Self-Driving Teslas Are Fatally Striking Motorcyclists More Than Any Other Brand: New Analysis

Tesla self driving is never going to work well enough without sensors - cameras are not enough. It’s fundamentally dangerous and should not be driving unsupervised (or maybe at all).

Accurate.
Each fatality I found where a Tesla kills a motorcyclist is a cascade of 3 failures.
The car's cameras don't detect the biker, or it just doesn't stop for some reason.
The driver isn't paying attention to detect the system failure.
The Tesla's driver alertness tech fails to detect that the driver isn't paying attention.
Taking out the driver will make this already-unacceptably-lethal system even more lethal.
- Self-driving turns itself off seconds before a crash, giving the driver an impossibly short timespan to rectify the situation.
- There's at least two steps before those three:
  -1. Society has been built around the needs of the auto industry, locking people into car dependency
  A legal system exists in which the people who build, sell and drive cars are not meaningfully liable when the car hurts somebody
Most frustrating thing is, as far as I can tell, Tesla doesn't even have binocular vision, which makes all the claims about humans being able to drive with vision only even more blatantly stupid. At least humans have depth perception. And supposedly their goal is to outperform humans?
- Tesla's argument of "well human eyes are like cameras therefore we shouldn't use LiDAR" is so fucking dumb.
  Human eyes have good depth perception and absolutely exceptional dynamic range and focusing ability. They also happen to be linked up to a rapid and highly efficient super computer far outclassing anything that humanity has ever devised, certainly more so than any computer added to a car.
  And even with all those advantages humans have, we still crash from time to time and make smaller mistakes regularly.
These fatalities are a Tesla business advantage. Every one is a data point they can use to program their self-driving intelligence. No one has killed as many as Tesla, so no one knows more about what kills people than Tesla. We don’t have to turn this into a bad thing just because they’re killing people /s
they originally had lidar, or radar, but musk had them disabled in the older models.
- They had radar. Tesla has never had lidar, but they do use lidar on test vehicles to ground truth their camera depth / velocity calculations.

Hey guys relax! It's all part of the learning experience of Tesla FSD.
Some of you may die, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

Regards
Elon Musk
CEO of Tesla

P.S. Volunteers needed for the Mars mission as well.
- Is musk going, because I vote to be on whatever planet he isn't.
- News on the first mission: Meteoroid crashes into full flying SpaceX rocket, killing all aboard.
+1 for you. However, replace "Regards" with the more appropriate words from the German language. The first with an S, and the second an H. I will not type that shit, fuck Leon and I hope the fucking Nazi owned Tesla factory outside of Berlin closes.
- Yes I'm not writing that shit, even in a sarcastic post. Bu I get your drift.
  On the other hand, since you are from Germany, VW group is absolutely killing it on EV recently IMO.
  They totally dominate top 10 EV here in Denmark, with 7 out of 10 top selling models!!
  They are competitively priced, and they are the best combination of quality and range in their price ranges.

Lidar needs to be a mandated requirement for these systems.

Or at least something other than just cameras. Even just adding ultrasonic senses to the front would be an improvement.
- The range on ultrasonics is too short. They only ever get used for parking type situations, not driving on the roadways.
Honestly, emergency braking with LIDAR is mature and cheap enough at this point that is should be mandated for all new cars.
- No, emergency braking with radar is mature and cheap. Lidar is very expensive and relatively nascent
How about we disallow it completely, until it's proven to be SAFER than a human driver. Because, why even allow it if it's only as safe?
- As an engineer, I strongly agree with requirements based on empirical results rather than requiring a specific technology. The latter never ages well. Thank you.
- This sounds good until you realize how unsafe human drivers are. People won’t accept a self-driving system that’s only 50% safer than humans, because that will still be a self-driving car that kills 20,000 Americans a year. Look at the outrage right here, and we’re nowhere near those numbers. I also don’t see anyone comparing these numbers to human drivers on any per-mile basis. Waymos compared favorably to human drivers in their most recently released data. Does anyone even know where Teslas stand compared to human drivers?

This is news? Fortnine talked about it two years ago.
TL;DR Tesla removed LIDAR to save a buck and the cameras see two red dots that the 'puter thinks it's a far away car at night when indeed it's a close motorcycle.

