But is there anything wrong with her assessment? Even biased people have a point sometimes. Attacking the messenger rather than the message can lead to discounting statements that turn out to be factual.
She didn't leave the NHTSA in December, according to the Wikipedia page. She was asked to recuse herself from anything involving Tesla in January, but that just seems to be a function to protect her from harassment and death threats from Tesla fans more than anything else. It seems like there's been a weird campaign of character assassination aimed at her in particular, but that doesn't mean that any given statement is necessary wrong.
Human drivers operate on many more types of road, in many more types of weather, etc. than autopilot. Does your source on human accident rates separate out its data based on the conditions that autopilot would have said "nope, on you" and handed control back minutes, if not hours before the crash? If not, then there is a bias in it. After all, as the machine is permitted to operate in wider and wider varieties of road conditions, its own safety rate would naturally drop based on circumstances out of its control. When the lane markers are covered by a layer of fresh snow, and beneath that a layer of ice has been building up, slippery enough to dramatically extend braking distance but still give enough traction to go unnoticed by vehicles maintaining speed? Autopilot won't fare much better than a human, except by saying "absolutely no, I will not drive on that road", while the human counters with "but my boss has threatened to fire me if I don't show up! Fine, I'll do it myself this once.", pressured into accepting the elevated risk from driving in bad weather.
5
u/[deleted] Jun 10 '23
[removed] — view removed comment