Tesla sends an open letter to US senators, says Autopilot and FSD are safe

In an open letter sent to two US senators from the Democratic Party, Senior Director of Tesla Rohan Patel tries to convince the ruling party that the current Autopilot and Full Self-Driving features are safe. This letter comes as a response to an earlier letter sent to the company's CEO, Elon Musk, raising significant concerns about those features. There have been multiple letters sent to Tesla urging for a more robust driver monitoring system while using the Autopilot and FSB.

In the letter, Patel tries to explain all the nuances around the self-driving features and describes them as Level 2 systems that "require constant monitoring and attention of the driver". In short, the car can handle most of the tasks on the road but full autonomy isn't here yet. However, Elon Musk repeatedly said that by the end of 2022, Autopilot and FSD will be safer than human driving.

To support these claims, Tesla cites its own data from Q4 2021 showing one crash per every 4.31 million miles driven with either of the features enabled. In contrast, NHTSA says that there's a car crash occurs every 484,000 miles.

Senators and experts don't seem to be buying it, though, dismissing the data because Tesla's stats are mostly highway. Users tend to use the feature mostly on highways, whereas the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration gathers data from urban, residential and highway driving.

It seems as if senators are pushing for better in-cabin monitoring of the drivers while using Autopilot and FSD, despite the fact that Model Y and some Model 3 cars have cameras for this purpose in addition to the torque sensors on the steering wheel. Tesla admits that most of the crashes occurring during self-driving are due to complacency as drivers often ignore the prompts to retake control of the vehicle in certain scenarios.

Source | Via