It's helpful to remember that not everyone has seen the same stories you have. If we want something to change, like regulators not allowing dangerous products, then raising public awareness is important. Expressing surprise that not everyone knows about something can be counterproductive.
Going beyond that, wouldn't the new information here be the statistics?
- like regulators not allowing dangerous products,
  I include human drivers in the list of dangerous products I don't want allowed. The question is self driving safer overall (despite possible regressions like this). I don't want regulators to pick favorites. I want them to find "the truth"
It could be two motorcycles side by side.
It can't even perceive the depth of the lights?
- Not with cameras alone, no.
- Why not? It’s got multiple cameras so could judge distances the same way humans do.
  However there have been both hardware and software updates since most of those, so the critical question is how much of a problem is it still? The article had no info or speculation on that
The argument is that humans can drive with just 2 eyes, so cameras are enough. I disagree with this position, given that the limitations of a camera-only system. But that's what it is.
Different sensors excel at different tasks and different conditions, and cameras are not always it.

Stop dehumanizing drivers who killed people.
Feature, wrongly called, Full Self-Driving, shall be supervised at any time.

If you’re going to say your car has “full self driving”, it should have that, not “full self driving (but needs monitoring.)” or “full self driving (but it disconnects 2 seconds before impact.)”.
I think it's important to call out inattentive drivers while also calling out the systems and false advertising that may lead them to become less attentive.
If these systems were marketed as "driver assistance systems" instead of "full self driving", certainly more people would pay attention. The fact that they've been allowed to get away with this blatant false advertising is astonishing.
They're also obviously not adequately monitoring for driver attentiveness.

Sounds like NHTSA needs a visit from DOGE!

Gotta get rid of the evidence.

LIDAR vs Tesla.

I had ignored the video, as I didn't expect Mark to expose Tesla

I imagine bicyclists must be æffected as well if they're on the road (as we should be, technically). As somebody who has already been literally inches away from being rear-ended, this makes me never want to bike in the US again.

Time to go to Netherlands.

*affected
- Thank you for your service.
- Affectively, does it realy mater if someone has slite misstakes in there righting?
this makes me never want to bike in the US again.
I live close enough to work for it to be a very reasonable biking distance. But there is no safe route. A high-speed "stroad" with a narrow little bike lane. It would only be a matter of time before some asshole with their face in their phone drifts into me.
I am deeply resentful of our automobile-centric infrastructure in the U.S. It's bad for the environment, bad for our wallets, bad for our waistlines, and bad for physical safety.
- I mean yeah, I just said above that someone almost killed me. They were probably a human driver. But that's a "might happen, never know." If self driving cars are rear-ending people, that's an inherent artifact of it's programming, even though it's not intentionally programmed to do that.
  So it's like, things were already bad. I already do not feel safe doing any biking anymore. But as self driving cars become more prevalent, that threat upgrades to a kind of defacto, "Oh, these vast stretches of land are places where only cars and trucks are allowed. Everything else is roadkill waiting to happen."

Why is self-driving even allowed?

