The closer you look at those statistics the more questionable they are. You can’t directly compare ‘overall crashes per kilometre across all human drivers and conditions’ with ‘crashes per kilometre while autopilot is active’ when autopilot being active implies:
- driving on a divided highway (what’s the actual prerequisite?)
- good enough weather for autopilot to engage
- in a relatively new, high end luxury vehicle which is likely to be well maintained and have better handling and braking than average vehicles
- likely to be driven by older middle-class drivers less prone to risk-taking
- unclear what the cutoff is between ‘autopilot driving’ and ‘human driving’ during a crash, if autopilot disengaged before impact does that count as human or autopilot driving?
- driving on a divided highway (what’s the actual prerequisite?)
- good enough weather for autopilot to engage
- in a relatively new, high end luxury vehicle which is likely to be well maintained and have better handling and braking than average vehicles
- likely to be driven by older middle-class drivers less prone to risk-taking
- unclear what the cutoff is between ‘autopilot driving’ and ‘human driving’ during a crash, if autopilot disengaged before impact does that count as human or autopilot driving?