Tesla won’t give drivers their own crash data without a court order • Hacker News Board

Re: Tesla won’t give drivers their own crash data without a court order

#181

Post by danso » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 4:40 PM UTC

chc wrote: post #155

danso wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Step up Reveal, an “independent journalism organization” to start “reporting” on Tesla. Quotation marks are normally considered to denote sarcasm, and boy do I ever mean it. Sounds like an article committed to defending Tesla. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but "with as little bias as possible" is debatable.

I don't see how you take the writer saying "These people are reporting outright falsehoods and their falsehoods appear to closely match the talking points of a PR campaign" as an indication that they're committed to defending Tesla. If those facts are true, that seems like the sort of thing an unbiased analysis would explain.

Yes, but this purportedly-unbiased analysis does not explain these assertions, and resorts to strawman arguments:

For example:

> The first of their “personal stories” was about how a person involved in developing the factory was told that they can’t use yellow caution tape or beeping forklifts because they offend Musk’s sensibilities. The lack of these things, according to Reveal, could be to blame for the “high” rate of injuries.

The assertion that Tesla lacked yellow because of Musk's preference is attributed to the factory's former safety lead, Justine White, and documented in her 2017 resignation letter: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4437759-Resignation-...

You can argue about whether Reveal should have talked to Tesla's former safety lead, but the story doesn't assign blame to lack of yellow or whatever for the rate of injuries. In fact, the story is not about Tesla's "high" rate of injuries. The story notes that Tesla's injury rate in 2017 fell steeply. The point of the story is that, according to Tesla's own internal log, injuries that are mandated to be reported were not listed on the official report.

According to a Reveal followup a month later, Tesla's official injuries report has been amended with the injuries that Reveal accused Tesla of hiding:

https://www.revealnews.org/article/tesla-left-injuries-off-t...

The dailykos article doesn't have to agree that Reveal was overall in the right to investigate Tesla, but an objective analysis would note Tesla's actions in response to the investigation.

In fact, if you read the Reveal followup, you'll see that the added injuries don't even make Tesla a particular outlier:

> The additions raise Tesla’s 2017 injury rate to 6.3 injuries per 100 workers, just above the 2016 industry average of 6.2.

So noting the followup, and the adjusted stat, is well within the comfort zone of an article that attempts to objectively defend Tesla. Yet the dailykos writer seems to have completely missed reading the followup and can only throw insults at Reveal. That does not seem like an "unbiased" analysis to me.

Re: Tesla won’t give drivers their own crash data without a court order

#182

Post by lumisota » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 4:40 PM UTC

nemoniac wrote: post #165

craftyguy wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you are in the EU. Many Tesla drivers aren't.

The GDPR also holds for European Tesla drivers outside the EU.

Is this true? Doesn't the GDPR only applied to those within the EU (i.e., resident or not), or anyone, anywhere, if the company handling the data is in the EU?

Re: Tesla won’t give drivers their own crash data without a court order

#183

Post by Maybestring » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 4:43 PM UTC

gwbas1c wrote: post #48

Accelerator pedal immediately went from 0% to 100%? Really? Even I don't press my brake like that when parking.

They say abruptly.

And this is normal in a mistaken accelerator pedal application. You press down on the 'brake', the car speeds up, you panic stomp down on the 'brake' as hard as you can.

Re: Tesla won’t give drivers their own crash data without a court order

#184

Post by insulanus » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 4:45 PM UTC

MisterTea wrote: post #42

Can we please go back to selling physical things instead of EULAs? If I bought the car it's mine along with all the data I generate while inside of MY vehicle. This is why I will not buy newer computer filled vehicles; they don't belong to you anymore.

Actually, I think we need a new, stronger rule. You must have guaranteed strong controls (the ability to review it, at the very least) over all data generated by virtue of your existence as a free agent.

In the future, everything will have sensors in it. If we leave things as they are now, your Samsung refrigerator will be reporting back what you eat, and when. A good place to sell that data is to grocery stores and General Mills.

That's great if you want your doctor to know that information, or if you need an alibi; "your honor, I was eating yoghurt at the time".

Oh wait - bad example, because you own the refrigerator. My point was that in the future, when you go outside, everything will have recording devices in it. So, the public spaces and government rituals you are subjected to need to be dealt with, as well.

Property rights no longer suffice for these situations.

