Fellow Tesla owner here. Agree with everything you wrote.
Autopilot is a wonderful system when used properly. It's lousy when it's abused. Applied responsibly, it is very obviously a safety improvement to anybody who uses it. Used as a substitute for human attention, it's very easy to see how it can turn tragic (as we are discussing/witnessing).
The way Elon talks about these situations frustrates me to no end. The data are on his side, yet he continually resorts to half-truths because they are simple to present. Pretty obnoxious for a dude who is on a tear about media dishonesty. But: that is a knock against Elon, not against Autopilot. At the end of the day, I believe Autopilot does much more good than bad, and results in in more people staying alive than would without it. I'm glad we have NTSB and NHTSA to keep Tesla honest, and I'm also glad that they are more thorough and tempered than a lot of folks here on HN would like them to be.
Autopilot is a wonderful system when used properly. It's lousy when it's abused. Applied responsibly, it is very obviously a safety improvement to anybody who uses it. Used as a substitute for human attention, it's very easy to see how it can turn tragic (as we are discussing/witnessing).
The way Elon talks about these situations frustrates me to no end. The data are on his side, yet he continually resorts to half-truths because they are simple to present. Pretty obnoxious for a dude who is on a tear about media dishonesty. But: that is a knock against Elon, not against Autopilot. At the end of the day, I believe Autopilot does much more good than bad, and results in in more people staying alive than would without it. I'm glad we have NTSB and NHTSA to keep Tesla honest, and I'm also glad that they are more thorough and tempered than a lot of folks here on HN would like them to be.