Self-Driving Teslas Are Fatally Striking Motorcyclists More Than Any Other Brand: New Analysis - FuelArc News
fuelarc.com
Among motorcyclists, there is a persistent rumor that Teslas are dangerous to ride around in traffic. Whether it’s their silent electric drivetrain, extreme acceleration, or self-driving technology supposedly failing to see motorcycles, every biker seems to know someone who’s had a close call with a Tesla. Our new analysis of data from the NHTSA on […]

TL;DR: Self-Driving Teslas Rear-End Motorcyclists, Killing at Least 5

Brevity is the spirit of wit, and I am just not that witty. This is a long article, here is the gist of it:

  • The NHTSA’s self-driving crash data reveals that Tesla’s self-driving technology is, by far, the most dangerous for motorcyclists, with five fatal crashes that we know of.
  • This issue is unique to Tesla. Other self-driving manufacturers have logged zero motorcycle fatalities with the NHTSA in the same time frame.
  • The crashes are overwhelmingly Teslas rear-ending motorcyclists.

Read our full analysis as we go case-by-case and connect the heavily redacted government data to news reports and police documents.

Oh, and read our thoughts about what this means for the robotaxi launch that is slated for Austin in less than 60 days.

  • captainastronaut@seattlelunarsociety.orgEnglish
    22·
    10 months ago

    Tesla self driving is never going to work well enough without sensors - cameras are not enough. It’s fundamentally dangerous and should not be driving unsupervised (or maybe at all).

    • KayLeadfoot@fedia.ioOP
      11·
      10 months ago

      Accurate.

      Each fatality I found where a Tesla kills a motorcyclist is a cascade of 3 failures.

      1. The car’s cameras don’t detect the biker, or it just doesn’t stop for some reason.
      2. The driver isn’t paying attention to detect the system failure.
      3. The Tesla’s driver alertness tech fails to detect that the driver isn’t paying attention.

      Taking out the driver will make this already-unacceptably-lethal system even more lethal.

      • jonne@infosec.pubEnglish
        8·
        10 months ago
        1. Self-driving turns itself off seconds before a crash, giving the driver an impossibly short timespan to rectify the situation.
        • KayLeadfoot@fedia.ioOP
          5·
          10 months ago

          … Also accurate.

          God, it really is a nut punch. The system detects the crash is imminent.

          Rather than automatically try to evade… the self-driving tech turns off. I assume it is to reduce liability or make the stats look better. God.

          • jonne@infosec.pubEnglish
            4·
            10 months ago

            Yep, that one was purely about hitting a certain KPI of ‘miles driven on autopilot without incident’. If it turns off before the accident, technically the driver was in control and to blame, so it won’t show up in the stats and probably also won’t be investigated by the NTSB.

      • br3d@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        There’s at least two steps before those three:

        -1. Society has been built around the needs of the auto industry, locking people into car dependency

        1. A legal system exists in which the people who build, sell and drive cars are not meaningfully liable when the car hurts somebody
    • Ledericas@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      9 months ago

      they originally had lidar, or radar, but musk had them disabled in the older models.

      • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        9 months ago

        They had radar. Tesla has never had lidar, but they do use lidar on test vehicles to ground truth their camera depth / velocity calculations.

    • scarabic@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      These fatalities are a Tesla business advantage. Every one is a data point they can use to program their self-driving intelligence. No one has killed as many as Tesla, so no one knows more about what kills people than Tesla. We don’t have to turn this into a bad thing just because they’re killing people /s