Because muh freedum, EU are a bunch of commies for not allowing this awesome innovation on their roads
(I fucking love living in the EU)
Robots don't get drunk, or distracted, or text, or speed...
Anecdotally, I think the Waymos are more courteous than human drivers. Though waymo seems to be the best ones out so far, idk about the other services.
- Don't waymos have remote drivers that take control in unexpected situationsml?
Humans are terrible drivers. The open question is are self driving cars overall safer than human driven cars. So far the only people talking either don't have data, or have reason cherry pick only parts of the data that make self driving look good. This is the one exception where someone seemingly independent has done analysis - the question is are they unbiased, or are they cherry picking data to make self driving look bad (I'm not familiar with the source so I can't answer that)
Either way more study is needed.
- I am absolutely biased. It's me, I'm the source :)
  I'm a motorcyclist, and I don't want to die. Also just generally, motorcyclists deserve to get where they are going safely.
  I agree with you. Self-driving cars will overall greatly improve highway safety.
  I disagree with you when you suggest that pointing out flaws in the technology is evidence of bias, or "cherry picking to make self driving look bad." I think we can improve on the technology by pointing out its systemic defects. If it hits motorcyclists, take it off the road, fix it, and then save lives by putting it back on the road.
  That's the intention of the coverage, at least: I am hoping to apply pressure to improve rather than remove. Read my Waymo coverage, I'm actually a big automation enthusiast, because fewer crashes is a good thing.
- Humans are terrible. The human eyes and brain are good at detecting certain things though that allow a reaction where computer vision, especially only using one method of detection, fails often. There are times when an automated system will prevent a problem before a human could even see it. So far neither is the clear winner, human driving just has a legacy that automation has to beat by a great length and not just be good enough.
  On the topic of human drivers, I think most on the road drive reactively and not based on prediction and anticipation. Given the speed and possible detection methods, a well designed automated system should be excelling at this. It costs more and it more complex to design such a thing, so we're getting the bare bones of the best minimum tech can give us right now, which again is not a replacement for all cases.
Because the only thing worse than self driving is human driving.
Because the march of technological advancement is inevitable?
In light of recent (and let's face it, long ago cases) Tesla's "Full Self Driving" needs to be downgraded to level 2 at best.
Level 2: Partial Automation
The vehicle can handle both steering and acceleration/deceleration, but the driver must remain engaged and ready to take control.
Pretty much the same level as other brands self driving feature.
- The other brands, such as Audi and VW, work much better than Tesla's system. Their LIDAR systems aren't blinded by fog, and rain the way the Tesla is. Someone recently tested an Audi with its system against a Tesla with its system. The Tesla failed either 3/5 or 4/5 tests. The Audi passed 3/5 or 4/5. Neither system is perfect, but the one that doesn't rely on just cameras is clearly superior.
  Edit: it was Mark Rober.
  https://youtu.be/IQJL3htsDyQ
Bribes to local governments and police, mostly.

Five years ago, you could not have brought this up without Musk simps defending it.

There seems to be people/bots down-voting critical takes up and down this very thread. What chumps.
On Reddit perhaps

the cybertruck is sharp enough to cut a deer in half, surely a biker is just as vulnerable.

I wonder if it's happened yet
- There was an article where he sliced a deer in half

On a quick read, I didn't see the struck motorcycles listed. Last I heard, a few years ago, was that this mainly affected motorcycles with two rear lights that are spaced apart and fairly low to the ground. I believe this is mostly true for Harleys.

The theory I recall was that this rear light configuration made the Tesla assume it was looking (remember, only cameras without depth data) at a car that was further down the road - and acceleration was safe as a result. It miscategorised the motorcycle so badly that it misjudged it's position entirely.

I also saw that theory! That's in the first link in the article.
The only problem with the theory: Many of the crashes are in broad daylight. No lights on at all.
I didn't include the motorcycle make and model, but I did find it. Because I do journalism, and sometimes I even do good journalism!
The models I found are: Kawasaki Vulcan (a cruiser bike, just like the Harleys you describe), Yamaha YZF-R6 (a racing-style sport bike with high-mount lights), and a Yamaha V-Star (a "standard" bike, fairly low lights, and generally a low-slung bike). Weirdly, the bike models run the full gamut of the different motorcycles people ride on highways, every type is represented (sadly) in the fatalities.
I think you're onto something with the faulty depth sensors. Sensing distance is difficult with optical sensors. That's why Tesla would be alone in the motorcycle fatality bracket, and that's why it would always be rear-end crashes by the Tesla.
- At least in EU, you can’t turn off motorcycle lights. They’re always on. In eu since 2003, and in US, according to the internet, since the 70s.
- Because I do journalism, and sometimes I even do good journalism!
  In that case, you wouldn't happen to know whether or not Teslas are unusually dangerous to bicycles too, would you?
Whatever it is, it's unacceptable and they should really ban Tesla's implementation until they fix some fundamental issues.
The ridiculous thing is, it has 3 cameras pointing forward, you only need 2 to get stereoscopic depth perception with cameras...why the fuck are they not using that!?
Edit: I mean, I know why, it's because it's cameras with three different lenses used for different things (normal, wide angle, and telescopic) so they're not suitable for it, but it just seems stupid to not utilise that concept when you insist on a camera only solution.
- That seems like a spectacular oversight. How is it supposed to replicate human vision without depth perception?
This video proposes that theory.
- Ah, thanks for jogging my memory
Still probably a good idea to keep an eye on that Tesla behind you. Or just let them past.
Are you saying Harley drivers are fair game?

