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

271–280 of 286 posts

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

#271

Post by ornornor »

furyofantares wrote: post #31
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 behav…

To add, this is also punitive for endangering countless other road users that aren’t suing in this particular instance.

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

#272

Post by scarab92 »

thoroughburro wrote: post #263
aziaziazi wrote: post #258

For those not aware of the circonstances (as me), here’s Tesla defence: > this driver was solely at fault because he was speeding, with his foot on the accelerator—which overrode Autopilot—as he rummaged for his dropped phone without his eyes on the road There’s lots to blame in auto makers « security marketing » and phone addiction but it seems obvious that driving a 1ton+ vehicle while not constantly looking at the…

Do you usually learn about the circumstances of legal cases by reading the arguments of only one side?

Do you have an actual critique of the argument?

I was grateful for it, and at first glance, assuming Tesla’s argument is true, it’s hard to see how they are even partially responsible.

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

#273

Post by drewbeck »

ghusto wrote: post #269
drewbeck wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone wants the circumstances they should read the article, not Tesla’s press release. Here’s what the jury said: … while McGee was two-thirds responsible for the crash, Tesla also bore a third of the responsibility for selling a vehicle "with a defect that was a legal cause of damage"

That doesn't give the circumstances, but the judgement. The original commentor gave the circumstances.

As I wrote, the article is where to go to find the circumstances. Neither the original nor I gave the circumstances; my comment gave a counterpoint to Tesla’s assertion about fault.

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

#274

Post by mantas »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #252
mantas wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why more distance? Streets wouldn’t get wider. Rather if you try to dense-up the city, streets will go narrower. Besides complete hellholes like 80s US from the famous parking lot pictures, when trying to dense up the city, wide major streets would go first being built up. At least here there massive parking lots to just build on exist mostly on the outskirts. There’s no point in building on them. Going closer to dow…

> Why more distance? Streets wouldn’t get wider. Rather if you try to dense-up the city, streets will go narrower. ......yes? You make the paved street narrower, allowing more distance between the lanes and the sidewalk. And I didn't say anything about changing the density of the overall city. I'm talking about places where people are already walking but they're next to tons of cars. > If you remove street parking, t…

Here paved part, besides the major isolated streets, is already quite as narrow as standard buses and lorries allow. Also, where streets were seen as too wide, when rebuilding, sometimes sidewalks got even narrower. The used space was either used for greenery (which is nice), dedicated bike paths (also good) or on-street commerce (which IMO sucks since I prefer wider sidewalks).

Usually getting rid of traffic ideas involve densing up the cities by building more. The idea is that once you remove cars, people will want to live closer to PoIs. And more housing is needed. Hoping that people will just switch to public transit, from what I see, just doesn’t work - business and entertainment moves to car-OK parts of the city. There needs to be cheap housing and strict regulations preventing sprawl too.

And I’m saying that „just“ solving cars at high speed passing by is very complex.

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

#275

Post by projektfu »

ehnto wrote: post #201
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. Ther…

You can also narrow the space between the curbs in which cars can go and achieve the same effect, while keeping pedestrians grade separated from traffic.

It would go a long way if we could eliminate spaces where a driver can exceed 50 km/hr (31 MPH) while menacing unprotected users of the street.

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

#276

Post by ajross »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #98
ajross wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As gets pointed out ad nauseum, the very first "cruise control" product in cars was in fact called "Auto-Pilot". Also real "autopilot" systems in aircraft (where the term of art comes from!) aren't remotely supervision-free. This is a fake argument (post hoc rationalization): It invents a meaning to a phrase that seems reasonable but that has never been rigorously applied ever, and demands that one speaker, and only…

> real "autopilot" systems in aircraft (where the term of art comes from!) aren't remotely supervision-free Pilot here. If my G1000’s autopilot were flying and I dropped my phone, I’d pick it up. If my Subaru’s lane-keeping were engaged and I dropped me phone, I might try to feel around for it, but I would not go spelunking for several seconds.

I can't tell which side of the argument you're on here. The driver in the Tesla case didn't "drop a pen". Your Subaru is a recent car and not a 2018 Tesla Model S (which was launched before the Full Self Driving product everyone here seems to think they're arguing about existed!).

And... no pilot is allowed to operate any automatic pilot system without supervision, I genuinely can't imagine that's what you're implying[1].

[1] Your "drop a pen" example seems deliberately constructed to invent a scenario where you think you're allowed to stop supervising the aircraft because it sounds harmless. It's not. You aren't. And if the FAA traces that post to your license I bet anything they'll suspend it.

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

#277

Post by ajross »

ratelimitsteve wrote: post #54
aaomidi wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s why we have a jury. Autopilot quite literally means automatic pilot. Not “okay well maybe sometimes it’s automatic”. This is why a jury is made up of the average person. The technical details of the language simply does not matter.

Couldn't agree more. This thing where words have a common definition and then a secret custom definition that only applies in courts is garbage. Everyone knows what "full self driving" means, either deliver that, come up with a new phrase or get your pants sued off for deceptive marketing.

> Everyone knows what "full self driving" means

Sadly most people don't know that this case involved a comparatively ancient Tesla that did not have FSD. Seems like better attention to the "meaning of words" (like, the ones in the article you seem not to have read) might have helped things and not hurt them?

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

#278

Post by MBCook »

sgustard wrote: post #256
MBCook wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Substitute Autopilot then. No other auto maker uses similar language. Ford and GM use BlueCruise and SuperCruise, clearly implying an improved kind of cruise control.

Do you honestly think a negligent driver who blows through a stop sign at 62 mph would have acted differently in a car marketed to have "SuperCruise" rather than "Autopilot"? I have no strong belief either way, and I shed no tears for Tesla, but I do worry about any chilling effect on technologies that will make driving safer than the bloodbath we currently suffer on the roads every day.

Yes.

For one thing, SuperCruise and BlueCruise are limited to mapped uninterrupted highways. He couldn’t activate it on that street.

Not only would that have physically prevented it. But if he had been using those systems he would have known they were limited. It makes it much more clear what their capabilities are.

We know how to fix the “bloodbath“. We don’t choose to. I question if level two driving systems help or make things worse despite having used them myself.

Slower speeds and better designed roads make a massive difference. We keep speeds high, make giant wide roads/stroads that psychologically encourage high speed even if the marked speed is lower. We don’t punish speeders anywhere near enough. and we don’t build with trees or other large things next to the road, we put the sidewalk there.

Because when a car that’s going too fast makes a mistake, it’s important that it can mow through a pedestrian and survive instead of hitting a big tree and hurt the driver.

those giant trees next to the road on old streets? They psychologically encouraged the driver not to go as fast. Because they don’t feel as safe at the higher speeds. we chose to stop doing that.

Lower death rates are 100% doable without modern assist systems of any kind.

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

#280

Post by cyberge99 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #135
HWR_14 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing that dissolving your LLC as a punishment would include the forfeiture of all the associated assets, not distributing them to shareholders.

> guessing that dissolving your LLC as a punishment would include the forfeiture of all the associated assets, not distributing them to shareholders This is just expropriation. Which is legally complicated. And raises questions around what the government should do with a bunch of seized assets and liabilities that may or may not be in a going condition, and whether some stakeholders should be reimbursed for their los…

The entire company should be turned over to the government.
Post reply on HN