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Tesla has to pay historic $243M judgement over Autopilot crash, judge says

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Re: Tesla has to pay historic $243M judgement over Autopilot crash, judge says

#71

Post by dekhn »

jeffbee wrote: post #62
nradov wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You shouldn't be down voted. Regardless of the moral or technical issues involved, there are established formulas used to calculate damages in wrongful death civil suits. Your range is generally correct although certain factors can push it higher. (Punitive damages are a separate issue.)

There are not "established formulas" or, to the extent that they are, the coefficients and exponents are not determined. The parties always argue about the discount rates and whatnot.

Sure, no argument there, I was just referring to research like this: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/82d0550k

"""Results. At a discount rate of 3 percent, males and females aged 20-24 have the highest PVLE — $1,517,045 and $1,085,188 respectively. Lifetime earnings for men are higher than for women. Higher discount rates yield lower values at all ages."""

Re: Tesla has to pay historic $243M judgement over Autopilot crash, judge says

#72

Post by WalterBright »

triceratops wrote: post #63
WalterBright wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Statistics aren't collected on that. But I've read anecdotes where individuals recounted the autopilot saving them from a severe accident. You can also google "how many lives has tesla autopilot saved?" and the results suggest that the autopilot is safer than human pilots.

That doesn't make any sense. If I, a human, hit the brakes in time and avoid an accident today, then hit someone tomorrow, should I not be held responsible for the second incident?

The point is to compare the consequences of more deaths by not using autopilot with deaths by the autopilot.

If you accidentally kill someone with your car, do you think you should have to pay $243m?

Re: Tesla has to pay historic $243M judgement over Autopilot crash, judge says

#73

Post by nickff »

mmooss wrote: post #65
robotnikman wrote: post #58

Will this have any effect on other companies developing self driving tech? It sets a very high precedent for fines, and may discourage companies from further working on such tech.

That's an old argument by corporations against liability. Should they not be fully liable? It should discourage them from making unsafe products. If it's not economical for them to make safe products, it's good that they go bankrupt and the economic resources - talent, money - go to someone else. Bankruptcy and business failure are just as fundamental to capitalism as profit.

These product-liability lawsuits are out of control; perhaps this judgement is directionally correct, but the punitive damages seem insane. This reminds me of the lawsuits which drove Instant Pot bankrupt, where the users were clearly doing very stupid things, and suffered injuries because they were able to physically overpower the safety mechanisms on their pressure-cookers.

Re: Tesla has to pay historic $243M judgement over Autopilot crash, judge says

#74

Post by janalsncm »

robotnikman wrote: post #58

Will this have any effect on other companies developing self driving tech? It sets a very high precedent for fines, and may discourage companies from further working on such tech.

Developing, no, but once companies start releasing vehicles onto our shared public streets I have a lot less tolerance for launching science experiments that end up killing bystanders.

I can understand the argument that in the abstract over-regulation kills innovation but at the same time in the US the pendulum has swung so far in the other direction that it’s time for a correction.

Re: Tesla has to pay historic $243M judgement over Autopilot crash, judge says

#75

Post by tapoxi »

nitinreddy88 wrote: post #67
jrjeksjd8d wrote: post #47

Earlier 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".

According to your analogy. Certified pilot = Certified driving license holder. Its not like Tesla is advertising non driving license or in eligible person can drive using Autopilot. I wonder how can you even justify your statement

Autopilot is part of a private pilots license and systems are approved by the FAA. Tesla autopilot isn't part of a driving license, nor did it undergo review by the NHTSA prior to launch because Elon considered it "legal by default".

Re: Tesla has to pay historic $243M judgement over Autopilot crash, judge says

#76

Post by eYrKEC2 »

bsimpson wrote: post #44

Good It seems clear that "autopilot" was a boisterous overclaim of its capabilities that led to people dying. It may be minorly absurd to win founder-IPO-level wealth in a lawsuit, but it's also clear that smaller numbers don't act as an effective deterrent to people like Elon Musk.

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.

Re: Tesla has to pay historic $243M judgement over Autopilot crash, judge says

#77

Post by BugsJustFindMe »

maxdo wrote: post #56

I'm so lost. The guy decided to pick up the phone from the floor while driving the car at high speed. 1. It could be ANY car with similar at that time auto steer capabilities. 2. Why the hate , because of some false promise ? Because as of today same car would save the guy in exact same situation, because FSD now handles red lights perfectly. Far better and safer vs ANY other tech included in the avg car price of sam…

> Why the hate , because of some false promise ?

Another name for "false promise" when made for capital gain is "fraud". And when the fraud is in the context of vehicular autonomy, it becomes "fraud with reckless endangerment". And when it leads to someone's death, that makes it "proximate cause to manslaughter".

Re: Tesla has to pay historic $243M judgement over Autopilot crash, judge says

#78

Post by Almondsetat »

WarmWash wrote: post #70
Almondsetat wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By which metrics has Tesla been left in the dust wrt autonomous driving? Right now they are the only brand where you can buy a car and have it do basically 90% (or sometimes 100%) of your daily driving. Sure, it's supervised, but the alternatives are literally extremely geogated taxis

Tesla has a level 3 system that it's willing to gamble on not needing intervention for a handful of miles for a handful of Tesla fanboys. It's very telling that their "level 4" robotaxis are basically unicorns and only exist (existed? it's not clear they are even available anymore) in a single neighborhood subsection of the level 3 robotaxis full area in Austin. Waymo on the other hand has a level 4 system, and has f…

I don't understand the point of your reply. Waymo is geofenced taxis. You cannot buy a Waymo. It cannot drive basically wherever you want. Teslas mostly can. So, again, how is Tesla the one left in the dust?

Re: Tesla has to pay historic $243M judgement over Autopilot crash, judge says

#79

Post by Retric »

beering wrote: post #69
Retric wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Doesn’t basic airplane autopilot just maintain flight level, speed, and heading? What are some other things it can do?

Recover from upsets is the big thing. Maintaining flight level, speed, and heading while upside down isn’t acceptable.

Levels of safety are another consideration, car autopilot’s don’t use multiple levels of redundancy on everything because they can stop without falling out of the sky.

Re: Tesla has to pay historic $243M judgement over Autopilot crash, judge says

#80

Post by [deleted] »

nickff wrote: post #59
jrjeksjd8d wrote: post #47

Earlier 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…

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