Trucks in general have gotten so big they are pedestrian deathtraps

as daily rider, i must add having a tesla behind to the list of road hazards to look out

I'm on mine far more often than I'm in a car. I think Tesla found out that I point and laugh at any cyber trucks I see at red lights while I'm out and is trying to kill me.
I feel like that as a driver. Tesla’s do not move at a consistent speed, which drives me mad
You're not wrong, but good luck watching out for a vehicle approaching you at a 30 mph differential (which is what I recall from fortnine covering the topic years ago) from behind.

Every captcha.....can you see the motorcycle? I would be afraid if they wanted all the squares with small babies or maybe just regular folk...can you pick all the hottie's? Which of these are body parts?

can you pick all the hottie’s?
... the hottie's what?

Remember, you have the right to self-defence, against both rogue robots and rogue humans.

- Propane cylinder. Mutually assured destruction.
- If it's a Tesla truck, I guess I could splash it with half a Dixie cup full of water...
- The Arnold Method

It’s because the system has to rely on visual cues, since Tesla’s have no radar. The system looks at the tail light when it’s dark to gauge the distance from the vehicle. And since some bikes have a double light the system thinks it’s a car in front of them that is far away, when in reality it’s a bike up close. Also remember the ai is trained on human driving behavior which Tesla records from their customers. And we all know how well the average human drives around two wheeled vehicles.

I'm wondering how that stacks up to human drivers. Since the data is redacted I'm guessing not well at all.

If it were good, we'd be seeing regular updates on Twitter, I imagine.

Elon needs to take responsibility for their death.

That's why Tesla's full self driving is officially still a level 2 cruise control. But of course they promise to jump directly to level 4 soon™.

Cuz other self driving cars use LIDAR so it's basically impossible for them to not realise that a bike is there.

unless it's foggy, etc.

This is another reason I’ll never drive a motorcycle. Fuck that shit.

It's like smoking: if you haven't started, don't XD
- As a fellow meat crayon I agree
As someone who likes the open sky feeling, this is why I drive a convertible instead.

I wonder if a state court judge could mandate its use as unsafe?

They are illegal in every developed country.
- But muh innovation! How are genius CEOs supposed to innovate if they can't use the public at large as guinea pigs??

Good to know, I'll stay away from those damn things when I ride.

Commuting in CA feels like I’m navigating a minefield 🤡
I already do. Flip a coin: Heads, the car is operating itself and is therefore being operated by a moron. Tails, the owner is driving it manually and therefore it is being operated by a moron.
Just be sure to carefully watch your six when you're sitting at a stoplight. I've gotten out of the habit of sitting right in the center of the lane, because the odds are getting ever higher that I'll have to scoot out of the way of some imbecile who's coming in hot. That's hard to do when your front tire is 24" away from the license plate of the car in front of you.
- For me it depends which bike I'm riding. If it's my 49cc scooter, I'll sit to the very right side of the lane for a quick escape while watching my mirrors like a hawk. On my XR500, I'll just filter to the front (legal in Utah).
Good luck. They're fucking everywhere, at least where I live.

Why? Crash rates for Self-Driving Cars (when adjusted for crash severity) are lower.
Removing sensors to save costs on self driving vehicles should be illegal
WHY CAN'T WE JUST HAVE PUBLIC TRANSIT, FUCK! TRAINS EXIST!
teslas aren't even worthy of the designation "self-driving". They use cheap cameras instead of LIDAR. It should be illegal to call such junk "self-driving".
Shouldn't be an issue if drivers used it as a more advanced cruise control. Unless there is catastrophic mechanical or override failure, these things will always be the driver's fault.

Musk = POS Nazi. Who couldn't care less about people being killed by his shit companies.

What bike is that in the photo?

