this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2026
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Remember that the bar for self driving cars isn't perfect driving, it's better-than-human driving, and humans are generally pretty bad at driving, so that bar isn't as high as you probably hope it is.
I'm not suggesting they've reached that bar, only that "sometimes a mistake happens that results in death" is also a problem with human driving, but we know that self driving cars don't get drunk or distracted by their phones, so they've already got a leg up on the competition.
But take that to the next step. Let’s say it reaches the point where it drives better than humans. The problem is it’s not perfect, and has different weaknesses than humans. Even after self-driving is statistically safer, there will be accidents where a human could have done better. Would we accept it under those circumstances? Because those are the circumstances
I think "could have" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here and it's making the question seem more complicated than it is. You can't make decisions based on hindsight from specific examples. If, hypothetically, self driving cars are statistically safer, then they're safer, regardless of any specific anecdote that suggests otherwise.
Maybe I'm not grasping what you're saying?
By “statistically safer” I mean as an overall metric. However there will still be specific scenarios where self-driving is less safe, or even just people believe they could have done better. People will naturally focus on those specific scenarios and reject self-driving even when it is overall safer
Can you give me a hypothetical example? I'm not understanding the scenario you're referring to.
As a fake example, let’s say Tesla full self-driving is overall safer than humans, however it doesn’t recognize traffic poles and will try to drive through them. People would probably reject FSD as not yet ready despite the evidence that it was safer than humans
I appreciate the clarification, but I doubt there will be a way for both scenarios to exist simultaneously; that is to say, I think any sufficiently common "exception" would result in self driving cars not being statistically safer than human drivers.
It would have to be something sufficiently obscure, like, I dunno, going down a eastern-facing switchback road in the fog at sunrise. (Maybe too obscure.)
That being said, I remember reading an article or maybe watching a video about the challenges for making a self driving car feel safer for people. Stuff like turn speed on main roads vs in residential neighborhoods. The forces being felt are exactly the same, and the safety is exactly the same, but (apparently) people feel like one is acceptable but the other is dangerous.
If your ultimate question was along these lines, then yes, I agree there is more than just statistics that will be necessary before people are comfortable with mass adoption of self driving cars. And not for nothing but that tool Musk isn't helping anything by putting out "self driving" cars before they're actually ready.
Without judging the effectiveness, Tesla has made great progress on this. If you read through recent FSD reviews you’ll see many claim things like “the car drives more confidently”
A human can drive decades without accidents. I've done that myself. Day and night, rain, snow and fog.
Most autonomous systems are not allowed to be used in any of those conditions!
So there's a long way for FSD to match a competent driver.
So Tesla is definitely not anywhere near "better than a human". Not even under optimal conditions like daylight and no bad weather.
Aside from the interactive voice response, Tesla self-driving would easily pass a road test here. Although I never tried to get it to parallel park and certainly not “parallel park between those two cars”.
The driving part is easy though. What I remember of the driving test was basic skills and confidence, and self-driving has those. Real life driving is a plethora of unexpected stuff and edge cases: that’s where self-driving still needs work but is also not covered in a road test
OK, to be fair the roads in USA are 100 times easier to navigate than in Europe. At least when I compare Californian cities to Copenhagen and other European cities.
But when the Tesla AI can be confused by the above, I'm not so sure it will easily pass a drivers test. Something that is completely obvious to a human, obviously is not to the AI of a Tesla Robo Taxi, that even has extra sensors compared to a normal Tesla.
"Competent driver" is a higher bar than is strictly necessary to make the roads safer. That was my point. It's easy to read a story about a self driving car getting confused at some traffic pattern, but that happens all the time for humans, too.
I don't know how to quantify "not anywhere near" but I agree the industry isn't there yet, and there are some pretty significant challenges to figure out, like inclement weather.
Tesla isn't the only company trying to crack this; don't let Musk being a terrible person blind you to the fact that very smart people are working on this.
This was about a robotaxi, this is Tesla specifically.
There are no other vendors that are equally irresponsible.
I'm not arguing whether Tesla is ahead or behind, I'm only arguing that Tesla is acting with a level of irresponsibility that should have had them fined and controlled on these issues long ago.
I have no doubt that eventually the technology will be good enough, but it's 10 years ago that Musk claimed FSD would be ready next year, and be safer than human drivers, and be able to pick you up and drive you across country, completely without human intervention.
Musk is a liar, I never made that claim about the other companies working on it. But the "good people" at Tesla are still acting irresponsibly, and putting people's lives in danger for profit.
You'll get no disagreement from me that Musk/Tesla is being irresponsible by over stating the capabilities of their vehicles.
But I don't find it interesting to discus Musk and his many character flaws; I was always speaking more generally about the technology itself.
In general the technology is fine, it's all about implementation, and the way Tesla is implementing it is irresponsible and should be illegal.
The human safety supervisor of a Tesla Robotaxi who crashed was apparently sleep deprived and having a mental health episode, so, if you think self-driving cars will insulate you from human foibles, just you wait. The futures going to get real weird!
Broadly I agree, though. The goal is better-than-human. It really shouldn't ever cross a solid line, though.
That was this case, it's all self-reported so take it with a grain of salt, but it was interesting food for thought: https://electrek.co/2026/07/28/tesla-self-driving-manager-rolling-hazards-lawsuit/
The goal should be far fewer cars of any sort on the street. Investing in self driving cars instead of better infrastructure is stupid. Especially when the cars are privately owned
A non-existent car is ALSO safer than a human-driven car, so it'll sound weird coming from an automotive journalist, but I totally agree. There's no car safer than a railway car.