Tesla Motors is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for failure to disclose that one if its car crashed while in self-driving mode. The question is whether whether Tesla should have disclosed the accident as a “material” event: a development a reasonable investor would consider important. That opens a bigger question about the nature of driving.
Take a look at the IIHS Fatal Crash data:
There were 29,989 fatal motor vehicle crashes in the United States in 2014 in which 32,675 deaths occurred. This resulted in 10.2 deaths per 100,000 people and 1.08 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled. The fatality rate per 100,000 people ranged from 3.5 in the District of Columbia to 25.7 in Wyoming. The death rate per 100 million vehicle miles traveled ranged from 0.57 in Massachusetts to 1.65 in South Carolina.
Humans are far from perfect and we do a fine job of killing ourselves behind the wheel. The fatality rate has improved over the last near century of car use.
The red line of deaths per mile travelled is flattening out, indicating to me that we can not eliminate fatal car crashes. Humans are not perfect.
Self-driving cars will not be perfect. There will still be crashes and there will still be fatal crashes. The big question for self-driving cars is whether they will do better than humans at keeping ourselves alive behind the wheel.
In looking at the SEC inquiry, the question is whether the fatal crash was a material event that should have been disclosed.
According to Tesla’s news release their cars have driven for 130 million miles on Autopilot and this is the first death. That’s a rate of 0.77 deaths per million miles driven.
According to that IIHS data, that rate is less than the nationwide average of 1.08 deaths and less than the Florida average of 12.5 deaths. At least statistically, it does not seem material to investors. (It’s obviously very material to the family and friends of the crash victim.)
Google cars have driven more than 1.3 million miles since 2009. Those cars have been in at least 18 crashes, 17 of which were blamed on other drivers.
Can self-driving cars do a better job than humans?
Sources:
- A Tragic Loss
- SEC Investigating Tesla for Possible Securities-Law Breach by By JEAN EAGLESHAM, MIKE SPECTOR and SUSAN PULLIAM in the Wall Street Journal
- USA annual VMT vs deaths per VMT by Dennis Bratland (CC BY SA)
- Distraction and Teen Crashes: Even Worse than We Thought
- IIHS Fatal Crash Data
- Will Google Cars Eviscerate the Personal Injury Bar?
- Google’s Self-Driving Car Caused Its First Crash