My partner and I were actually debating that exact question before I posted it!
It's just stock art, but of a rider in the Midwest. Custom exhaust, custom saddle and rack for that cafe racer look, and I just barely can't make out the model on the engine fairing.
Here it is all big, let me know if you can figure it out: https://unsplash.com/photos/a-person-riding-a-motorcycle-on-a-city-street-kPfwWyUWubA
Looks hot, that's why I picked it.
- Found it! Thanks to your image.
  It's a 2016 - 2018 SYM Wolf Classic 150
It looks a great deal like a Royal Enfield, but I couldn't tell you which model. A Bullet, maybe?
- I think it's a 2016 - 2018 SYM Wolf Classic 150

You mean they are providing organ donations more than any other car. Silver lining. /s

They call it the Model 3 because the Tesla Organ-Harvester didn't translate well to Chinese

I'm not sure how that's possible considering no one manufactures self-driving cars that I know of. Certainly not Tesla.

if only there was a government department to investigate these kinds of things..... Too soon?

Disbanded!
... for effieciency!

Let's get this out of the way: Felon Musk is a nazi asshole.

Anyway, It should be criminal to do these comparisons without showing human drivers statistics for reference. I'm so sick of articles that leave out hard data. Show me deaths per billion miles driven for tesla, competitors, and humans.

Then there's shit like the boca raton crash, where they mention the car going 100 in a 45 and killing a motorcyclist, and then go on to say the only way to do that is to physically use the gas pedal and that it disables emergency breaking. Is it really a self driving car at that point when a user must actively engage to disable portions of the automation? If you take an action to override stopping, it's not self driving. Stopping is a key function of how self driving tech self drives. It's not like the car swerved to another lane and nailed someone, the driver literally did this.

Bottom line I look at the media around self driving tech as sensationalist. Danger drives clicks. Felon Musk is a nazi asshole, but self driving tech isn't made by the guy. it's made by engineers. I wouldn't buy a tesla unless he has no stake in the business, but I do believe people are far more dangerous behind the wheel in basically all typical driving scenarios.

He may not be an engineer, but he's the one who made the decision to use strictly cameras rather than lidar, so yes, he's responsible for these fatalities that other companies don't have. You may not be a fan of Musk, but it sounds like you're a fan of Tesla
"Critical Thinker" Yikes. Somehow the right made that a forbidden word in my mind because they hide behind that as an excuse for asking terrible questions etc.
Anyway. Allegedly the statistics are rather mediocre for self driving cars. But sadly I haven't seen a good statistic about that, either. The issue here is that automatable tasks are lower risk driving situations so having a good statistic is near impossible. E.g. miles driven are heavily skewed when you are only used on highways as a driver. There are no simple numbers that will tell you anything of worth.
That being said the title should be about the mistake that happened without fundamental statements (i.e. self driving is bad because motorcyclists die).
- Did I ask a terrible question, or do you just not like anything being objective about the issue? I'm so far over on the left side ideologically that you'd be hard pressed finding an issue that i'm conservative on. I don't fit the dem mold though, i'm more of a bernie.... though I am very critical in general. I don't just take things at face value. Anywho...
  Saying that the statistics aren't great just lends credence to the fact that we can't objectively determine how safe or unsafe anything is without good data.
In Boca Raton, I've seen no evidence that the self-driving tech was inactive. According to the government, it is reported as a self-driving accident, and according to the driver in his court filings, it was active.
Insanely, you can slam on the gas in Tesla's self-driving mode, accelerate to 100MPH in a 45MPH zone, and strike another vehicle, all without the vehicle's "traffic aware" automation effectively applying a brake.
That's not sensationalist. That really is just insanely designed.
- FTFA:
  Certain Tesla self-driving technologies are speed capped, but others are not. Simply pressing the accelerator will raise your speed in certain modes, and as we saw in the police filings from the Washington State case, pressing the accelerator also cancels emergency braking.
  That’s how you would strike a motorcyclist at such extreme speed, simply press the accelerator and all other inputs are apparently overridden.
  If the guy smashes the gas, just like in cruise control I would not expect the vehicle to stop itself.
  The guy admitted to being intoxicted and held the gas down... what's the self driving contribution to that?

