Tesla cars on auto-pilot crashed more times than its rivals: Data
Tesla cars have dope interiors, a cool, luxurious design, a hip CEO, and boasts of being futuristic with a hefty price tag. All these factors make the Tesla electric cars seem very appealing. But it doesn’t mean that it makes the car an engineering wonder, nor does it make everything uttered by Musk about Tesla’s prowess true.
The news: The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released a set of data regarding the performance of advanced driver-assistance system enabled cars or cars with self-driving systems at level 2. The data was released for the first time on June 15, 2022 and lists 392 crashes involving self-driving cars.
The department collected the data for 30 seconds before a crash as manufacturers including Tesla are known for switching off the auto-pilot mode 1 second before impact to escape the scrutiny of its systems. The department opened the investigation last year after a fatal car crash involving a Tesla.
What did the data find?
- 70% of the 392 crashes involved a Tesla car on auto-pilot mode.
- Tesla cars on auto-pilot were involved in 273 crashes mostly in the past 10 months.
- The data tracked crashes reported since July 2021 and also some major crashes involving fatalities and serious injuries a few years before that.
- Honda came second in the ranking with 90 such crashes and Subaru came in 3rd with 10 crashes.
Why does it matter? As we rush towards the futuristic world with self-driving cars, and put those technologies on a real road with other cars and drivers, the safety of such systems needs to be analysed. Besides, the US department which collected the data acknowledged that the stats revealed about crashes were much more than they had initially thought of.
What is Tesla’s stance? Tesla or Musk has not yet commented on the data. But it has held for long that their self-driving system is much safer than manually driven cars, citing the annual vehicle crash deaths in the US.
However, the comparison is not viable as the number of manual car owners in the US is much more than Tesla car owners.
Limitations of the data: The data and its analysis in itself are not complete and companies cannot be compared as accurately. Tesla collects much more data on its systems and cars compared to other companies.
The data also doesn’t look into how many miles the vehicles have travelled and how many cars are deployed across the company’s fleet.
What’s happening with Tesla? In other news, Tesla has recently increased the prices of its cars across models. Tesla also recently laid off several of its employees. Its CEO Musk is busy voicing his support for Republican Ronald DeSantis for the 2024 presidential elections.