When FSD/Autopilot became really safer than an average Human Driver? Tesla’s history of settling lawsuits.

These are famous accidents because of the fact FSD was being used... however, hundreds to thousands of accidents caused by human error happen every day. It would be absurd to assume automatic safety features reduce accidents, while FSD causes more accidents, this would be contradictory. FSD is significantly safer than human drivers, and I can't wait for more people to get FSD.

[Full Self-Driving (Supervised) Vehicle Safety Report | Tesla](https://www.tesla.com/fsd/safety) According to this, it already is. It logged an average of 5.3M miles before a major collision and 1.6M miles before a minor collision. Average human is 660k miles and 222K miles respectively. The issue with self driving is people expect it to be perfect and any imperfection is magnified. When a person crashes we say "oh well everyone makes a mistake that's ok" When a self driving car crashes we say "OH WHAT HOW it should NEVER make a mistake look at it, it is very unsafe I'd rather drive myself oh my how can it ever make a mistake" even when it is 7X less likely to crash than a human driver. I agree Tesla definitely overstated the capabilities of FSD especially on earlier versions calling it "full self-driving" was a massive stretch. But FSD is truly safer than most human drivers, we just have an unreasonably high standard when it comes to self-driving cars, we expect them to be absolutely perfect and never make any mistakes.

FSD was not in use during any of these accidents.

That latest lawsuit from TheStreet article is still going to be appealed. The driver was using Autopilot, not FSD, and had their foot on the accelerator which means they were overriding the car anyway.

Besides the 3, were these all legacy Model X and S’s?

Maybe if they had FSD, these accidents would have been less likely to have occurred. It is already known that these autonomous safety features are safer than not having them, however life has an infinite amount of variables that can cause things to go awry.

FSD was launched 10 years ago, and I assume its safety was progressing upwards somewhat linearly. When I first tried FSD it was not convincing, but it is nowadays. My question was at what point of time it became comparable and then better than humans.

Tesla doesn't claim that FSD is already safer than humans. They only claim that humans using FSD (Supervised) are safer than humans driving manually. That's a big difference. Whether or not FSD has already crossed the human safety threshold *by itself*, that we don't know. But Tesla hasn't claimed it yet. But yes, people's standards for self-driving systems at this point are way too high. They're quick to criticize any accident that occurs, while brushing all the human accidents under the rug.

Defining the certain point in time when FSD became safer, I guess would bring an avalanche of lawsuits for the times before. It still is interesting when did that happen.

Tesla hasn't claimed it's better than humans yet (unsupervised). If it has become better than humans, then it reached that point only very recently. But we don't know if it has.

I would say V12/V13 is when it is getting really damn good and can typically react faster than humans do. V12 rollout was march 2024. Any version before v12 and even v12 itself had some red light running issue and some other imperfections but I would say v12 is on par with most human drivers if not a bit better.

I am not certain FSD has improved over time. It does more things that are really impressive (recognizing street signs and stop lights, for instance), but the driving part hasn't improved much IMHO. For it to be viable, it needs to be right a very high percentage of the time (if you are using it everywhere). The problem is each incremental improvement is an order of magnitude more difficult than the last without some major technological breakthrough that hasn't come. The other issue is improvement in one area can lead to degradation in another. I really wish Tesla would have devoted the resources used for FSD to produce far reaching innovative battery technology, but 4680 was sort of a flop and they seemed to slow their drive for innovation after that.

Man you make a lot of assumptions. You assume it's safety is progressing upwards somewhat linearly. Why in the hell would you ever assume that? Why do you think FSD is safer than humans? Mine makes mistakes every single day. And I'm talking about crossing the double yellow line kinds of mistakes.

It’s already safer but people don’t understand statistics and what that means. Just because it can still cause accidents and make rare mistakes that a person may not have made, people just shout that it’s unsafe. It results in less accidents per chosen mile metric (100, 1k, 10k, 100k miles) than a human driver. I’m less likely to get it’s a minor or major collision while using it and if I’m watching the road alongside it and ready to adjust and takeover, if need be, it’s even safer

If the number of serious FSD accidents can be counted on 1 hand that's pretty impressive. None in the last 2 years either? Maybe the lawsuits are still in progress?

Yeah, taking into account a big number of miles logged, it really is.

You are showing 4 serious accidents that happened over 6 years. Human drivers probably do that every few minutes.

Definitely not linear, many periods of slow growth interspersed with huge jumps. While it still makes mistakes, anecdotally I think it’s probably safer than the average driver. Definitely not as safe as could be, but when we factor in some of the complete crazies we see on the road that average is not as high as we’d like.

The issue is being safer than “the average” driver. That’s not good enough for me.