For what it's worth, it really isn't clear if this is FSD or AP based on the constant mention of self driving even when it's older collisions when it would definitely been AP, and is even listed as AP if you click on the links to the crash.

So these may all be AP, or one or two might be FSD, it's unclear.

Every Tesla has AP as well, so the likelihood of that being the case is higher.

That's not good though, right? "We have the technology to save lives, it works on all of our cars, and we have the ability to push it to every car in the fleet. But these people haven't paid extra for it, so..."
- Well, only 1 or 2 of those were in a time frame where I'd consider FSD superior to AP, it's a more recent development where that's likely the case.
  But to your point, at some point I expect Tesla to use the FSD software for AP for the exact reasons you mentioned. My guess is they'd just do something like disable making left/right turns , so you wouldn't be able to use it outside of straight stretches like AP today.
In this case, does it matter? Both are supposed to follow a vehicle at a safe distance
I’d be more interested in how it changes over time, as new software is pushed. While it’s important that know it had problems judging distance to a motorcycle, it’s more important to know whether it still does
- In this case, does it matter? Both are supposed to follow a vehicle at a safe distance
  I think it does matter, while both are supposed to follow at safe distances, the FSD stack is doing it in a completely different way. They haven't really been making any major updates to AP for many years now, all focus has been on FSD. I think the only real changes it's had for quite awhile have been around making sure people are paying attention better.
  AP is looking at the world frame by frame, each individual camera on it's own, while FSD is taking the input of all cameras, turning into 3d vector space, and then driving based off that. Doing that on city streets and highways is only a pretty recent development. Updates for doing it this way on highway and streets only went out to all cars with FSD in the past few months. For a long time it was on city streets only.
  I’d be more interested in how it changes over time, as new software is pushed.
  I think that's why it's important to make a real distinction between AP and FSD today (and specifically which FSD versions)
  They're wholly different systems, one that gets older every day, and one that keeps getting better every few months. Making an article like this that groups them together over the span of years muddies the water on what / if any progress has been made.

Unless it's a higher rate than human drivers per mile or hours driven I do not care. Article doesn't have those stats so it's clickbait as far as I'm concerned

Thanks, 'Satan.
Do you know the number of miles driven by Tesla's self-driving tech? Because I don't, Tesla won't say, they're a remarkably non-transparent company where their tech is concerned. Near as I can tell, nobody does (other than folks locked up tight with NDAs). If the ratio of accidents-per-mile-driven looked good, you know as a flat fact that Elon would be Tweeting all about it.
Sorry you didn't find the death of 5 Americans newsworthy. I'll try harder for the next one.
- You're right, 5 deaths isn't newsworthy in the context of tens of thousands killed by human drivers each year.
  Is it worse than human drivers is the only relevant point of comparison, which the article doesn't make.
The fact that the other self driving brands logged zero motorcyclist fatalities means the technology exists to prevent more deaths. Tesla has chosen to allow more people to die in order to reduce cost. The families of those five dead motorcyclists certainly care.
- [Edit: oh, my bad, I replied to you very cattily when I meant to reply to Satan. Sorry! Friendly fire! XD ]
Cybertrucks have 17 times the mortality rate of the ford pinto.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/02/report-cybertruck-safety-ford-pinto/
- I wrote the original analysis Mother Jones is citing there. Hah, how about that! Delights me to see it cited in the wild.
- Completely irrelevant to whether or not FSD is safer than human drivers.
Same goes for the other vehicles. They didn’t even try to cover miles driven and it’s quite likely Tesla has far more miles of self-driving than anyone else.
I’d even go so far as to speculate the zero accidents of other self-driving vehicles could just be zero information because we don’t have enough information to call it zero
- No, the zero accidents for other self-driving vehicles is actually zero :) You may have heard of this little boutique automotive manufacturer, Ford Motor Company. They're one of the primary competitors, and they are far above the mileage where you would expect a fatal accident if they were as safe as a human.
  Ford has reported self-driving crashes (many of them!). Just no fatal crashes involving motorcycles, because I guess they don't fucking suck at making self-driving software.
  I linked the data, it's all public governmental data, and only the Tesla crashes are heavily redacted. You could... IDK... read it, and then share your opinion about it?