TL;DR: Self-Driving Teslas Rear-End Motorcyclists, Killing at Least 5
Brevity is the spirit of wit, and I am just not that witty. This is a long article, here is the gist of it:
- The NHTSA’s self-driving crash data reveals that Tesla’s self-driving technology is, by far, the most dangerous for motorcyclists, with five fatal crashes that we know of.
- This issue is unique to Tesla. Other self-driving manufacturers have logged zero motorcycle fatalities with the NHTSA in the same time frame.
- The crashes are overwhelmingly Teslas rear-ending motorcyclists.
Read our full analysis as we go case-by-case and connect the heavily redacted government data to news reports and police documents.
Oh, and read our thoughts about what this means for the robotaxi launch that is slated for Austin in less than 60 days.
The driver being drunk doesn’t mean the self-driving feature should not detect motorcycles. The human is a fallback to the tech. The tech had to fail for this fatal crash to occur.
If the system is advertised as overrriding the human speed inputs ( traffic aware cruise control, it is supposed to brake when it detects traffic, regardless of pedal inputs), then it should function as advertised.
Incidentally, I agree, I broadly trust automated cars to act more predictably than human drivers. In the case of specifically Teslas and specifically motorcycles, it looks like something is going wrong. That’s what the data says, anyhow. If the government were functioning how it should, the tech would be disabled during the investigation, which is ongoing.