Tesla just released its latest quarterly Autopilot safety report, in which the company compares the number of miles traveled by accident with Autopilot on and off. According to Tesla, a vehicle is up to seven times less likely to have an accident with the assistant activated.
“In the fourth quarter, we logged one accident for every 3.45 million miles with Autopilot activated. For those who drive without Autopilot but with our active safety features, we log one accident for every 2.05 million miles traveled.
We log one accident for those who drive without Autopilot, and our active safety features every 1.27 million miles. By comparison, the most recent data from NHTSA shows that in the United States, there is one car accident every 484,000 miles.”
From this data, we can deduce that the claim that Autopilot is up to seven times less likely to be involved in an accident is obtained by comparing the NHTSA figures with those of Tesla itself. However, it must be taken into account that the Autopilot is used today mainly on expressways such as motorways, in which the probability of suffering an accident is much lower than in other areas.
Finally, it is always interesting to compare the results of the fourth quarter of 2020 with those of the fourth quarter of 2019: with the Autopilot connected, in 2019 there was an accident every 3.07 million miles; with Autopilot off but with active safety features on, every 2.10 million miles; and with Autopilot and active safety features turned off every 1.64 million miles.