I mean in that case imagine these people being allowed to drive. There's no reason computers can't be better than people, and many reasons they could be better.
There are advantages and disadvantages to each. The computer failure methods are new to us, but we're all too familiar with human failings. Humans have much slower reaction times. Humans get sleepy, drunk, or distracted. Humans sometimes get angry or impatient and do dangerous things with their vehicles.
The important metric is accidents per mile driven. Right now, Teslas on autopilot seem to be significantly safer than human drivers. From Tesla's vehicle safety report[1]:
> ...we registered one accident for every 4.53 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 2.27 million miles driven. For those driving without Autopilot and without our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 1.56 million miles driven. By comparison, NHTSA’s most recent data shows that in the United States there is an automobile crash every 479,000 miles.
Yes autopilot has issues and limitations, but it's already 3x safer than unaided drivers. Also, it seems to be improving in safety. Two years ago, autopilot's crash rate was only 1.5x lower than unaided Tesla drivers.
Now are those metrics comparable? Are they normalized for conditions and location? That is situations where autopilot disengages and driver does not take action counted in?
Weather, type of road and so on has huge effect on number of accidents. Unless those are taken in consideration it's only lies...
I'm going to say that these are not normalized. It's fairly well known (and NHTSA data backs it up) that the accident rate for the types of vehicle Tesla builds (luxury 4/5 door sedans) accounts for a fraction of total vehicle accidents.
A portion of this is a result of the ability for young adults to purchases $30-40,000 cars: 16-19 yo drivers make up around 2/5 of the total accidents in the US.
Additionally, 4 door sedans in general (which describes most Tesla models) are only involved in approximately 27% of all accidents. The Model X, a compact SUV, only accounts for about 13% of all accidents.
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