Thanks! :j

They call it the Model 3 because the Tesla Organ-Harvester didn’t translate well to Chinese

The new “Start Seeing Motorcycles” merch just dropped!

I don’t think anyone has reliable public data on miles travelled. If it existed, I would use it. The fact that it doesn’t exist tells you what you need to know about Level 2 ADAS system safety ;)

The only folks who are being real open with their data, near as I can tell, is Waymo. And Waymo has zero motorcycle fatalities, operating mostly in California, where the motorcycle driving culture is… absolutely fucking nuts uniquely risk-accepting.

My EMT career was both short lived and rewarding, right back at ya :)

Police report for 2024 case attached, it is also linked in the original article: https://www.opb.org/article/2025/01/15/tesla-may-face-less-accountability-for-crashes-under-trump/

It was Full Self Driving, according to the police. They know because they downloaded the data off the vehicle’s computer. The motorcyclist was killed on a freeway merge ramp.

All the rest is beyond my brief. Thought you might like the data to chew on, though.

Fair enough!

At least one of the fatalities is Full-Self Driving (it was cited by name in the police reports). The remainder are Autopilot. So, both systems kill motorcyclists. Tesla requests this data redacted from their NHTSA reporting, which specifically makes it difficult for consumers to measure which system is safer or if incremental safety improvements are actually being made.

You’re placing a lot if faith that the incremental updates are improvements without equivalent regressions. That data is specifically being concealed from you, and I think you should probably ask why. If there was good news behind those redactions, they wouldn’t be redactions.

I didn’t publish the software version data point because I agree with AA5B, it doesn’t matter. I honestly don’t care how it works. I care that it works well enough to safely cohabit the road with my manual transmission cromagnon self.

I’m not a “Tesla reporter,” I’m not trying to cover the incremental changes in their software versions. Plenty of Tesla fans doing that already. It only has my attention at all because it’s killing vulnerable road users, and for that analysis we don’t actually need to know which self-driving system version is killing people, just the make of car it is installed on.

My partner and I were actually debating that exact question before I posted it!

It’s just stock art, but of a rider in the Midwest. Custom exhaust, custom saddle and rack for that cafe racer look, and I just barely can’t make out the model on the engine fairing.

Here it is all big, let me know if you can figure it out: https://unsplash.com/photos/a-person-riding-a-motorcycle-on-a-city-street-kPfwWyUWubA

Looks hot, that’s why I picked it.

Any time :)

Bahaha, that one is new to me.

Back when I worked on an ambulance, we called the no helmet guys organ donors.

This comment was brought to you by PTSD, and has been redacted in a rare moment of sobriety.

No, the zero accidents for other self-driving vehicles is actually zero :) You may have heard of this little boutique automotive manufacturer, Ford Motor Company. They’re one of the primary competitors, and they are far above the mileage where you would expect a fatal accident if they were as safe as a human.

Ford has reported self-driving crashes (many of them!). Just no fatal crashes involving motorcycles, because I guess they don’t fucking suck at making self-driving software.

I linked the data, it’s all public governmental data, and only the Tesla crashes are heavily redacted. You could… IDK… read it, and then share your opinion about it?

I wrote the original analysis Mother Jones is citing there. Hah, how about that! Delights me to see it cited in the wild.

[Edit: oh, my bad, I replied to you very cattily when I meant to reply to Satan. Sorry! Friendly fire! XD ]

I upvoted every comment in this sub-thread shitshow and hated all of it.

You monster gif

Thanks, 'Satan.

Do you know the number of miles driven by Tesla’s self-driving tech? Because I don’t, Tesla won’t say, they’re a remarkably non-transparent company where their tech is concerned. Near as I can tell, nobody does (other than folks locked up tight with NDAs). If the ratio of accidents-per-mile-driven looked good, you know as a flat fact that Elon would be Tweeting all about it.

Sorry you didn’t find the death of 5 Americans newsworthy. I’ll try harder for the next one.

It’s like smoking: if you haven’t started, don’t XD

Interesting! I did not know that - I assumed the teleoperators took direct control, but that makes much more sense for latency reasons (among others)

Perfectly fair. Sorry, I jumped the gun! Good on you for being incredulous and inspecting the piece for manipulation, that’s smart.

Little known fact: the Model S (P) actually stands for Polyphemus Edition, not Plaid Edition.

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.