Talking about FSD and where it is likely to take us in terms of lives saved, I have an image for you. I know quite a lot about this as Scotland was my home from the mid 80's to the mid 2010's.
If we look at this chart we see some key datum points. Deaths on the roads were around 900 in 1970. Between 1970 and 1980, car safety became much better, seatbelts became mandatory to be fitted in 1967 (at least in the front), then, in 1983, wearing seatbelts, in the front, became law.
From 1983 we see a huge drop in deaths on the roads.
Then, again, in 1991, rear seatbelts became mandatory to be worn. Again, over the next few years deaths dropped.
In the 2000's Scotland went on a manic set of regulation changes, 20mph speed limits, traffic calming, speed camera's, drink drive limits slashed.
We saw a decline again. But this is the press version. At the same time we saw a huge rise in ABS and airbags. Cars became much safer.
However, buoyed with the press about how their "laws" had saved so many lives, they slashed the drink driving limit again.
Last year there was a concerted effort to drop the drink driving limit in Scotland to 0. It failed. Why? Because the last halving of the limit saved not one single life.
Speed limits are already low. Camera's are everywhere and the use of number plate recognition average speed limits are massively on the rise. Yet deaths on the roads refuse to drop significantly below 200.
So where can we go from here?
Enter FSD, advanced avoidance software and a whole plethora of other systems to protect both the driver and other road users.
But this is where it becomes a problem. Because it is quite likely that Scotland could get down to 100 deaths per year with these enhanced systems.
The thing is that even if we did save 80-90 lives with them, they would be blocked by the 10-15 lives that might be taken by the mistakes as the software learns to be better.
You would think that reducing human error by saving 90 lives would massively outweigh the 10-15 lives that might be taken by computer mistakes.
But you would be wrong. Apparently only humans are allowed to err and kill people and keep on doing it year after year without getting better.
Should we take the pragmatic approach, the existing Tesla software could save hundreds, if not thousands, of lives around the world. But in the process of learning to be this good they might just take a few dozen.
Where this fits in, on topic? Acceptance of FSD, warts and all, could boost Tesla dramatically. Rejection of it wouldn't break them, but would greatly slow them down.