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

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

#201

Post by ehnto »

ivape wrote: post #188

Car travel is such a weird thing. The other day I was walking on the driver side of a wide street where cars were passing me by very fast. Most of us are usually an arms length away from passing cars when we do that, roughly an arms length away from being hit at 20+ mph, yet humans do this careful beam walking without flinching. It’s the American version of Indians riding the roof of a train. If you goto a third worl…

Interestingly, removing this illusion of a safe "beam" or division is part of safer road design for mixed traffic areas like city streets.

When you remove physical divides between "road" and a "footpath" drivers become more aware that they are dangerous and slow down on their own. Making roads narrower has a similar effect, and removing car parking helps remove that divide and removes the blindspots they create.

There are many roads that should either stop pretending to be safe for pedestrians and turn into highways, or lower the speed limit and redesign the layout to suit the mixed traffic nature of the areas. Doesn't have to be extreme just be honest about the real use of the roads. If it's actually mostly pedestrians, suck it up, make it safe, go drive on the other faster roads.

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

#202

Post by ivape »

jcurtis wrote: post #198
earthnail wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet it works surprisingly well. When I lived in London, people waiting for the tube were leas than an arm’s length away when it rushed in. Blew my mind. Eventually I got used to it and did the same.

The tube follows fixed tracks, which is quite different from cars on a road.

Yeah but look at how normalized it is. All you need to do is slightly misstep, out of the thousands of steps you take, to bump your head on a passing train. You think it’s not possible (part of the trance) but all the parameters are set up so that the slot machine eventually hits the jackpot. You’re 12 inches away from a projectile, and you are to repeat the loop daily for a lifetime. The odds are the odds.

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

#203

Post by ehnto »

wouldbecouldbe wrote: post #199
lblume wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that the tube driver (assuming there even is one) can't just decide to take a slight turn from the planned route, while the car driver really might.

Yet of all the traffic accidents, the one you describe never happens. So it’s not much difference

Sorry if I misunderstand but you don't think cars come off the road and impact pedestrians? Happens for a myriad of reasons, but it does happen.

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

#204

Post by mort96 »

dmix wrote: post #74
mcrk wrote: post #20

I bet most of the prosecution time was spent "explaining" the meaning of autopilot to the jury. Easy money.

Airplanes have autopilots too but pilots are still sitting there on the controls and have to be paying attention. A brand or technical name doesn't remove responsibility.

This wasn't a plane though, and the driver wasn't a pilot

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

#205

Post by lblume »

parineum wrote: post #144
ratelimitsteve wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

> Only when it comes to rights. "Corporations are people" means a corporation is people, not a corporation is a person. People have rights, whether they are acting through a corporation or not. That's what Citizens United determined. I hope you think about who misled you to thinking that "corporations are people" meant a corporation is a person and trust them a little less.

In most jurisdictions, a corporation is a juridical person[1]. When not explicitly mentioning natural persons, whether a corporation is a "person" is thus ambiguous.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juridical_person

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

#206

Post by ehnto »

jcurtis wrote: post #198
earthnail wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet it works surprisingly well. When I lived in London, people waiting for the tube were leas than an arm’s length away when it rushed in. Blew my mind. Eventually I got used to it and did the same.

The tube follows fixed tracks, which is quite different from cars on a road.

This is why you can run trams in pedestrian only areas and have very few impacts. Trained professional driving it, predictable speed and direction.

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

#207

Post by mort96 »

jayess wrote: post #106
BonoboIO wrote: post #80

Tesla tried to hide evidence … the jury probably did not like to be lied to by Tesla. F** around and find out > The case also included startling charges by lawyers for the family of the deceased, 22-year-old, Naibel Benavides Leon, and for her injured boyfriend, Dillon Angulo. They claimed Tesla either hid or lost key evidence, including data and video recorded seconds before the accident. > Tesla has previously face…

"Schreiber acknowledged that the driver, George McGee, was negligent when he blew through flashing lights, a stop sign and a T-intersection at 62 miles an hour before slamming into a Chevrolet Tahoe that the couple had parked to get a look at the stars."

Probably the reason why the driver was assigned 66% of the blame.. Did you have a point?

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

#208

Post by Xylakant »

wouldbecouldbe wrote: post #199
lblume wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that the tube driver (assuming there even is one) can't just decide to take a slight turn from the planned route, while the car driver really might.

Yet of all the traffic accidents, the one you describe never happens. So it’s not much difference

It happens all of the time. Cars veering off the road and maiming pedestrians is a fairly common occurrence.

Sorry to cite German sources, but google translate should help you out

August 2024: 8 Year old “caught by a car on the pavement” https://www.swr.de/swraktuell/baden-wuerttemberg/ulm/kind-be... October 2024: A Mother and two children killed by an SUV that “veered off the road” https://www.merkur.de/deutschland/baden-wuerttemberg/erfasst... May 2025: 2 Children injured, on their way home from school https://www.focus.de/panorama/welt/20-meter-von-schule-entfe... July 2025: 2 pedestrians injured https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/starnberg/starnberg-aut...

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

#209

Post by joshuanapoli »

mike-cardwell wrote: post #186

> Tesla Model S in Autopilot mode allegedly came to a T-intersection and, failing to see that the roadway was ending, kept his foot on the accelerator Autopilot requires you to have your foot on the accelerator? That seems weird to me.

Normally, Autopilot does not require your foot on the accelerator. Pressing the accelerator overrides it to make to car move ahead where the autopilot decided to stop. At the time, autopilot would always stop at an intersection, and the driver was supposed to move ahead when it is clear.

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

#210

Post by baubino »

wouldbecouldbe wrote: post #199
lblume wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that the tube driver (assuming there even is one) can't just decide to take a slight turn from the planned route, while the car driver really might.

Yet of all the traffic accidents, the one you describe never happens. So it’s not much difference

It does happen, it happened to me — a driver was distracted (because they were texting while driving) and they veered from the traffic flow and I was hit at 40 mph. The EMS worker who responded to the scene told me two things: 1. They almost never pull people alive from this kind of accident, 2. This kind of head-on, no brakes, distracted driver accident was happening more and more. This was 10 years ago.
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