Tesla

The New York Times reported the death of two men in Texas, in a car crash that involved the popular Tesla. The report quotes Mark Herman, a constable who revealed that on the basis of the evidence from the scene it is to be believed that no one drove the car. Further, the story mentions that it was a 2019 Model S vehicle, was going at a high speed, and a statement from the wives of the deceased clearly states that it was Tesla and they were speaking about its autopilot mode. 

Now let us keep this piece of information aside for some time and look at the recent Tesla Vehicle Safety Report and Elon Musk’s tweet on the same. Contradictory to the news reports of accidents involving Tesla making rounds on the internet, the new safety report for Q1 2021, released by the company indicates the lower chances of accidents when the autopilot feature is on in the vehicle. 

Let us see what the report says: 

“In the 1st quarter, we registered one accident for every 4.19 million miles driven in which drivers had Autopilot engaged. For those driving without Autopilot but with our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 2.05 million miles driven. For those driving without Autopilot and without our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 978 thousand miles driven. By comparison, NHTSA’s most recent data shows that in the United States there is an automobile crash every 484,000 miles.”

This affirmative report comes amidst a scenario wherein Tesla is under the scrutiny of federal regulators. The ongoing investigation by the National Highway Safety Administration of 23 crashes according to the NYT spanning the last five years has laid the light of suspicion on this popular self-driving car. However, commenting on the recent Texas car crash involving two deaths, Elon Musk’s tweet says, “Data logs recovered so far show Autopilot was not enabled & this car did not purchase FSD. Moreover, standard Autopilot would require lane lines to turn on, which this street did not have.” This was in response to a person’s tweet elaborating Tesla’s innocence. 

Tesla’s autopilot feature uses eight surround cameras with 360-degree visibility around the car within a range of 250 meters. They have twelve updated ultrasonic sensors to aid the vision and detect objects. A forward-facing radar gives information about the external conditions and can see through heavy rain, fog, etc. The car houses a computer with high computing power and autopilot enables the car to steer, accelerate, and break automatically under active supervision from the driver. 

Elon Musk, in his tweet, said that Tesla engaged with autopilot can have a 10 times lower chance of accident than an average vehicle. This statement and the safety report are analyzed by Electrek, an American news website by comparing the safety report data from 2020 and 2021. The report reveals that the likeliness of getting into accidents with engaged autopilot has actually gone up since last year.

For instance, in the 2nd and 3rd quarter of the 2020 safety report, with autopilot engaged, one accident was registered every 4.53 and 4.59 million miles driven respectively. But, it went down to one accident per 4.19 million miles in 2021. The distance in which an accident occurs has reduced indicating a concern. Although it might differ when we take into account the whole year’s data. 

Considering that all these car crashes are under investigation and have not yet arrived at a legal conclusion, it becomes vague to blame Tesla outrightly. These cars were one of the initial steps towards bringing artificial intelligence and smart driving into self-driving cars and commercializing it. Tesla’s attempt to provide transparent data about safety is something to be appreciated and we are yet to reach a confirmation if these cars actually led to so many accidents. Since Tesla has clearly stated on its website that these autopilot cars need active supervision, we should ponder on whether the drivers are actually aware of it and take necessary measures.