
Did Elon Musk lie about the safety of Autopilot? - QuantumGood
https://medium.com/@DavidGLarson/is-this-a-lie-by-elon-musk-a1a8c00b8b0e
======
lsiunsuex
I'm having a hard time recalling when Musk ever said that the Autopilot
feature was 100% safe to use. I do recall Tesla and Musk saying this is beta
software and is constantly being improved by data the car sends back to HQ for
processing and learning.

People that buy snow tires don't automagically drive better in the snow, nor
should they be doing 100mph in in-climate weather. The snow tires offer more
grip where an all season or summer tire might not.

Using Autopilot won't make you a better driver nor prevent accidents (not now
anyways) - use it when conditions allow, but be aware, at any given time, crap
happens (ie: when even snow tires can't get you out of a snow bank) and the
driver should be alert and attentive to if and when that does happen.

If this post is regarding the death involving Autopilot (which I think it is),
I don't think there will be enough data to say 1 way or another wether the
driver put his hands on the wheel or not, if the software failed or not or if
the driver ignored the warnings and it's on him. Are there sensors in the
steering wheel that Tesla might have recorded and can say, yes, the car
notified the driver to resume control and we never sensed touch on the wheel?

If nothing else, what comes of this might be an overly cautious car; erroring
on the side of, as soon as the driver is notified to resume control, if that
doesn't happen in x seconds, begin a chain reaction to pull the car over to
the side of the road and come to a complete stop.

------
Someone
IMO, [https://www.teslamotors.com/blog/tragic-
loss](https://www.teslamotors.com/blog/tragic-loss) definitely contains some
spin, certainly where it compares Tesla autopilot with the worldwide safety
record ( _" Worldwide, there is a fatality approximately every 60 million
miles"_), and neglects the fact that autopilot only works on the safest roads.

Western Europe has about half the traffic deaths per capita and per mile as
the Americas, but by looking at the world, adding for example Africa with over
ten times the number of deaths per capita or per km, that text manages to
avoid telling that.

Many, many traffic deaths occur on roads in third-world countries where,
likely, statistically few Tesla cars have been and even fewer have seen
autopilot used.

In addition, Elon's text forgets to mention that cars that are newer or more
expensive tend to be safer. Many of the cars involved in deadly crashes in the
third world won't have working airbags, for example.

