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How the Media Screwed up the Fatal Tesla Accident
- Thread starter Patrick W
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Good article. I've read many tech pieces by that journalist, Nick Bilton.
Quote from the article:
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Sure, these are all fair points, and Brown’s death is clearly a tragedy, but perhaps the media is looking at this all wrong. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in 2014, the last recorded year for these statistics, one person dies for every 100 million miles drivenin the United States. According to Tesla, however, the accident on May 7 was the first fatality in 130 million miles of driving on Autopilot. So your odds of remaining safe on the road are actually better in an autonomous vehicle than with a human behind the wheel.
What about globally? Well, those numbers are even more frightening. The Association for Safe International Road Travel notes that nearly 1.3 million people die a year in car crashes around the globe. On average, that’s 3,287 deaths a day. Which means that there is a fatality every 60 million miles. (Presumably this has something to do with the millions of people in China hitting the road for the first time—ever.) On top of that, an additional 20 million to 50 million people are injured or disabled as a result of auto accidents annually. Yet after a single accident on Autopilot, people are already talking about banning driverless cars.
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Quote from the article:
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Sure, these are all fair points, and Brown’s death is clearly a tragedy, but perhaps the media is looking at this all wrong. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in 2014, the last recorded year for these statistics, one person dies for every 100 million miles drivenin the United States. According to Tesla, however, the accident on May 7 was the first fatality in 130 million miles of driving on Autopilot. So your odds of remaining safe on the road are actually better in an autonomous vehicle than with a human behind the wheel.
What about globally? Well, those numbers are even more frightening. The Association for Safe International Road Travel notes that nearly 1.3 million people die a year in car crashes around the globe. On average, that’s 3,287 deaths a day. Which means that there is a fatality every 60 million miles. (Presumably this has something to do with the millions of people in China hitting the road for the first time—ever.) On top of that, an additional 20 million to 50 million people are injured or disabled as a result of auto accidents annually. Yet after a single accident on Autopilot, people are already talking about banning driverless cars.
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