American RDW: “Tesla Autopilot was involved in 17 fatalities and 736 accidents.”
Tesla Autopilot, a collection of semi-autonomous driving assistants, has been involved in 736 accidents in the US since 2019, 17 of which were fatal. And that number is growing fast, according to Washington Post research.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk claims that using Autopilot properly makes a Tesla 10 times safer than the average car. The numbers tell a different story.
Tesla Autopilot is not a fully self-driving system
Tesla has been recording how many accidents happen to its models since 2018. This is expressed in accidents per mile driven and broken down by vehicle with Autopilot on and off.
To be clear: Autopilot is a combination of semi-autonomous driver assistants, just like other manufacturers have done. There is a lot of criticism of the term “autopilot” and the addition “full self-driving capability”, since the system is certainly not self-driving.
Autopilot isn’t ten times safer than Musk claims
Statistics from the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) show that there is an average of one accident for every 484,000 miles driven in the US.
For Tesla, these numbers would be 1 in 978,000 (without Autopilot engaged) and 1 in 4.19 million (with Autopilot engaged). The conclusion Musk draws from this is that a Tesla with Autopilot is 10 times safer than the average car.
But there are some things that speak against it. For example, autopilot is mainly used on the freeway, where there are fewer accidents than in town or on country roads. And the NHTSA data isn’t broken down by location, so you can’t compare it to the Tesla data.
Tesla does not use radar in its driving assistants
According to the Washington Post, there are two reasons for the increasing number of autopilot accidents. First, the number of Teslas on US roads is increasing and Tesla has stopped using radar for its semi-autonomous systems. According to the manufacturer, cameras are sufficient.
Another reason could be the fact that more and more Teslas in the US are on the road with Full Self-Driving Beta, a still experimental system that Tesla touts as fully self-driving but isn’t.
Multiple NHTSA investigations into Tesla are ongoing
In America it has been mandatory for several years to report incidents involving semi-autonomous systems. There were a total of 807 accidents, of which 736 Teslas were affected. Subaru is second at 29.
Several NHTSA investigations into the safety of Autopilot and Full Self-Driving Beta are currently underway in the United States. And not only for that. NHTSA also wants to know why several Model Ys had their steering wheels come off along the way.