For the primary time in additional than a yr, Tesla has released new data presenting how its controversial Autopilot driver assistance technology retains its prospects secure.
The Austin, Texas-based electrical car maker mentioned that it recorded one crash for each 7.63 million miles pushed by U.S. shoppers that enabled Autopilot, which incorporates cruise management and software program that helps drivers hold their automobile inside their lane. Tesla additionally reported one crash for each 955,000 miles pushed by its prospects who didn’t allow the motive force help know-how.
In an announcement posted on its web site, Tesla compares its knowledge to general knowledge collected by U.S. auto security regulators, which, in 2022, discovered one crash for each 670,000 miles pushed on U.S. roads. In different phrases, Tesla claims automobiles outfitted with Autopilot are greater than 11 occasions safer than different automobiles not outfitted with the software program.
However that’s not the complete story.
As Electrek points out, Autopilot is primarily used on U.S. highways, whereas the Nationwide Freeway Transportation Security Administration’s (NHTSA) knowledge considers accidents on all roads. Accidents are extra frequent on metropolis roads and undivided roads. NHTSA knowledge additionally accounts for incidents together with all automobiles, together with vans, buses, and older automobile fashions. It’s not a clear comparability.
Tesla and car security
Tesla started releasing its car security report in 2018 to determine a baseline for Autopilot’s security, evaluating the miles between accidents in its automobiles based mostly on Autopilot utilization (or lack thereof) to the trade’s common. Tesla stopped reporting the information after the final quarter of 2022 with out rationalization — till this week, when it launched the primary quarter 2024 report.
The car security studies have allowed Tesla to constantly tout the success of its Autopilot know-how, even because it started going through a barrage of lawsuits and federal inquiries.
In 2016, a number of individuals would die in incidents associated to Autopilot, together with Joshua Brown of Canton, Ohio. The Tesla fanatic was killed in Florida after his Mannequin S crashed right into a truck, which U.S. auto security regulators later decided was attributable to an over-reliance on Autopilot. The crash was the primary Autopilot-related loss of life within the U.S. and would result in updates to the software program.
A number of crashes would happen sooner or later, a few of which led to lawsuits. Final October, Tesla won its first U.S. jury trial over a deadly Autopilot crash. But the corporate nonetheless faces at least a dozen more cases in the U.S. Final month, Tesla settled a lawsuit over the death of an Apple engineer whose Mannequin X crashed right into a barrier on a California freeway whereas Autopilot was engaged.
Autopilot has been linked to more than 200 crashes and 29 deaths, in response to the NHTSA. The company has opened greater than 50 particular crash investigations into Tesla automobiles considered linked to Autopilot.
Even because the NHTSA closed a years-long inquiry into the know-how final month, it opened another.
The regulator is probing the corporate’s recall of more than 2 million electric vehicles — which make up almost all of Tesla’s automobiles on the street within the U.S. — in December. The NHTSA mentioned it had recognized considerations with the Autopilot software program repair issued to these automobiles. Tesla has been given a July 1 deadline to reply to questions posed by the NHTSA concerning the recall.
Tesla’s additionally confronted prices round deceptive communications.
The corporate has been accused of false advertising by California’s Division of Motor Automobiles and investigated by the state lawyer common’s workplace over its advertising and marketing practices associated to Tesla’s driver help software program. The U.S. Division of Justice can also be investigating whether or not CEO Elon Musk and Tesla’s feedback concerning the know-how may represent as securities fraud or wire fraud.
This text initially appeared on Quartz.
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