Take Tesla safety claims with about a pound of salt

Philip Koopman · 19 Dec 2023 · safeautonomy.blogspot.com ↗

2 korrents from this piece

Philip Koopman did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

Our reading
Whatever safety gain a driver-assistance system delivers is cancelled out by the driver complacency it creates.

Their wordssuggests that any steering automation safety gains (e.g., Level 2 autopilot) are approximately negated by driver complacency, with autopilot on being slightly worse than autopilot off

Interesting
Our reading
A carmaker's claim to be the safest is mostly an artefact of comparing a new car against a fleet average twelve years old.

Their wordsAny true safety improvement for Tesla is good to have, but is much more likely due to comparison against an "average" vehicle (12 years old in the US) which is much less safe than any recent high-end vehicle regardless of manufacturer, and probably not driven on roads as safe on average as where Teslas are more popular.

Interesting