Per miles driven Tesla’s get into fewer accidents, per miles driven Tesla’s with AP on get into even fewer accidents. It’s an easily googled fact.
Alright, let's try this then.
I Google'd "model 3 autopilot safety". The first 3 links are...
They're all tesla.com. That's a bad start since it's first-party information which can be manipulated, but we'd be hard-pressed to find anything else.
The first links touts safety, but mentions no numerical or comparative data.
The second links has a lot of forward-looking statements that in my opinion are downright misleading. It is not at all clear that the features mentioned are not currently available, especially when skimming the page. Also, no numerical or comparative data.
The third link finally has some meat. Let's pull 2019 Q3 data,
In the 3rd quarter, we registered one accident for every 4.34 million miles driven in which drivers had Autopilot engaged. For those driving without Autopilot but with our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 2.70 million miles driven. For those driving without Autopilot and without our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 1.82 million miles driven. By comparison, NHTSA’s most recent data shows that in the United States there is an automobile crash every 498,000 miles.
So you are correct in that while AP is enabled, it is true that more miles are traveled per accident on average.
However, this does not account for the fact that AP is normally used in safer situations at higher speeds (meaning more miles traveled).
A town may be 10 miles in diameter and experience a lot of accidents per day, but the 30 mile highway connecting two towns with many inter-town commuters may only have one or two accidents per day. People that have vehicles for "in town" travel very few miles compared to highway commuters. Only highway commuters can really use AP right now. The very true fact is that these AP stats
sound good on paper, but all they're saying is "higher speed safe areas have less accidents per mile than lower speed complex areas", which is trivially true for all vehicles.
Furthermore, one can/should not use AP in poor weather. Doing so is obviously less safe and not recommended by Tesla. This statement alone should be evidence that AP is not universally safer. It
may help a
small amount on clear days on highways that are relatively straight.
Additionally, we don't know if "Autopilot engaged" in this blurb means Autosteer+TACC or perhaps also just TACC. Since TACC is part of AP, they certainly could include TACC-only usage in these numbers.
What
is good to see and has
less of a bias is that the active safety systems help, though this again should be true for all manufacturers.
And what is
even better to see is that on the third page,
one of the early links shows comparisons to other vehicles for NHTSA ratings and testing. Regardless of whether or not AP is safer,
if you get into an accident, the Model 3 is one of the safest vehicles you can be in.
