US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash

Will the review assess overall mortality of the vehicles compared to similar cars, and overall mortality while FSD is in use?

No, that is not part of a review. They may use some reference aggregated industry data, but it's out of scope to answwer the question I think you're trying to imply.

Lawyers are not known for their prowess in mathematics, let alone statistics.

Making these arguments from the standpoint of an engineer is counterproductive.

Yes, if tesla complies and provides that data

I get where you’re coming from and would also be interested to see, but based on the clips I’ve seen that wouldn’t be enough in this case. Of course the bias is inherent in what people choose to post (not normal and not terrible/litigable), but I think there’s enough at this point to perceive a stable pattern.

Long story short, my argument is this: it doesn’t matter if you reduce serious crashes from 100PPM to 50PPM if 25PPM of those are new crash sources, speaking from a psychological and sociological perspective. Everyone should know that driving drunk, driving distracted, driving in bad weather, and in rural areas at dawn or dusk is dangerous, and takes appropriate precautions. But what do you do if your car might crash because someone ahead flashed their high beams, or because the sun was reflecting off another car in an unusual way? Could you really load up your kids and take your hands off the wheel knowing that at any moment you might hit an unexpected edge condition?

Self driving cars are (presumably!) hard enough to trust already, since you’re giving away so much control. There’s a reason planes have to be way more than “better, statistically speaking” — we expect them to be nearly flawless, safety-wise.

> But what do you do if your car might crash because someone ahead flashed their high beams, or because the sun was reflecting off another car in an unusual way?

These are -- like drunk driving, driving distract, and driving in bad weather -- things that actually do cause accidents with human drivers.

Which is why they are the wrong people to run the country

The point is the choice of taking precaution part that you left out of the quote. The other day I was taking my kid to school, and when we turned east the sun was in my eyes and I couldn't see anything, so I pulled over as fast as I could and changed my route. Had I chosen to press forward and been in an accident, it is explainable (albeit still unfortunate and often unnecessary!). However, if I'm under the impression that my robot car can handle such circumstances because it does most of the time and then it glitches, that is harder to explain.

This language is a bit of a sticking point for me. If you're drunk driving or driving distracted, there's no "accident". You're intentionally doing something wrong and committing a crime.

If you're trying to hint at Tesla's own stats, then at this point those are hopelessly, and knowingly, misleading.

All they compare is "On the subsets of driving on only the roads where FSD is available, active, and has not or did not turn itself off because of weather, road, traffic or any other conditions" versus "all drivers, all vehicles, all roads, all weather, all traffic, all conditions".

There's a reason Tesla doesn't release the raw data.

Indeed, yet humans can anticipate such things and rely on their experience to reason about what's happening and how to react. Like slow down or shift lanes or just move ones head for a different perfective. A Tesla with only two cameras ("because that's all humans need") is unlikely to provably match that performance for a long time.

Tesla could also change its software without telling the driver at any point.

Whom? Because math is important and so is law, among a variety of other things.

s/ Thankfully the US presidential choices are at least rational, of sound mind, and well rounded people. Certainly no spoiled man children among them. /s

I have to disengage FSD multiple times a day and I’m only driving 16 miles round trip. And routinely have to stop it from doing dumb things like stopping at green traffic lights, attempting to do a u turn from the wrong turn lane, or switching to the wrong lane right before a turn.

Fatalities per passenger mile driven is the only statistic that would matter. I actually doubt this figure differs much, either way, from the overall fleet of vehicles.

This is because "inattentive driving" is _rarely_ the cause of fatalities on the road. The winner there is, and probably always will be, Alcohol.

> The winner there is, and probably always will be, Alcohol.

I'd imagine mobile device use will overtake alcohol soon enough

Distracted driving cost 3308 lives in 2022 [1].

Alcohol is at 13384 in 2021 [2].

Although you're right that alcohol does claim more lives, distracted driving is still highly dangerous and isn't all that rare.

[1] https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/distracted-driving

[2] https://www.nhtsa.gov/book/countermeasures-that-work/alcohol...

They do a disservice by not further breaking down distracted driving by age. Once you see it that way it's hard to accept that distracted driving on it's own is the appropriate target.

Anyways.. NHTSA publishes the FARS. This is the definitive source if you want to understand the demographics of fatalities in the USA.

https://www.nhtsa.gov/research-data/fatality-analysis-report...

Mobile devices have been here for 40 years. The volume of alcohol sold every year suggests this overtake point will never occur.

Why would you even turn it on at this point…