Yahoo Autos Elon Musk Says Tesla's Autopilot Lowers Accident Probability by 50 Percent
Elon Musk makes so many off the cuff comments that sometimes it can be tough to keep track of all of them. He was in Norway recently and made comments about autopilot that nobody seemed to pick up on.
Here's the tidbit that Elecktrek found:
The probability of having an accident is 50% lower if you have Autopilot on. Even with our first version. So we can see basically what's the average number of kilometers to an accident – accident defined by airbag deployment. Even with this early version, it's almost twice as good as a person.
The data isn't including fender benders or crashes without airbag deployment. We're not saying that there are a ton of them, but using airbag deployment as the metric doesn't necessarily give the full view of the improvement. Also, autopilot is supposed to be used in good weather on the highway. A controlled cruise is not where a lot of accidents happen.
However, cutting the accidents that happen in those conditions in half is still rather impressive.
The second generation of the system, which is coming in a few years, promises to be fully autonomous. That could prove to be even safer.
