Elon Musk says Tesla’s autopilot is already “probably” better than human drivers

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/01/11/elon-musk-says-teslas-autopilot-is-already-probably-better-than-human-drivers/

by ChrisCinelli • 11 years ago

31 36 11 years ago

washingtonpost.com

creshal2• 11 years ago

Looking out of my office window onto a busy intersection with bad visibility, that's easy to believe. It's insane how many accidents happen solely because drivers are unwilling to slow down for a second.

BinaryIdiot2• 11 years ago

Hmm is he referring to the ability released to the public to date or their capability in general that isn't yet accessible by the general public? If it's the former that doesn't make sense so I'm going to assume the latter.

Considering in 2014 there were 32,675 motor vehicle deaths, 2,300,000 motor vehicle related injuries and 6,100,000 reported accidents in general (which means a likely higher number of accidents though not sure by how much) [1] it would not surprise me that even buggy software could do a better job than humans who tend to become distracted with almost anything. Though I'm not sure about extreme conditions like snow, heavy fog and rain, etc.

As much as I love driving (and I really do) I can't wait for autonomous vehicles. Considering it's a, if I remember correctly, a 1.7% chance in your lifetime that you'll be killed in an auto accident in the United States (and higher of a chance that you'll known someone killed) that's just way to high of a number for me (especially being a Dad).

[1] http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/812219.pdf

Someone12346• 11 years ago

It is worth keeping in mind that even without automatic vehicles, vehicle deaths have and will continue to fall massively.

From the worst in 1937 (29.357 per 100K pop) to today (10.345 per 100K pop), and falling by on average 2%/year since 1996 (was 15.8599 in 1996).

Without trying to sound melodramatic, cars built in the 1990s are "death traps" by 2015 standards (and the same is true of 19980s cars by 1990s standards). The reason we're seeing it fall slowly is as the late 1990s vehicles gradually disappear.

I suspect we'll see a massive drop again in the next ten years even without fully automatic cars as systems like Eyesight auto-break to slow collision speeds.

One thing which will get interesting when we do have completely automatic vehicles is: current drink driving laws (in particular in the US) aren't compatible with them. In many US states falling asleep in a parked vehicle with the keys is enough to get someone for "drink driving" (even without the driving part), so falling asleep in an automatic car could still get someone a DUI.

chubot• 11 years ago

Really, what has changed about cars, besides automatic breaking? I agree that that feature saves lives. But I wonder about other stuff. I have a '99 Accord :) (which I barely drive)

loganu3• 11 years ago

Thinking about your last sentence: Elon has been tweeting about Tesla's summon feature - tap your phone and your car will come to you, across the street or across the country. If a car can drive LA to NY legally, without a driver, there should be a way for it to carry a drunk passenger. Whether that means enabling "drunk mode" so you can't grab the steering wheel, or that you have to sit in the back seat, there's surely room for a compromise between the automakers and lawmakers. Technology like this will save lives.

BinaryIdiot2• 11 years ago

It is worth keeping in mind that even without automatic vehicles, vehicle deaths have and will continue to fall massively.

Fair enough and I completely agree it's just not falling fast and far enough for me :)

creshal2• 11 years ago

From the worst in 1937 (29.357 per 100K pop) to today (10.345 per 100K pop), and falling by on average 2%/year since 1996 (was 15.8599 in 1996).

Yet, the statistic is still twice to thrice as high as for other car-heavy nations like Germany or the UK, no matter whether you go by incidents per pop, incidents per vehicles or incidence per miles driven.

There's a lot of room for improvement outside technical gadgets.

sandworm1017• 11 years ago

Better perhaps a very specific tasks. I'd still like to see them respond to someone controlling traffic with hand gestures (a routine thing) or judge how best to get out of the way of an ambulance, which occasionally means breaking laws/rules.

pbreit2• 11 years ago

Yeah, I think there's more to driving than just proceeding on the correct route and obeying laws,signals & signs. So I can see autopilot coming pretty soon but I think fully autonomous is much further out.

Someone12346• 11 years ago

I definitely think that systems like auto pilot will be better than human drivers, but that being said, I don't believe he has enough data to make the case for it being better TODAY.

Musk has a habit of going off half cocked, and I think this is one of those cases. Auto pilot is great, but you cannot say much difinitively about it because it hasn't got enough miles or road conditions under its belt.

That all being said, I myself have invested in this type of technology (Subaru's Eyesight) but auto pilot claims to be able to do much more than the more stabilised technology found on mass market vehicles.

pbreit2• 11 years ago

He said "probably" and he's probably right.

Slippery_John• 11 years ago

While this isn't Tesla's implementation specifically, there is indeed data that says self-driving cars are better than than human drivers.

http://www.vtti.vt.edu/featured/?p=422

Someone12346• 11 years ago

That data is unfair. You're comparing taking automatic vehicles out in good weather conditions to drivers who need to drive in all weather conditions.

Call me when automatic vehicles get tested in a blizzard, sandstorm, or anything else that isn't an idealised Californian test track.

PS - And this is someone who owns an auto-braking system vehicle, and I know first hand that it turns off when weather goes too bad.

supergirl2• 11 years ago

better in normal circumstances maybe. probably terrible in corner cases, which as he said, is where the real difficulties are and there are millions of corner cases.

ceejayoz• 11 years ago

It'd be interesting to know how many road accidents are those corner cases and how many are simple inattention. I've been in a couple accidents and each has been something I'm sure even a basic autopilot would've easily prevented.

supergirl2• 11 years ago

1. You're right but you are thinking of human corner cases. AI also has corner cases which might be trivial for humans. I'm saying these corner cases for AI are too many currently.

2. And anyway, from my point of view 'better than humans' doesn't necessarily mean 'causes fewer accidents'. If that was the goal then an auto-pilot that kept the car still (or drove very very slowly) would win.

melling• 11 years ago

This feature alone could change the way we build cities and our suburbs:

"With the “summon” feature, a driver can tell her Tesla to park itself or pull out from a parking spot or garage."

A car that can drop you off and pick you up from work means parking can be moved away from the office, or even out of a city.

loganu3• 11 years ago

I was just imagining an autopilot lane with cars flying into the city to pick up their owners.

You could also have parking garages with a much higher capacity per sq. foot if all the cars were smart and could work together. (Or even sections designed for this) Instead of single or double car rows, you could have them 4 or five cars deep, and self-rearranging to let each other out.

BuckRogers• 11 years ago

Elon Musk is wrong.

As someone who has had family cars run into 3 times in 1 year at stop lights, by folks looking down at their cell phones. I'm sure that Tesla's autopilot is already better than human drivers.

stevesearer• 11 years ago

When they talk about "Tesla tweaks the software running its vehicles by analyzing data from the hundreds of millions of miles driven by current owners."...

Does that mean that they analyze the miles driven using autopilot or the miles driven by the human driver or both?

It would seem that using data from human driven miles would give them good insight into how human drivers would react in weird and non-standard situations.

Also, with as many cars as Tesla has out on the road, I wonder if the amount of data they have to feed into their self-driving systems is more than Google or other players in the space.

stevenalowe• 11 years ago

Hey Elon, prove it: enter an autopiloted Tesla in a major car race.

Elon Musk says Tesla’s autopilot is already “probably” better than human drivers

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