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

For whatever it's worth, Teslas with Autopilot enabled crash about once every 4.5M miles driven, whereas the overall rate in the US is roughly one crash every 70K miles driven. Of course, the selection effects around that stat can be debated (people probably enable autopilot in situations that are safer than average, the average tesla owner might be driving more carefully or in safer areas than the average driver, etc), but it is a pretty significant difference. (Those numbers are what I could find at a glance; DYOR if you'd like more rigor).

We have a lot of traffic fatalities in the US (in some states, an entire order of magnitude worse than in some EU countries), but it's generally not considered an issue. Nobody asks, "These agents are crashing a lot; are they really competent to drive?" when the agent is human, but when the agent is digital it becomes a popular question even with a much lower crash rate.

> Gaps in Tesla's telematic data create uncertainty regarding the actual rate at which vehicles operating with Autopilot engaged are involved in crashes. Tesla is not aware of every crash involving Autopilot even for severe crashes because of gaps in telematic reporting. Tesla receives telematic data from its vehicles, when appropriate cellular connectivity exists and the antenna is not damaged during a crash, that support both crash notification and aggregation of fleet vehicle mileage. Tesla largely receives data for crashes only with pyrotechnic deployment, which are a minority of police reported crashes.3 A review of NHTSA's 2021 FARS and Crash Report Sampling System (CRSS) finds that only 18 percent of police-reported crashes include airbag deployments.