Humans cause 16 thousand accidents alone in the US every single days. Over 90% of which is attributed to distracted driving or human error. There’s also over 120 deaths per day due to human driving and it never really makes headlines like the Tesla crashes do. On a large scale it’s probably much safer. FSD doesn’t drink, fall asleep, text, get distracted by eating or listening to music, or zoning out, and it can see 360 degrees at all times where humans can just see directly ahead.  I’d say it’s far better and will only continue in that route.

A lot of people in this sub are convinced that this doesn’t happen, but I believe you. It happens to me too. Definitely not daily but enough that I can never fully be at ease while it’s driving.

Without supervision, it still isn't. The problem is people that use it without supervision get themselves in trouble because they don't understand that it's only safer with supervision because people intervene when they need to.

It still hasn't. That data is safety of FSD+human, not FSD by itself. The FSD with monitor but no driver data is multiple times less safe than a human and that's still with having a human that can trigger an emergency stop.

Only when supervised though. FSD by itself is still far more likely to be involved in an accident.

It's WAY safer than the average driver. I'd say more on par with elite drivers that gets into on average <1 crash in their whole life considering it logs 1 major crash every 5.3M miles which most people don't even drive that much in a a whole lifetime. (Avg 12k mile a year over 50 driveable years is 600k lifetime miles very rough estimate just to throw some numbers in there)

But that doesn’t tell the whole story. I’ve had to (at least on HW3) take over before something bad happened, and that doesn’t get logged of course as an issue in the FSD stats. HW4 is of course miles better.

That's very informative, thanks for sharing!

That’s not what any of the data suggests. Tesla supervised in so far ahead of a human driver in terms of accident chance that even if I increase the accident rate for fsd by 8x, I’m still less likely to be in an accident compared to a human driver. Certainly that’s more than enough to offset supervision considering how rare it is to even need a critical intervention. I’m sure their ow unsupervised fsd data would corroborate how far ahead it is of a human driver. We can’t say definitively but the logical educated inference to make is that fsd unsupervised is still much safer than a human driver is.

You fundamentally misunderstand the data. I gave an accurate presentation of the data. You're absolutely wrong on everything you just said. The 9x number is an apples to oranges comparison that isn't valid for a few reasons. Even if it was, it's still as a supervised system and the critical intervention rate is currently every 300-1500 miles depending on where you are. The apples to apples comparison is the Tesla vs Tesla numbers. Basic safety features of a Tesla vs FSD only gets a 2.1x reduction which is more realistic and using the same metrics. However, when using FSD supervised, an accident only occurs when both the driver AND FSD screw up at the same time. Since a human driver screws up every 250k miles or so, FSD could be pretty bad and still happen to catch the 1 error per 250k miles that would lead to an accident. FSD still regularly relies on humans to stop it from doing stupid and dangerous things. FSD in Austin robotaxis has been involved in an accident every 40k miles. I've been driving for over 350k miles and never had a single accident like they have had.

You don’t get to decide orange or apples when the metrics are the same. You’re cherry picking, and outright ignoring data driven conclusions, to appease your bias.

No I'm not. I have a functioning understanding of data science. The overall average vehicle statistics include any accident reported whether airbags deploy or not. The Tesla data only includes accidents with air bag deployment. Those are vastly different mechanisms of data collection and are explicitly listed in the methodology section as sources of error. Comparing Tesla with FSD vs Tesla without is the most accurate means of comparison as both use airbag deployment reporting. In that case the data is only 2.1x time miles between accidents and only with supervision.

You don’t get to decide accurate when the metrics compared are the same. Stop cherry picking to support your bias.

They aren't the same. It's outlined in the very report you are working from. You are just flat out wrong. I use FSD 99 percent of the time and own it purchased outright on both of my vehicles. I'm not an FSD hater but you are citing data incorrectly. You are the one cherry picking. Teslas own report illustrates that it's only a 2.4x increase between Teslas without FSD and with FSD using the exact same reporting. The 9x numbers explicitly are comparing all filled accidents (which include very many without airbag deployment) vs only counting Tesla accidents when they have an airbag deployment. Please actually try reading the data methodology and source.

You’re saying flat out wrong but the statistics say otherwise, to which you have not provided one factual piece of data against. Not sure why you think your opinion trumps facts but I’m not surprised you are this way. Not that it even matters but I’ve owned teslas since 2015 and likely used fsd for longer than you. Didn’t mention any of this because it’s irrelevant but you somehow think it is because you mentioned it so I figured I would throw that out there. You seem really set on cherry picking to suit your bias and ignoring facts you don’t like so this will be my last response.

They are literally citing the report you are getting your data from back to you. You are just flat out wrong. FSD is not 9x safer comparing the same data points. Teslas own data is that Tesla's are only 2.4x safer with FSD than without.