While self-driving cars are the future, today’s driver assistants (such as Tesla’s Autopilot) have serious problems that need to be addressed. Of all the brands, Elon Musk’s company is the one with the most problems right now.
Tesla vehicles with its Autopilot software have been implicated in 273 accidents in the last year, according to regulators, much more than previously known and that provides concrete evidence on the real-world performance of its autonomous functions.
The figures, released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) for the first time on Wednesday, show that Tesla-made vehicles accounted for nearly 70% of the 392 crashes where driver assistance was involved.
As well as most of the fatalities and serious injuries, some of which date back more than a year. Eight of the Tesla accidents took place before June 2021.
Of the six fatalities listed in the data set released Wednesday, five were linked to Tesla vehicles. Some date back to 2019.
Federal authorities have put Tesla in the crosshairs in recent months with a growing number of investigations, product recalls and even public reprimands directed at the company.
The new data set stems from a federal order last summer that requires automakers to report accidents involving driver assistance to assess whether the technology poses safety risks.
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— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 16, 2022
And Tesla vehicles have been found to turn off the advanced driver assistance systemAutopilot, about a second before impact, according to regulators.
the order of the NHTSA required manufacturers to disclose crashes in which the software was in use within 30 seconds of the crashin part to mitigate concerns that manufacturers would hide crashes by claiming that the software was not in use at the time of impact.
“These technologies hold great promise for improving safety, but we need to understand how these vehicles behave in real-world situations.“NHTSA Administrator Steven Cliff said in a call with the media.
The reports present a new window to systems like Autopilot, but the database is still very green, with many unknowns even in the raw data and questions that remain.
The data does not lend itself easily to comparisons between different manufacturers, because it does not include information such as the number of kilometers traveled by the different driver assistance systems or the extent of their implementation in the manufacturers’ fleets.
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism