time.

What are those two things an Autopilot user needs to perform simultaneously? First is watching the car's surroundings, the traffic around the vehicle. Second is watching and trying to understand software behavior in those constantly changing traffic situations.

No average Joe, college kid, grandma or grandpa is capable of focusing on two things at the same time in constant life and death environment.

Airplane pilots are not average Joes and they are constantly trained to understand flying Autopilot software limitations and capabilities in a lot less stressful and busy traffic environments, two of their main job requirements being discipline and responsibility. That is not the case with the average driver on the road.

I think OP is right with what the ultimate question should be.

Let's agree that a normal driver without autopilot (ND) is mostly attentive, with occasional attention lapses (frequency depending on the individual).

That same normal driver according to MIT, is less attentive when using an autopilot system - let's call this autopilot distraction (AD).

However, the Autopilot system, despite its weaknesses, likely offers some extra safety benefit (ASB) - especially if it can somewhat counteract the attention lapses that a normal driver would have.

So the question becomes, does the autopilot's marginal benefit outweigh the autopilot distraction?

Is: ND > (ND - AD + ASB)?

However, determining this would be difficult without real-world testing. In the real world, the factor which matters most is whether accidents happen (kind of the Overall Survival of this experiment) - which is why testing the real-world accident rate is important - and is ultimately the important question.

Autopilot creates a false sense of safety, as long as the people that payed for it and are eventually using it, are (by their own standards that made them buy it) not good at driving and not interested to get better at it.

But the fallacy stands in the numbers where Autopilot “safety report” is presented by Tesla and compared to average drivers performances.

Why a fallacy? Because the human driver drives everywhere, at any time, in any weather conditions and on all drivable roads. The Autopilot goes on and off based on how drivable the environment is by the Autopilot system detection done by the sensors involved. In addition to that, up to this point, almost all of its errors where caught and corrected by its users, so no one could actually estimate what would happen if Autopilot owners would let the software do the driving for 100%, same thing the humans do.

Also, once disconnected from the driving system (feet off the pedals and hands off the steering wheel) the driver would need up to 20 seconds (or even more) to reconnect and fully understand what the car does and what the traffic around is like. That is a recipe for disaster while every second the situation changes inside and outside the car.

The autopilot system, including the inattentive driver, is the system currently. We don't need to test what happens if ONLY the software drivers, that is not is what happening.

Based on my own observation, Tesla drivers, despite being supposedly inattentive, catch a fair number of errors in autopilot. So they are part of the system.

That factor (human involvement, even if imperfect) coupled with the overall safety of the tesla approach (which includes safety benefits in a whole range of areas) may mean that despite this supposed "expose" of the "inattentive" driver the system is safer overall.

One thing folks "exposing" tesla drivers seem to assume is that non-tesla drivers are very good drivers. They are not. It's takes minutes looking into cars to see this. I was just next to a non-tesla road rager who nearly caused three accidents trying to get at this truck.

If places like MIT did some more actual studies on system effectiveness I'd be REALLY curious at fatality rates etc for folks driving Teslas in a normal way, yes, in driving in ANY kind of weather.

Same thing with emergency vehicle accidents which made the news. How many first responder fatalities were caused by Tesla's vs non Tesla vehicle? It could turn out that many / most are caused by inattentive gas powered no auto-pilot cars that are the ones actually killing first responders.

I was tempted to not reply, as some of what you wrote feels like it's verging into axe-to-grind / genuinely crazy / TSLAQ territory, but here goes...

> Autopilot creates a false sense of safety, as long as the people that payed for it and are eventually using it, are (by their own standards that made them buy it) not good at driving and not interested to get better at it.

Or... there are people that are good attentive drivers who buy it as a driver aid - to minimise tiredness on long journeys?

> But the fallacy stands in the numbers where Autopilot “safety report” is presented by Tesla and compared to average drivers performances.

Yes, the methodology of the safety report is probably flawed, but that's a totally different subject.

> Also, once disconnected from the driving system (feet off the pedals and hands off the steering wheel)

...which isn't how Autopilot currently works - you are asked to maintain contact with the steering wheel and have to prove it by providing torque on the wheel every few seconds. (Yes,

> the driver would need up to 20 seconds (or even more) to reconnect and fully understand what the car does and what the traffic around is like. That is a recipe for disaster while every second the situation changes inside and outside the car.

