Sample size is too small to tell. However, if you ignore that, Tesla's Autopilot is at least 2-3 times worse than the average human in a passenger vehicle. And it only gets worse if you restrict further to middle aged people in expensive vehicles.
TLDR: Tesla compared their numbers to a statistic that includes much more dangerous forms of transport(bike, 18-wheelers, whatever). The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety did a study on just driver fatalities in passenger vehicles(cars and light trucks) and came up with 1 fatality / 438 million miles driven. Versus the Tesla figure of 1 / 130 million miles.
Whole article is worth reading as it goes into more detail on statistical issues with Tesla's safety statistic claims.
I'll add that human driving ability is not uniformly distributed. Most accidents are due to particular demographic groups: people that drink and drive, teenagers. It's entirely possible for a self-driving car to be worse at driving than most humans, while still better than the average. In that scenario getting really bad drivers into self-driving cars would improve average accident numbers, but getting non-bad drivers(aka the majority of drivers) into self-driving cars would make average accident numbers worse.
Source: http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1106613_how-safe-is-tesl...
Stats are on low page 2 and high page 3.
TLDR: Tesla compared their numbers to a statistic that includes much more dangerous forms of transport(bike, 18-wheelers, whatever). The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety did a study on just driver fatalities in passenger vehicles(cars and light trucks) and came up with 1 fatality / 438 million miles driven. Versus the Tesla figure of 1 / 130 million miles.
Whole article is worth reading as it goes into more detail on statistical issues with Tesla's safety statistic claims.
I'll add that human driving ability is not uniformly distributed. Most accidents are due to particular demographic groups: people that drink and drive, teenagers. It's entirely possible for a self-driving car to be worse at driving than most humans, while still better than the average. In that scenario getting really bad drivers into self-driving cars would improve average accident numbers, but getting non-bad drivers(aka the majority of drivers) into self-driving cars would make average accident numbers worse.