Re: Tesla won’t give drivers their own crash data without a court order

#185

Post by danso » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 4:46 PM UTC

berdon wrote: post #158

bjpbakker wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What use would this type of data be to the average consumer? We can also reverse this question: why would Tesla hide this type of data from their customers so intensely? One reason that comes to mind on both questions, is that customer's (or someone on their behalf) are able to review if the crash is due to software malfunction. > isn't this otherwise very similar to being in a plane crash and demanding the black b…

This isn't reversing the question - it's asking an entirely different question. My question was about the value of the data to a consumer. Presumably, this data is a mixture of location history, sensor/actuator logs (maybe human readable?), and maybe various state data for ML algorithms. Depending on the human "readability" of this data - how could someone without proprietary knowledge find any value in it? That's my…

But Tesla's defense is not that the data is in a proprietary format that can't be decoded. And even if it were, are you suggesting Tesla logs and stores data solely in a non-industry format for which there is not an ETL function that turns it into something less opaque?

And what do you base this speculation that Tesla does something so strange? Because Tesla has a machine-learning heavy reputation? Google does far more machine-learning and yet allows us to export data, such as geolocation, in portable JSON format:

https://blog.rakam.io/rakam-google-takeout-importer-analyze-...

Re: Tesla won’t give drivers their own crash data without a court order

#186

Post by mysticfluff » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 4:47 PM UTC

A few months ago my valet backed my brand new X into a wall in the garage. I asked Tesla for the data to help use this for insurance. At no point was Tesla possibly at fault, but they still told me that in order to get the data I would need a subpoena.

Re: Tesla won’t give drivers their own crash data without a court order

#187

Post by snackbugs » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 4:50 PM UTC

gonational wrote: post #176

nerbert wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, very simple logic. That is of course until Comcast becomes the only internet provider in your area. I prefer my gov to have my back on those simple things just in case a particular situation that makes it easy for anyone to screw me over arises.

OK, let’s see if we can think of one solution to that problem… Oh! Enforce existing anti-trust laws! This, plus the fact that the increasingly monopolistic reality of ISP in the United States is a direct result of overregulation. We don’t need more laws. We need to enforce some of the most basic laws that have existed fore more than a century.

In your opinion, what is the perfect number of laws anyone should have? 10^4? 10^5?

Re: Tesla won’t give drivers their own crash data without a court order

#188

Post by danso » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 4:51 PM UTC

ovao wrote: post #171

vinceguidry wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't need a reason to not buy Tesla, I need a reason to buy Tesla. Belief in Musk's vision and the awesomeness of the car was that reason. Without both of those things being true, there's no reason to buy something that new and untested. It's like asking me to buy a Kickstarter car.

Maybe there's an element to this that I'm simply missing, but I don't believe Musk's vision has changed, and Tesla's internal policies regarding the release of crash data to consumers doesn't say anything about the 'awesomeness' of the car itself. Your ownership experience of the car will be affected by Tesla's policies, for sure, but regardless of what Tesla does or does not do with crash data, the car itself doesn'…

Agreed. If I were in the market for a car, particularly an electric vehicle what Tesla does with crash data would probably be a very low priority, based on a presumption that I don't expect to get into a crash, nor the kind that would cause a situation in which I needed the data (since that possibility had never been available before in my past years of driving).

Re: Tesla won’t give drivers their own crash data without a court order

#189

Post by Maybestring » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 4:51 PM UTC

danso wrote: post #15

berdon wrote: post #13

What use would this type of data be to the average consumer? Outside of the obvious question of ownership and argument of who owns the data - isn't this otherwise very similar to being in a plane crash and demanding the black box data? Surely the data, itself, isn't very helpful compared to the analysis of the data? Note: My question is in no way trying to argue against the consumer owning the data. I'm just wonderin…

In the cases mentioned, it's not the "average consumer", but the owners who get into crashes and who presumably have a great incentive to figure out what's needed to analyze the data. It's not as if there's only one objective way to analyze the data.

If the incentive is to support a law suit, then getting the discovery order was something they were going to need to do anyway.

Re: Tesla won’t give drivers their own crash data without a court order

#190

Post by JorgeGT » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 4:52 PM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #85

dsr_ wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the copying right, not the moral right. The moral right is the right to be identified as the creator and the right to maintain the integrity of the work in subsequent copying.

So, they can't sell that, as the GP is proposing, or they generally just don't under the current economic system? Because I'm pretty sure Dean Koontz does a variation of this, where he outlines the story but someone else actually writes the book, and it's published under his name.

It depends on the jurisdiction. In some countries like the UK they can be indeed waived, but in others like France moral rights are inalienable -- any contract wherein you give up these rights is null and void by law.