Comment by Veserv | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Veserv | Hacker News Reader

If you want to look at the underlying reports they can be found here:

https://www.nhtsa.gov/laws-regulations/standing-general-orde...

In particular here:

https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/ffdd/sgo-2021-01/SGO-2021-01_In...

You can see that Tesla always reports ADAS version as: [REDACTED, MAY CONTAIN CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS INFORMATION].

Almost every other company reports the version almost always if it is known. Some companies have many unknowns, but most of those crash reports seem to be from customer reports which appear to not have associated telemetry.

Of note, most of those reports with unknown version include un-redacted summaries and injury severity information, so they do seem to be good faith efforts, if somewhat lacking in actionable information.

In contrast, Tesla redacts all narrative and does not confirm injury severity. In over 700 cases, around 95% of their reports, they choose not to investigate whether an injury or fatality occurred.

In the ~5% with a confirmed injury/fatality, exactly one has no 3rd party confirmation. The other ~95% have no 3rd party reports of injury/fatality and lo and behold, no injury/fatality is reported.

This is straight up impossible if you look at the crash reports. There are literally tens if not hundreds of high speed oncoming, t-bone, object, and pole collisions all with no recorded injury/fatality. They are absolutely reporting in bad faith.

> In contrast, Tesla redacts all narrative and does not confirm injury severity. In over 700 cases, around 95% of their reports, they choose not to investigate whether an injury or fatality occurred.

Tesla has now "decided" that if active restraints or airbags are not deployed, that incident "does not count going forward".

As an automobile manufacturer, there is no good conscience reasoning that Tesla is unaware that active restraint and airbag systems of today are far more nuanced and weigh multiple criteria when deciding to deploy (as compared to initial/early implementations, which were essentially "if collision=true and speed >= X mph then deploy"). You can have a very significant incident (two that I've witnessed recently as a paramedic involved vehicles into stationary objects at ~30mph) without airbag deployment. But if that was a Tesla in FSD that hit something at 30mph and didn't deploy airbags, well, that's not an accident according to Tesla.

That also doesn't account for "incident was so catastrophic that restraint systems could not deploy", also "not counted" by Tesla. Or just as egregious, "systems failed to deploy for any reason up to and including poor assembly line quality control", also not an accident and also "not counted".

As far as I can tell that has always been their reporting methodology. As can be seen in Column CV, SV (subject vehicle) Any Airbags Deployed?, around 90% of all reports have Tesla airbag deployment. I have not been able to find reliable information on airbag deployment rate in crashes, but it is nowhere near 90%, so the report distribution is statistically unlikely if that was not already their reporting methodology.

> In contrast, Tesla redacts all narrative and does not confirm injury severity. In over 700 cases, around 95% of their reports, they choose not to investigate whether an injury or fatality occurred.

The primary reason why all those Tesla cases lack those details, is that they're reported basically immediately when they happen, because all Teslas are connected to the mothership and report back when it happens.

The NHTSA page even explicitly points it out under the data limitations section, under "Incident Report Data May Be Incomplete or Unverified".

> This means that a reporting entity with access to vehicle telemetry may quickly become aware of an air bag deployment incident subject to the General Order, but it may not become aware of all circumstances related to the crash, such as surface conditions, whether all passengers were belted, or whether an injury occurred.

This is also the reason why Tesla are so overrepresented in the data. Almost no other automaker has connected cars, or are like the GM On-Star a subscription service that not everyone has.

All other reports have to come in manually though actual crash investigations, which can take time. Or not happen at all if nobody thinks those systems might have had been activated/relevant. For example, a car using driver assist technology getting t-boned by a manually driven car at an intersection will likely not raise any alarms about automated systems during crash investigations. But for Tesla they're reported, because they immediately know those cars were in a crash.

So in conclusion, as NHTSA has said, none of the data has been normalized, and lacks important contextual information to properly analyze it, and should thus not be used by itself to draw any conclusions.

> Almost no other automaker has connected cars

Wait, is this true for EVs? I've written off purchasing an EV entirely because I don't want a connected car and I thought they all were. If there are ones that aren't connected, that changes the equation quite a lot.

While I don't know about the details of what all the other EVs have, most of the legacy auto EVs model year 2020 and earlier were basically built on ICE platforms, and mostly have the same features except having an EV drivetrain.

Many models coming out now are on new dedicated EV platforms, so you'd really have to check them to see what connectivity features they might have.

Nothing about EVs require connectivity though, it's just Tesla that have caused a shift in direction in many other automakers.

No. Please do not make up or regurgitate baseless good-sounding bullshit to protect a bad actor.

https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/2023-04/Second-A...

As can be seen on page 16 of the order, outlining request format 1, each reporting entity is required to submit a initial incident report and a follow up updated report 10 days after receiving notice of the incident. This is registered in Column D, Report Type, as 10-day update.

As can be plainly seen in Column D, Report Type, and Column B, Report Version, the vast majority of Tesla reports are on version 2, the second updated report issued 10 days after initial notice of the incident. Most of the remaining, newer, reports are on version 1, a report issued 5 days after notice of the incident as it has not yet been 10-days since the corresponding released NHTSA dataset.

Also note that reporting entities are allowed to voluntarily issue subsequent reports marked as Report Type, Update. Tesla has intentionally chosen to not do any investigation to evaluate the operational or safety characteristics of their incomplete product in use. That is completely and utterly unacceptable for a safety-critical product.

In addition, even if you were not colossally wrong on the nature of the reports, safety-critical systems require a positive proof of safety. You do not get to bet lives on unproven systems. If no proof is available, and no conclusions can be drawn, then it is not acceptable for use. This is the absolute basics of safety-critical system evaluation. The absence of information or inconclusive results is not a defense as you seem to think, it is a admission of guilt.

In conclusion, you are completely wrong in both the particulars of report submission and the generalities of what conclusions can be drawn from the Tesla reporting methodology.

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