this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2025
1153 points (100.0% liked)

Technology

71802 readers
4101 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

TL;DR: Self-Driving Teslas Rear-End Motorcyclists, Killing at Least 5

Brevity is the spirit of wit, and I am just not that witty. This is a long article, here is the gist of it:

  • The NHTSA’s self-driving crash data reveals that Tesla’s self-driving technology is, by far, the most dangerous for motorcyclists, with five fatal crashes that we know of.
  • This issue is unique to Tesla. Other self-driving manufacturers have logged zero motorcycle fatalities with the NHTSA in the same time frame.
  • The crashes are overwhelmingly Teslas rear-ending motorcyclists.

Read our full analysis as we go case-by-case and connect the heavily redacted government data to news reports and police documents.

Oh, and read our thoughts about what this means for the robotaxi launch that is slated for Austin in less than 60 days.

(page 2) 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I wonder if a state court judge could mandate its use as unsafe?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

They are illegal in every developed country.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Good to know, I'll stay away from those damn things when I ride.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I already do. Flip a coin: Heads, the car is operating itself and is therefore being operated by a moron. Tails, the owner is driving it manually and therefore it is being operated by a moron.

Just be sure to carefully watch your six when you're sitting at a stoplight. I've gotten out of the habit of sitting right in the center of the lane, because the odds are getting ever higher that I'll have to scoot out of the way of some imbecile who's coming in hot. That's hard to do when your front tire is 24" away from the license plate of the car in front of you.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

For me it depends which bike I'm riding. If it's my 49cc scooter, I'll sit to the very right side of the lane for a quick escape while watching my mirrors like a hawk. On my XR500, I'll just filter to the front (legal in Utah).

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (8 children)

Let's get this out of the way: Felon Musk is a nazi asshole.

Anyway, It should be criminal to do these comparisons without showing human drivers statistics for reference. I'm so sick of articles that leave out hard data. Show me deaths per billion miles driven for tesla, competitors, and humans.

Then there's shit like the boca raton crash, where they mention the car going 100 in a 45 and killing a motorcyclist, and then go on to say the only way to do that is to physically use the gas pedal and that it disables emergency breaking. Is it really a self driving car at that point when a user must actively engage to disable portions of the automation? If you take an action to override stopping, it's not self driving. Stopping is a key function of how self driving tech self drives. It's not like the car swerved to another lane and nailed someone, the driver literally did this.

Bottom line I look at the media around self driving tech as sensationalist. Danger drives clicks. Felon Musk is a nazi asshole, but self driving tech isn't made by the guy. it's made by engineers. I wouldn't buy a tesla unless he has no stake in the business, but I do believe people are far more dangerous behind the wheel in basically all typical driving scenarios.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

He may not be an engineer, but he's the one who made the decision to use strictly cameras rather than lidar, so yes, he's responsible for these fatalities that other companies don't have. You may not be a fan of Musk, but it sounds like you're a fan of Tesla

load more comments (7 replies)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

Musk = POS Nazi. Who couldn't care less about people being killed by his shit companies.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (7 children)

Unless it's a higher rate than human drivers per mile or hours driven I do not care. Article doesn't have those stats so it's clickbait as far as I'm concerned

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Thanks, 'Satan.

Do you know the number of miles driven by Tesla's self-driving tech? Because I don't, Tesla won't say, they're a remarkably non-transparent company where their tech is concerned. Near as I can tell, nobody does (other than folks locked up tight with NDAs). If the ratio of accidents-per-mile-driven looked good, you know as a flat fact that Elon would be Tweeting all about it.

Sorry you didn't find the death of 5 Americans newsworthy. I'll try harder for the next one.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The fact that the other self driving brands logged zero motorcyclist fatalities means the technology exists to prevent more deaths. Tesla has chosen to allow more people to die in order to reduce cost. The families of those five dead motorcyclists certainly care.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (4 children)
load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›