[greendestiny]

"I should add a note here to explain why Tesla is deploying partial autonomy now, rather than waiting until some point in the future. The most important reason is that, when used correctly, it is already significantly safer than a person driving by themselves and it would therefore be morally reprehensible to delay release simply for fear of bad press or some mercantile calculation of legal liability."

That's a hell of a statement and I want to see much better stats than that. Just looking at the total distance per death in human driven cars and comparing it to the autopilot total distance is a gross simplification. At an absolute minimum you have to start by only comparing driving on similar roads. Tesla simply keeps hiding behind 'if used correctly' which includes the driver being alert and ready to take over - if we restrict human driving stats to similarly ideal conditions the accident rate will also drop. Additionally driver demographics is a big deal as is the safety features of the car itself.

[greendestiny]

Here's a probably equally badly made statistic. Tesla estimates their cars had driven 130 million autopilot miles before the fatality. Some googling suggests the first non-autopilot Tesla S fatality was in july 2014 and this graph ( http://insideevs.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Tesla-Model-... ) suggests that was around 400 million miles driven. So the autopilot is 3.33 times 'worse'?

Who knows, but if Tesla feels they have a moral duty to leave on autopilot if it is safer, they equally have one if it is more dangerous. It seems they are pretty happy to be in dark about which it is while they test their system.

[cubaia]

In other words, if you're a Tesla driver, you're safer driving the car yourself than driving it with autopilot.