Two Big Questions for Elon Musk

But there are two big problems with Musk's explanation. For one, how does Tesla quantify Autopilot's safety record compared with an ordinary car? Musk says that, in a car without Autopilot, there is on average one death for every 89 million miles traveled; but in a car with Autopilot, the first death won't happen for more than twice as many miles. It's not clear, however, how he reaches this conclusion. Academics like Missy Cummings, a roboticist at Duke, and John Leonard, an engineer at MIT, have long called for more transparency from the manufacturers working in the self-driving car space.