Thanks for the link, Petra, While having every confidence that
autonomous vehicles will be a boon in the long run, I see two major
flaws in this article:
1. The writer swallows Tesla's exquisitely worded
damned-lies-and-statistics press release.
"According to Tesla, however, the accident on May 7 was the first
fatality in 130 million miles of driving on Autopilot. So your odds of
remaining safe on the road are actually better in an autonomous
vehicle than with a human behind the wheel."
This implies that Autopilot's 130 million miles of testing were done
under equivalent conditions to the 'one US fatality per 130 million
miles' reported by the NHTSA. Yet this is what Tesla actually said:
"This is the first known fatality in just over 130 million miles where
Autopilot was activated."
Was that first mile of testing and every subsequent mile done:
* On public roads including passengers, pedestrians and other
vehicles and their occupants?
* In all weather and lighting conditions?
* At normal driving speeds?
Not likely. As with any piece of complex, high-risk technology, most
of the testing was done under lab conditions or on the training track
in tightly controlled conditions before they let it anywhere near
normal driving situations. To put it bluntly, the fatality rate sounds
comparatively good only because most of the time "where Autopilot was
activated" and it crashed there were few humans in the vicinity to
kill.
2. Blame the victim: Brown wasn't paying attention, and anyway he
clicked the equivalent of the software EULA, so he accepted full
responsibility for anything bad that might happen, right?
Well, other drivers and passengers on that stretch of highway have
rights too. Surely Tesla can't be arguing that Joshua Brown and all of
the other beta testers of their experimental car-weapon have the power
to waive those other people's rights not to be avoidably killed or
maimed?
Don't be surprised to see Tesla shift some of their road testing to
supportive authoritarian countries with a more congenial legal system.
--- Stuart
----- Original Message -----
From: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
To:"austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx"
Sent:Fri, 8 Jul 2016 13:12:49 +1000
Subject:atw: Re: OT I hate it when I am this right
How the media screwed up the fatal Tesla accident – this article
doesn’t shed any more light on the subject but simply casts a
different view
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/07/how-the-media-screwed-up-the-fatal-tesla-accident
[1]
Regards,
Petra
Links:
------
[1]
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/07/how-the-media-screwed-up-the-fatal-tesla-accident