...really, just... what?

a) where does this (frankly ludicrous) 20 seconds statistic come from? b) you're not accounting for (the many?) people who might not be actively driving when Autopilot is functioning (that's the point, of course) but are still watching the road, mirrors, maintaining situational awareness, etc.

You can't just compare attentive Tesla drivers (where you're probably projecting your own self onto this driver) with the worst non-Tesla drivers.

You have to compare the worst Tesla drivers to the worst drivers in regular vehicles. Average Tesla drivers to average drivers of regular vehicles, etc.

And I'm not sure a simulator is the best comparison.

No. The MIT study exclusively selected the data of 19 drivers in Boston and only selected AP disengagements "on free-flow highways (min speed when AP was active was above 30 mph) in daylight (cameras were not infrared) that are not safety critical (no system warnings and no sustained deceleration above 3 m/s )."

Its findings were that drivers paid more attention before engagement and after engagement than when AP was engaged.

Tesla publishes data on accident rates with and without autopilot, and the rate with autopilot engaged is lower. The problem is, that data is mostly meaningless because people don't use autopilot in conditions when an accident is most likely to occur.

I suppose you'd have to compare against only manual driving in good conditions to make a fair comparison. Not sure that data exists anywhere.

> Not sure that data exists anywhere.

Shouldn't Tesla create that data - research the issue - before giving people autopilot?

Governments are responsible for setting safety standards, and enforcing that they do.

Tesla is responsible for the consequences of their actions. If their cars exploded when hitting potholes, and the government didn't stop them, Tesla is still responsible.

The study doesn't say if it's bad or good. They just say that attention decreases with Autopilot is on.

The question you ask is completely different and thus, not brought into the article.

> Did MIT study whether the "inattentive" drivers had higher accident rates and fatality rates than other drivers?

> That should be the question.

Why should that be the question? If the feature is dangerous, removing it will improve safety. If there are more dangerous features, we can remove those too.

That should be the question because we don’t know if the drivers being inattentive actually lead to anything bad happening, I think. If the drivers are inattentive but there is no downside to that, then it doesn’t really matter.

Because maybe the Tesla features improve safety despite increasing inattentiveness

Because we need to define "dangerous" - the authors and you are making an assumption that what they call "inattention" is the same as "dangerous" whereas the comment you are replying to is questioning that assumption. If the link between "inattention" and accident rates is strong, then measuring that should be equivalent.

In medicine there is a concept of measuring disease-oriented outcomes instead of patient-oriented outcomes, because it's easier to show an intervention affects the disease-oriented outcomes, and much harder to show a change in patient-oriented outcomes.

So for example, a disease-oriented ourcome for hip-replacement surgery would be "range of movement after 2 weeks", patient-oriented might be "can go up a flight of stairs"

The analogy here seems relevant.

>>... Who crashes? The "inattentive" tesla driver? Or the other driver.

That's bullshit.

I'm sure it's safe to assume both crash more than very attentive drivers, which is the only question that matters when it comes to Tesla's autopilot.

What you're really asking is "who'd you rather have smash into you, someone in a Tesla using autopilot, or someone texting on their phone while driving?

This research itself is still valuable, as it proves that drivers become irresponsible with autopilot turned on. I don't get why you connect this to the safety of Tesla vehicles, or maybe I get the reason, but it's unspeakable.

"Individual glance metrics calculated at the epoch-level and binned by 10-s units of time across the available epoch lengths revealed that drivers in near-crashes have significantly longer on-road glances, and look less frequently between on- and off- road locations in the moments preceding a precipitating event as compared to crashes. During on-road glances, drivers in near-crashes were found to more frequently sample peripheral regions of the roadway than drivers in crashes. Output from the AttenD algorithm affirmed the cumulative net benefit of longer on-road glances and of improved attention management between on- and off-road locations."

Then, there's http://www.trb.org/Publications/Blurbs/171327.aspx, but I haven't given them my address. (https://pdf.sciencedirectassets.com/271664/1-s2.0-S000145751...)