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Tesla must pay portion of $329M damages after fatal Autopilot crash, jury says

cnbc.com

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Re: Tesla must pay portion of $329M damages after fatal Autopilot crash, jury says

#31

Post by furyofantares »

guywithahat wrote: post #4

> The company must pay $329 million in damages to victims and survivor, including compensatory and punitive damages. > A Tesla owner named George McGee was driving his Model S electric sedan while using the company’s Enhanced Autopilot, a partially automated driving system. > While driving, McGee dropped his mobile phone that he was using and scrambled to pick it up. He said during the trial that he believed Enhanced…

> This doesn't hold up logically unless I'm missing something, certainly the victim wouldn't be getting fined 329 million if it was decided to be his fault for not looking at the road

I hope we haven't internalized the idea that corporations should be treated the same as people.

There's essentially no difference $3M and $300M fine against most individuals, but $3M means very little to Tesla. If you want Tesla's behavior to change - and other automakers take notice and not repeat the behavior - then the fine must be meaningful to them.

That's another difference - fining an indivisible is not going to change risks much, the individual's behavior changing is not that meaningful compared to Tesla's behavior changing. And it's not like a huge fine is gonna make a difference in other drivers deciding to be better, whereas other automakers will notice a huge fine.

Re: Tesla must pay portion of $329M damages after fatal Autopilot crash, jury says

#32

Post by colingauvin »

guywithahat wrote: post #4

> The company must pay $329 million in damages to victims and survivor, including compensatory and punitive damages. > A Tesla owner named George McGee was driving his Model S electric sedan while using the company’s Enhanced Autopilot, a partially automated driving system. > While driving, McGee dropped his mobile phone that he was using and scrambled to pick it up. He said during the trial that he believed Enhanced…

Tesla was found partially liable for this crash. The reason they were liable was they sold something claiming (practically speaking) that it could do something. The customer believed that claim. It failed to do that thing and killed people.

So the question then is - how much did Tesla benefit from claiming they could do this thing? That seems like a reasonable starting point for damages.

Re: Tesla must pay portion of $329M damages after fatal Autopilot crash, jury says

#33

Post by Hamuko »

bsimpson wrote: post #5

Wellbeing doesn't have a price tag. There's no amount of money someone could pay you to make up for your daughter dying early or your son becoming disabled. However, $329M sounds like an imaginary amount of money in a liability claim. If this guy crashed into a parked car without Tesla being involved, the family would be unfathomably lucky to even get 1% of that amount.

Most of that $329 million is punitive, not compensatory.

Re: Tesla must pay portion of $329M damages after fatal Autopilot crash, jury says

#34

Post by blargey »

guywithahat wrote: post #4

> The company must pay $329 million in damages to victims and survivor, including compensatory and punitive damages. > A Tesla owner named George McGee was driving his Model S electric sedan while using the company’s Enhanced Autopilot, a partially automated driving system. > While driving, McGee dropped his mobile phone that he was using and scrambled to pick it up. He said during the trial that he believed Enhanced…

The fault with an individual can be reasonably constrained to the one prosecuted death they caused. The fault with "autopilot by Tesla", a system that was marketed and deployed at scale, cannot.

And if you want to draw parallels with individuals, an individual driver's license would be automatically suspended and revoked when found at fault for manslaughter. Would you propose a minimum 1~3 year ban on autopilot-by-Tesla within the US, instead?

Re: Tesla must pay portion of $329M damages after fatal Autopilot crash, jury says

#35

Post by Hamuko »

bookmtn wrote: post #2

If Tesla is partially responsible for this fatal accident, who or what else was ruled as contributing to the crash?

I'd guess the driver since he was using his phone, then dropped it and was scrambling to pick it up when the accident happened.

Re: Tesla must pay portion of $329M damages after fatal Autopilot crash, jury says

#37

Post by metabagel »

bangaladore wrote: post #28
thorum wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The product simply should not be called Autopilot. Anyone with any common sense could predict that many people will (quite reasonably) assume that a feature called Autopilot functions as a true autopilot, and that misunderstanding will lead to fatalities.

> feature called Autopilot functions as a true autopilot What's a "true autopilot"? In airplanes, autopilot systems traditionally keep heading, altitude, and speed, but pilots are still required to monitor and take over when necessary. It's not hands-off or fully autonomous. I would argue you are creating a definition of "autopilot" that most people do not agree with.

What matters is the definition which most people use.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44761341

Re: Tesla must pay portion of $329M damages after fatal Autopilot crash, jury says

#38

Post by realusername »

thorum wrote: post #19
guywithahat wrote: post #4

> The company must pay $329 million in damages to victims and survivor, including compensatory and punitive damages. > A Tesla owner named George McGee was driving his Model S electric sedan while using the company’s Enhanced Autopilot, a partially automated driving system. > While driving, McGee dropped his mobile phone that he was using and scrambled to pick it up. He said during the trial that he believed Enhanced…

The product simply should not be called Autopilot. Anyone with any common sense could predict that many people will (quite reasonably) assume that a feature called Autopilot functions as a true autopilot, and that misunderstanding will lead to fatalities.

There's two conflicting goals here, Tesla's marketing department would really like to make you think the car is fully autonomous for financial reasons (hence autopilot and full self driving) and then there's Tesla's legal department which would prefer to blame somebody else for their poor software.

Re: Tesla must pay portion of $329M damages after fatal Autopilot crash, jury says

#39

Post by nullc »

thorum wrote: post #19
guywithahat wrote: post #4

> The company must pay $329 million in damages to victims and survivor, including compensatory and punitive damages. > A Tesla owner named George McGee was driving his Model S electric sedan while using the company’s Enhanced Autopilot, a partially automated driving system. > While driving, McGee dropped his mobile phone that he was using and scrambled to pick it up. He said during the trial that he believed Enhanced…

The product simply should not be called Autopilot. Anyone with any common sense could predict that many people will (quite reasonably) assume that a feature called Autopilot functions as a true autopilot, and that misunderstanding will lead to fatalities.

A true autopilot is a system on a boat or aircraft that keeps it on a set heading. ISTM in this case that's what the autopilot did.
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