Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 286 posts

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

#61

Post by dontlaugh »

ratelimitsteve wrote: post #45
furyofantares wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 behav…

>I hope we haven't internalized the idea that corporations should be treated the same as people. Only when it comes to rights. When it comes to responsibilities the corporations stop being people and go back to being amorphous, abstract things that are impossible to punish.

Would be nice to see executions of corporations as punishment.

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

#62

Post by thejazzman »

bko wrote: post #53
furyofantares wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 behav…

> 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. What behavior do you want them to change? Remove FSD from their cars? It's been nearly 10 years since released and over 3bn miles driven. There's one case where someone died while fetching his cell phone. You would think if it was really dangerous, people would be dying i…

- FSD came out in October 2020; I suppose rounding up to 10 puts it nearly 10 years since. It also, literally, doubles the number from its actual value.

- There have been a lot more than one incident. This is one court case about one incident.

- There are an insane number of accidents reported; does it only matter to you if someone dies? A lot more than one person has died in an accident that involved a vehicle that was equipped with FSD.

- Your comment is obviously targeted and disingenuous.

There was even a recall over it: https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2023/02/16/tesla-full-self-driv...

So to answer your question of what one might want to come out of it, perhaps another recall where they fix the system or stop making false claims about what it can do.

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

#63

Post by SoftTalker »

SilverElfin wrote: post #6

> 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 Autopilot would brake if an obstacle was in the way. His Model S accelerated through an intersection at just over 60 miles per hour, hitting a nearby empty parked car and its owners, who were standing on the other side of their vehicle. Hard for me to see this as anything b…

And why was his mobile phone in his hand to drop, if he was driving? Most states have laws against mobile device usage while driving, and it was never a responsible thing to do even before the laws were enacted.

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

#64

Post by comte7092 »

A lot of discussion in this thread about the technical meaning of “autopilot” and its capabilities vs FSD.

This is really missing the point. Tesla could have called it “unicorn mode” and the result would still be the same.

The true issue at hand is that Elon Musk has been banding about telling people that their cars are going to drive themselves completely for over a decade now and overstating teslas capabilities in this area. Based on the sum totality of the messaging, many lay consumers believe teslas have been able to safely drive themselves unsupervised for a long time.

From a culpability standpoint, you can’t put all this hype out and then claim it doesn’t matter because technically the fine print says otherwise.

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

#65

Post by helsinkiandrew »

bko wrote: post #53
furyofantares wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 behav…

> 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. What behavior do you want them to change? Remove FSD from their cars? It's been nearly 10 years since released and over 3bn miles driven. There's one case where someone died while fetching his cell phone. You would think if it was really dangerous, people would be dying i…

> This is obviously targeted and the court system should not be playing favorites or going after political opponents

This was a jury trial of a civil case - the family of the deceased took Tesla to court, not an anti-Tesla/Musk court system conspiracy.

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

#66

Post by beambot »

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…

On the flip side: Penalties should be scaled relative to one's means so that the wealthy (whether people or corporations) actually feel the pain & learn from their mistakes. Otherwise penalties for the wealthy are like a cup of coffee for the average Joe -- just a "cost of business."

I'm also a big proponent of exponential backoff for repeat offenders.

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

#67

Post by SoftTalker »

metabagel wrote: post #43
jayess wrote: post #40

Good lord, $129 million in compensatory damages is absurd. One thing you notice when visiting Florida is that every other billboard says "In a wreck? Get a check! Call Lawyer Ambulance Chaser Jones!!"

How much is your life worth?

What is a reasonable forecast of your personal balance sheet at the time of your natural death?

Of course human life itself doesn't have a dollar value, but that also means that money cannot replace a lost life.

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

#68

Post by simion314 »

bko wrote: post #53
furyofantares wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 behav…

> 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. What behavior do you want them to change? Remove FSD from their cars? It's been nearly 10 years since released and over 3bn miles driven. There's one case where someone died while fetching his cell phone. You would think if it was really dangerous, people would be dying i…

> It's been nearly 10 years since released and over 3bn miles driven. There's one case where someone died while fetching his cell phone. You would think if it was really dangerous, people would be dying in scores.

And how many times did humans had to take over and save themselves and others from Tesla killing or injuring them? Tesla won't tell us this numbers, guess why ? The tech might be safe as a backup driver , but so far you need a human to pay attention to save himself from the car bugs/errors/glitches etc.

I really hate this bullshit safety claims pulled from someones ass, it is like me trying to convince you to get operated but an AI doctor by claiming "it is better then the a old and drunk doctor , he only killed a few people when the people supervising it did not payed attention but in the rest was very safe, we can't tell you how many times real doctors had to perform the hard work and our AI doctor only did stitching , those numbers need to be secret, but trust us the human doctors that had to intervene are just there because of the evil laws it could do the full job itself, we would not call it Full competent doctor if it can\t perform fully all expected tasks.

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

#70

Post by bruce511 »

stouset wrote: post #56
furyofantares wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 behav…

I agree that Tesla should receive punitive damages. And the size of the punitive damages must be enough to discourage bad behavior. I'm not necessarily sure the victim(s) should get all of the punitive damages. $329 million is a gargantuan sum of money; it "feels" wrong to give a corporation-sized punishment to a small group of individuals. I could certainly see some proportion going toward funding regulatory agencie…

>> it "feels" wrong to give a corporation-sized punishment to a small group of individuals

This feeling has a name; loss aversion.

It's a really interesting human traits. About 66% of people feel bad when someone else does well. The impact of this feeling on behavior (even behavior that is self-harming) is instructive.

The concept of "Fairness" comes into play as well. Many people have an expectation that the "world is fair" despite every evidence that it isn't. That results in "everything I don't get is unfair" whereas "everything I get I earned on my own." Someone rlse getting a windfall is thus "unfair".

Post reply on HN