German report calls Tesla's Autopilot a "hazard"

A new study from Germany's Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt) found that the autopilot feature of the Tesla Model S constitutes a "considerable traffic hazard," according to a report in Der Spiegel. Unsurprisingly, Tesla CEO Elon Musk doesn't agree and today said in a tweet that those reports were "not actually based on science," and repeated that "Autopilot is safer than manually driven cars." Tesla reports that its vehicles drove more than 130 million miles with Autopilot engaged before one was involved in a fatal crash. Statistically, that beats the safety record for manually driven cars which are involved in a fatal crash every 100 million miles in the U.S., according to data from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. It's worth noting that Der Spiegel reports that the study was an internal one, and did not represent a final evaluation.