The dangers of Tesla's overstated safety claims

Elon Musk has little patience for people who question the safety of Tesla Motors' technologies.

The CEO insists that Tesla's Autopilot software and newly unveiled self-driving hardware will make its electric vehicles remarkably safer than conventional cars. Musk bristles during press calls at the mention of Autopilot-related accidents or broader anxieties about abdicating the wheel to a computer.

Yet Musk might be undermining his own safety claims by glossing over the cars' vulnerabilities and branding the vehicles as more advanced than they really are, transportation experts told Mashable.

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Consider Wednesday's announcement that all future Model S, X and 3 Teslas will come equipped with Level 5 capabilities. 

The designation implies no human is needed at all to drive or park the car. In reality, Tesla drivers will still have to control the car until the software can catch up to the hardware, a process that may take years.

Image: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Level 5 is the highest designation for automated car technologies, according to the Society of Automotive Engineers. Level 0 indicates a car has no automation, while Level 4 is a highly automated car that requires some human assistance. 

Tesla's new technology would be closer to a Level 4, according to Alain Kornhauser, a professor at Princeton University who directs the school's transportation program.

"That is really dangerous, saying this is a Level 5," he said. Kornhauser said he worried that future Tesla buyers might slack off in the car, mistakenly assuming they were in a protective Level 5 bubble.

"Why oversell it? It's irresponsible," he said.

Similar criticisms have been lobbed at Autopilot. The system's name implies drivers can relax behind the wheel and tend to their smartphones as the car automatically steers, changes lanes and adjusts its speed. 

But "auto" is misleading, since drivers still have to remain alert at the wheel, said Doug Newcomb, an automotive technology expert and president of C3 Group, a connected car consulting firm.

Image: Sipa USA via AP

Autopilot was implicated in two deadly crashes — one in Florida, one in China — after the Teslas slammed into larger vehicles. In the U.S., Joshua Brown was killed in May after his Model S Autopilot system probably failed to distinguish a white tractor-trailer from the bright sky behind it.

The California carmaker is under pressure in Germany and California to change the name of Autopilot to something less sexy but more accurate, like "driver assistance."

"Tesla is sending the wrong message to people" by hyping its technologies, Newcomb said. "I think it does make it more dangerous."

A spokesperson for Tesla Motors did not return a request for comment by deadline. 

Still, Kornhauser, Newcomb and other experts all agreed that Tesla's technologies do make it safer than conventional cars — when used properly. 

"These are cars that rarely fail and definitely bring the crash rates down and death tolls down," said Kara Kockelman, a professor of transportation engineering at the University of Texas in Austin.

"No technology is 100-percent bullet proof. There are drivers out there who will abuse [Tesla's technology] and that will make them less safe on the road," she said. 

Tesla says it has taken large steps to address safety concerns with Autopilot. 

In September, the carmaker rolled out "dramatic improvements" to the software that Musk claimed would have prevented Brown's death last spring. 

The CEO previously noted that Brown's death was the first fatality in just over 130 million miles where Autopilot was activated — a lower rate than the U.S. average.

Musk has also claimed that of the more than 1 million auto deaths per year worldwide, "approximately half a million people would have been saved if the Tesla Autopilot was universally available," he told Fortune in a terse email. 

Image: AP photo/ringo h.w. chiu

Again, however, transportation experts said Musk may be overstating the safety of Tesla vehicles and misleading drivers.

No fair comparison exists yet of how semi and fully autonomous vehicles stack up against conventional cars when it comes to safety, given how new and relatively rare those technologies are, said Nidhi Kalra, who directs the RAND Center for Decision Making Under Uncertainty. 

"It would take hundreds of millions, or billions of miles to make statistical comparisons," she said.

Kalra co-authored a RAND report in April that found it would take decades or centuries to gather sufficient data from test-driving small fleets autonomous vehicles. 

"If every vehicle were to be autonomous, we could know within six months how they compare to human drivers," she said. "The challenge here is, how do we find out how safe autonomous vehicles are before the American public is able to use them?"

Image: spencer platt/Getty Images

She said Tesla had likely gathered more real-world data than its competitors by equipping its cars with Autopilot and, in the near future, with full self-driving hardware. Even if these programs need improvements along the way or draw scrutiny, they're gathering valuable information to help cars navigate the roads.

"One reason to be optimistic is that Tesla is getting more experience than any other automated carmaker," Kalra said.

Kornhauser, the Princeton professor, said despite his concerns of Musk's "dangerous" marketing approach, Teslas are still among the safest cars on the road.

"He has a very good product, and he could be very real about it, and still people would drive it," Kornhauser said. "I just don't see why there’s the overstatement of these things."