Most people, especially non technical people, aren’t going to care about numbers that say it’s safer or better on net when the car still occasionally does things that humans view as crazy or stupid.
i.e. if Tesla causes 100 new crashes of type A but saves 200 of type B, isn't that a gain? Even if type A crashes are one which humans don't normally make.
A way in which I agree with you is if type B crashes are more avoidable by conscientious drivers, and you feel that your personal base rate of B is therefore already low, and that introducing new type A risk is actually NOT an all-in improvement for you.
My overall analysis is: Tesla has some very serious enemies in other automakers, lawyers, etc. And yet, there are no clear studies or statistics saying they're worse, and Tesla claims they are safer. This isn't a very good analysis and I'd love to have a clearer more well-defined group for statistical comparison, but it at least seems plausible to me.
Insisting on not replacing a driver until every subcategory of driving type is strictly improved seems too stringent.
You still have an out here by saying that you're willing to accept more net risk due to "meta" factors like "driver not meeting minimal competence factors". But it would still be more honest in that case to fully admit that this reasoning requires knowingly accepting likely real-world increased fatalities.
And as an aside, for humans, "minimal competence" testing is reasonable - but at large scales & in statistical realms, such metrics value in protection from false claims are of less value since we already have millions of miles of real-world performance tests.
By that logic proffeshional racing drivers should be allowed to drive drunk and stoned
That a Tesla crashes in ways a human wouldn't doesn't seem true. From what I've seen, even the most common accident type for a Tesla occurs at a lower rate than non-Tesla cars.
Do you have more info that's more specific about the types of crashes?
The problem here is a lot of the worst crashes are caused by humans behaving crazy and stupid. It's not a good criticism.
I think you're overestimating human drivers frankly. Collisions like this one happen between humans every day, multiple times per day across North America, you just don't hear about it because normal human error is at fault.
