The numbers are hard to trivially analyze, because there is no source that tracks "deaths caused by tesla cars" - NHTSA tracks deaths in cars and pedestrians, but e.g. not in other cars involved in the accident, even if potentially there car without the fatality was a contributing factor (fault is kind of irrelevant).
But the numbers we do have make Tesla's look pretty dangerous. Tesla's overall fatality rate may be low, but that's true in general of luxury cars (perhaps because they're driven in safer areas, by safer drivers, have fewer safety related faults, or protect their occupants better). Compared to similarly priced cars, tesla does poorly (https://medium.com/@MidwesternHedgi/teslas-driver-fatality-r...).
Finally, specifically the autopilot is often compared incorrectly - autopilot isn't used on busy city streets or chaotic traffic situations (it's not capable of that yet) - but those are where most traffic fatalities occur. On the highway, fatalities are comparitively rare, even in "normal" cars. On interstates, in 2012 (I can't find more recent numbers), the fatality rate was 3.38 per billion miles travelled (source: http://www.bast.de/EN/Publications/Media/Unfallkarten-intern...) - and in some countries, much lower even than that (e.g. 0.72 in denmark). Since that includes old & cheap cars, you'd expect luxury cars to do better than that - that's the baseline autopilot should be compared against.
Comparing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_self-driving_car_fatal... with https://cleantechnica.com/2019/10/14/lex-fridmans-tesla-auto... I'd say a lower bound on autopilot's record is around 2 per billion miles - that's OK, but not very good. We may be missing autopilot related fatalities; if we missed even a single one, that would make these numbers look outright poor. That's a very rough estimate; but if we want any kind of reliable estimate on autopilot safety, you'd need much more data that we have (also more data on competitors!) Of course the very fact that we can't tell because data is so sparse is good! It means there are few deaths in this category; while driving in general may be dangerous, driving a luxury sedan on an interstate is fairly safe - exactly how safe doesn't really matter.
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All in all - Tesla's safety record looks good compared to the average car, but not very convincing compared to similarly aged similarly priced cars - i.e. Tesla's competition. If you were to base your buying choice on safety, you probably should not buy a Tesla; but definitely should not buy the marketing nonsense. On the upside; it simply doesn't matter much, driving on autopilot-enabled roads is fairly safe anyhow, regardless of whether autopilot helps or harms safety.
As of a recent update a month or two back, it is now. It is ever improving as they roll out new features.
Some of which are safety features. It’s a moving target. Whatever stats or safety records or flaws or concerns you think you know about today can be invalidated tomorrow.
In fact we just got an update tonight. I can’t tell you what’s in it since I haven’t gone downstairs to the car to read the release notes yet.
Oh definitely. The flaws may well be fixed, and aren't huge anyhow. But they're real enough to consider Tesla's past claims to be super-duper safe to be misleadingly cherry-picked (effectively they were lying), so it's a little hard to take new claims at face value.
But the numbers we do have make Tesla's look pretty dangerous. Tesla's overall fatality rate may be low, but that's true in general of luxury cars (perhaps because they're driven in safer areas, by safer drivers, have fewer safety related faults, or protect their occupants better). Compared to similarly priced cars, tesla does poorly (https://medium.com/@MidwesternHedgi/teslas-driver-fatality-r...).
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=no&tl=en&u=htt... - norwegian safety authority also concluding Tesla's are more dangerous.
Finally, specifically the autopilot is often compared incorrectly - autopilot isn't used on busy city streets or chaotic traffic situations (it's not capable of that yet) - but those are where most traffic fatalities occur. On the highway, fatalities are comparitively rare, even in "normal" cars. On interstates, in 2012 (I can't find more recent numbers), the fatality rate was 3.38 per billion miles travelled (source: http://www.bast.de/EN/Publications/Media/Unfallkarten-intern...) - and in some countries, much lower even than that (e.g. 0.72 in denmark). Since that includes old & cheap cars, you'd expect luxury cars to do better than that - that's the baseline autopilot should be compared against.
Comparing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_self-driving_car_fatal... with https://cleantechnica.com/2019/10/14/lex-fridmans-tesla-auto... I'd say a lower bound on autopilot's record is around 2 per billion miles - that's OK, but not very good. We may be missing autopilot related fatalities; if we missed even a single one, that would make these numbers look outright poor. That's a very rough estimate; but if we want any kind of reliable estimate on autopilot safety, you'd need much more data that we have (also more data on competitors!) Of course the very fact that we can't tell because data is so sparse is good! It means there are few deaths in this category; while driving in general may be dangerous, driving a luxury sedan on an interstate is fairly safe - exactly how safe doesn't really matter.
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All in all - Tesla's safety record looks good compared to the average car, but not very convincing compared to similarly aged similarly priced cars - i.e. Tesla's competition. If you were to base your buying choice on safety, you probably should not buy a Tesla; but definitely should not buy the marketing nonsense. On the upside; it simply doesn't matter much, driving on autopilot-enabled roads is fairly safe anyhow, regardless of whether autopilot helps or harms safety.