A Tesla fan launched a call a few days ago to recruit children to demonstrate the reliability of Tesla’s driving aids. A very bad idea according to the American regulator.
A few weeks ago The Dawn Project published a study relayed by an advertisement to denounce the inefficiency of Tesla’s Autopilot system in detecting children.
The study from a candidate for the US senatorial, and incidentally competitor of the Autopilot software, has already been widely disputed and even suspected of cheating.
But a fan wanted to demonstrate it himself by using his children in a video to prove that Tesla’s autonomous driving works perfectly well.
The video relayed on social networks agitates the debate around Tesla’s Autopilot, so much so that the NHTSA, the authority in charge of road safety in the United States, had to publish a statement urging fans not to use their children for testing.
“Consumers should never attempt to create their own test scenarios or use real people, and especially children, to test the performance of vehicle technology”said the NHTSA.
Tesla’s Autopilot, a divisive technology
It must be said that the debate is raging in the United States. On the one hand, critics who want to ban Tesla’s Full System Driving (FSD) face the brand’s supporters.
Last June, the NHTSA declared that it had identified 273 accidents involving semi-automatic driving aboard a Tesla out of the 392 declared in 10 months, all brands combined. A worrying score to say the least, even if it should be noted that the Teslas are by far the majority in this niche in terms of market share, which can cause an overrepresentation of the brand.
Conclusions that are obviously disputed by the manufacturer, which ensures that on average, there is 9 times less chance of having an accident with a Tesla than with another vehicle.
Tesla recalls that today fully automated driving is not activated and that the driver’s attention is still required. According to the manufacturer, accidents would always be the result of driver negligence rather than failure of the Autopilot system.
Source: Bloomberg