Jeeze, save some for the rest of us!
Tesla has to pay historic $243M judgement over Autopilot crash, judge says
111–120 of 176 posts
Re: Tesla has to pay historic $243M judgement over Autopilot crash, judge says
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right! We demand engineering perfection! No autopilot until we guarantee it will NEVER kill a soul. Don't worry that human drivers kill humans all the time. The rubric is not better than a human driver, it is an Angelic Driver. Perfection is what we demand.
Waymo drives better than most people. Tesla Autopilot seems to mostly drive hubris. The fine print says you're still supposed to maintain control. They don't have as sophisticated sensors as competitors because Elon decreed "humans don't have LiDAR, so we don't need to pay for it." Nobody is saying it has to be perfect, but Tesla hasn't demonstrated that it's even trying.
I can see where they're coming from with the video-only concept, but even they admit it's not self-driving yet, so just don't call it self-driving (or "FSD**" or "autopilot") until it is.
Re: Tesla has to pay historic $243M judgement over Autopilot crash, judge says
#113Tesla would benefit from the board replacing the CEO. It's increasingly clear that there is a problem and it's not talent, it's decision-making.
Tesla has made some great cars, but their CEO is not making sound decisions . I really think a new CEO could turn around Tesla. It doesn't need to hit rock bottom first. Every major auto company has been through this.
Re: Tesla has to pay historic $243M judgement over Autopilot crash, judge says
#114I’m not usually an apologist, and I’d agree with this judgement if the car was left to its own devices, but the driver of the car held his foot on the accelerator which is why it blew through those stop signs and lights. In regards to the autopilot branding, would a reasonable person expect a plane on autopilot to fly safely if the pilot suddenly took over and pointed it at the ground?
A “reasonable person” in a cockpit is not the same as a “reasonable person” behind the steering wheel. Pilots undergo rigorous training with exam after exam they must pass. No one is handed the keys to a Boeing 747 after some weekly evening course and an hours driving test.
I don't mean a reasonable pilot. Would a reasonable person expect autopilot in a plane prevents a plane from crashing into something that the pilot was accelerating towards while physically overriding the controls. The claim is that autopilot should not have been able to crash even with the driver actively overriding it and accelerating into that crash.
To me, it's reasonable to assume that the "autopilot" in a car I drive (especially back in 2019) is going to defer to any input override that I provide. I wouldn't want it any other way.
Re: Tesla has to pay historic $243M judgement over Autopilot crash, judge says
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
The average person does not know how to fly a plane or what a plane autopilot does. It's a ridiculous superficial comparison. Planes have professional pilots who understand the capabilities and limits of aviation autopilot technology. Tesla has had it both ways for ages - their stock price was based on "self-driving cars" and their liability was based on "asterisk asterisk the car cannot drive itself".
If the average person does not know what an autopilot does, why would they expect Tesla's 'autopilot' to take such good care of them? I am reminded of a case many years ago when a man turned on the cruise control in his RV and went to the back to make himself lunch, after which the RV went off some sort of hill or cliff. Rudimentary 'autopilots' on aircraft have existed for about a century now, and the earlier versio…
This would be more like they enabled cruise control, hit the brakes, and sued the manufacturer because they were rear-ended.
Re: Tesla has to pay historic $243M judgement over Autopilot crash, judge says
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember having this argument with a friend. My argument was that the idea that the name Autopilot is misleading comes not from Tesla naming it wrong, it comes from what most people think "Autopilots" on an aircraft do. (And that is probably good enough to argue in court, that it doesn't matter what's factually correct, it matters what people understand based on their knowledge) Autopilot on a Tesla historically di…
Autopilots do a lot more than that because flying an aircraft safely is a lot more complicated than turning a steering wheel left and right and accelerating or breaking. Tesla’s Autopilot being unable to swap from one road to another makes is way less capable than a decades old civilian autopilots which will get you to any arbitrary location as long as you have fuel. Calling the current FSD Autopilot would be oversta…
>"Autopilots do a lot more than that because flying an aircraft safely is a lot more complicated than turning a steering wheel left and right and accelerating or breaking."
Can you elaborate? My very limited knowledge but of very real airplane autopilots in little Cessna and Pipers is that they are in fact far easier than cars - they are a simple control feedback loop that maintains altitude and heading, that's it. You can crash into ground, mountain, or other traffic quite cheerfully. I would not be surprised to find adaptive cruise in cars is far more complex of a system than basic aircraft "autopilot".
Re: Tesla has to pay historic $243M judgement over Autopilot crash, judge says
#117I’m not usually an apologist, and I’d agree with this judgement if the car was left to its own devices, but the driver of the car held his foot on the accelerator which is why it blew through those stop signs and lights. In regards to the autopilot branding, would a reasonable person expect a plane on autopilot to fly safely if the pilot suddenly took over and pointed it at the ground?
Not sure what "autopilot" means in a car. Is the self-parking feature called "landing gear"?
Re: Tesla has to pay historic $243M judgement over Autopilot crash, judge says
#118I'm not clear on what Tesla is doing these days. They've been left in the dust on autonomous driving, they've failed to update their successful car models, and their only new model was a spectacular failure.
https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2026-us-elec... Tesla Model 3 highest overall in owner satisfaction. "Left in the dust?"
JD power is a company you pay to give you an award.
That's why Chevy has a bunch from them, including "Highest initial quality"
Re: Tesla has to pay historic $243M judgement over Autopilot crash, judge says
#119I’m not usually an apologist, and I’d agree with this judgement if the car was left to its own devices, but the driver of the car held his foot on the accelerator which is why it blew through those stop signs and lights. In regards to the autopilot branding, would a reasonable person expect a plane on autopilot to fly safely if the pilot suddenly took over and pointed it at the ground?
The original judgement held that the driver was 2/3 responsible, Tesla 1/3 responsible, which seems reasonable. The $243 million wasn't for causing the accident, but was a punitive amount for doing things that looked an awful lot like lying to the court and withholding evidence.
Re: Tesla has to pay historic $243M judgement over Autopilot crash, judge says
#120This will continually be appealed until it’s reduced.
Why the f this was downvoted? Literally from the article:
> Tesla has indicated it will appeal the verdict to a higher court.