It's not at all the same -- self-driving cars can risk the lives not only of the passengers, but of innocent bystanders. Several commenters have pointed out problems such as rain, snow, darkness, etc., but there are more fundamental problems. For example, self-driving cars based on machine learning may be susceptible to adversarial attacks that cause the car to behave unpredictably [1,2]. How will self-driving cars know how to react when things go wrong, e.g., the stop light is broken? What about construction?
I'm not saying humans react perfectly in these situations, but self-driving cars are rule-based, and have zero ability to adapt to unanticipated situations. I'm not arguing that Tesla shouldn't push forward. However, I believe that so far, Tesla has demonstrated a lack of concern for user safety. Companies like Google, Mercedes-Benz, etc. have tech at least as good as Tesla's, but have been much more cautious about deploying it.
The new system is not generally rule-based (although it does have a few rules for some things), it has integrated deep learning. It adapts to novel situations based on patterns learned from experience. The network will be trained by actual Tesla driver actions in these situations over the next months/years.
That's different from the previous auto-pilot version.
I'm fully supportive of self-driving vehicles, but arguments like this don't do the "pro-selfdriving" any favors.
"Autopilot v1" miles are also largely on freeways and conditions favorable to the driving-assist features. The 1 in 90 million is comparing to all cars and not just other cars with driving-assist. I don't think many people would argue that driving-assist is more dangerous than without. The 1 in 90 million is across far more driving conditions, many of which are more dangerous than what the Tesla Autopilot is driving in.
The comparison between the two isn't really a fair comparison and, in my opinion, is dishonest.
E:
In addition, picking any random model car may yield similar statistics. "Car accidents involving a Honda Civic per mile driven" is probably a lot higher than "Car accidents involving a Pontiac Firebird per mile driven". Because there are more Civics on the road... Firebirds may be in fewer accidents, but my money is on the Civic being a safer car.
I'm not saying humans react perfectly in these situations, but self-driving cars are rule-based, and have zero ability to adapt to unanticipated situations. I'm not arguing that Tesla shouldn't push forward. However, I believe that so far, Tesla has demonstrated a lack of concern for user safety. Companies like Google, Mercedes-Benz, etc. have tech at least as good as Tesla's, but have been much more cautious about deploying it.
[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.04435
[2] https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.6199