Autopilot and fully autonomous features from Tesla are safe, the company insists in a letter to two top Senate Democrats. She says it’s safer than human driving. But the senators are not convinced.
Rohan Patel, Tesla’s senior director of public policy, wrote a letter to US Senators Richard Blumenthal and Ed Markey.
“Tesla’s fully automated pilot and autonomous driving features enhance our customers’ ability to drive more safely than the average driver in the United States,” he said in the letter.
Tesla is responding to a letter from senators to Elon Musk, the company’s chief executive, last month that raised major concerns about automated pilots and fully autonomous driving.
Blumenthal and Marki also called on federal regulators to crack down on Tesla to prevent further abuse of the company’s advanced driver assistance features.
Autopilot and fully autonomous driving are described by Patel as Level 2 autonomous driving systems that require constant monitoring and driver attention.
He noted that these features are capable of performing some, but not all, of the dynamic driving tasks that human drivers perform.
In his message, Patel provides a more nuanced overview of Autopilot and fully autonomous driving than Musk usually provides via Twitter and in other public comments.
Patel insists that Tesla’s advanced driving features are safer than human driving. In the fourth quarter of 2021, the company recorded one crash for every 4.31 million miles our drivers drove using automated pilot technology, compared to the latest NHTSA data, which shows a car crash every 484,000 miles.
Tesla defends itself in front of lawmakers
The company sometimes releases safety reports that echo these same stats. This comes in an attempt to frame the automated guide as safer than human driving.
But experts point out that these statistics are largely meaningless. Autopilot is mainly used for highway driving.
Compared to national statistics covering a variety of driving environments, it gives Tesla an unfair advantage.
Patel goes on to describe the Driver Monitoring System, which uses torque sensors in the steering wheel and cabin cameras to monitor the driver’s attention.
However, he did not mention that regulators and safety experts have spent years asking the company to add better driver monitoring to its cars.
Musk admitted that accidents involving the autopilot stem from complacency. But he has previously rejected calls from engineers to add more driver monitoring to the company’s cars.
In a joint statement, the senators said: “This letter represents an evasion of the company.” Despite its alarming safety record and fatal accidents, the company appears to want to continue business as usual.
0 Comments