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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

#91

Post by ramses0 »

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.

I've always thought of it more as "Co-Pilot", but formally: "Autopilot" might truly be the better definition (lane-keeping, distance-keeping), whereas a "Co-Pilot" (in aviation) implies more active control, ie: pulling you up from a nose dive.

So... informally, "Tesla Co-Pilot" => "You're still the pilot but you have a helper", vs "Tesla Autopilot" => "Whelp, guess I can wash my hands and walk away b/c it's AuToMaTiC!"

...it's tough messaging for sure, especially putting these powertools into peoples hands with no formal training required. Woulda-coulda-shoulda, similar to the 737MAX crashes, should "pilots" of Teslas required training in the safety and navigation systems before they were "licensed" to use them?

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

#92

Post by nickff »

mmooss wrote: post #82
nickff wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> These product-liability lawsuits are out of control Businesses also claim that, all the time. We need some evidence. I remember doctors claiming that malpractice lawsuits were out of control; research I read said that it wasn't an economic issue for doctors and that malpractice was out of control.

I invite you to read both the claims and the judgements related to the Instant Pot lawsuits yourself; they're all quite clear, and you can come to your own decision about how reasonable they are.

My read is that people overpowered the safety interlock, after which the lid (predictably) flew off, and they were injured (mostly by the hot steam and bits of food). I think it's ridiculous for people to expect safety mechanisms to be impossible to bypass, but maybe you disagree!

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

#93

Post by omnimus »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #88
dekhn wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Autopilot is similar to cruise control that is aware of other cars, and lane keeping. I would fully expect the sort of accident that happened to happen (drop phone, stop controlling vehicle, it continues through an intersection). FSD has much more sophisticated features, explicitly handling traffic stops and lights. I would not expect the sort of accident to happen with FSD. The fact that Tesla misleads consumers is…

Autopilot is similar to cruise control that is aware of other cars, and lane keeping. Thanks for explaining why labeling it "Autopilot" is misleading and deceptive.

This is not even funny anymore. You reap what you sow.

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

#94

Post by WarmWash »

Almondsetat wrote: post #78
WarmWash wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes, Tesla leads on level 3 driving.

If you want to call this "autonomous" well then we are arguing semantics. But I think colloquially, autonomous means "no human".

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

#95

Post by bsimpson »

eYrKEC2 wrote: post #76
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.

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.

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

#96

Post by ErroneousBosh »

Retric wrote: post #79
beering wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's still massively simpler than making a self-driving car.

It's trivially easy to fly a plane in straight level flight, to the extent that you don't actually need any automation at all to do it. You simply trim the aircraft to fly in the attitude you want and over a reasonable timescale it will do just that.

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

#97

Post by Zababa »

janalsncm wrote: post #74
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.

I have no tolerance for bystanders being killed in general. If the science experiments kill on average less bystanders I'm all for them, if they don't they should be stopped until made safer.

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

#98

Post by D-Coder »

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…

> If the average person does not know what an autopilot does

The average person does know what an autopilot does, they're just wrong.

I think the example you provided supports that.

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

#99

Post by paxys »

Almondsetat wrote: post #37
standardUser wrote: post #10

I'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.

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

> By which metrics has Tesla been left in the dust wrt autonomous driving

By the fact that they don't have autonomous driving. And this very judgement demonstrates that.

If you have to keep your full attention on the road at all times and constantly look out for the 10% case where the autopilot may spectacularly fail, it instantly turns off the vast majority of prospective users.

Funny enough the tech that Musk's tweets and the Tesla hype machine has been promising for the last decade is actually on the streets today. It's just being rolled out by Waymo.

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

#100

Post by Retric »

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #96
Retric wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's still massively simpler than making a self-driving car. It's trivially easy to fly a plane in straight level flight, to the extent that you don't actually need any automation at all to do it. You simply trim the aircraft to fly in the attitude you want and over a reasonable timescale it will do just that.

> It's trivially easy to fly a plane in straight level flight, to the extent that you don't actually need any automation at all to do it. You simply trim the aircraft to fly in the attitude

That seemingly shifts the difficulty from the autopilot to the airframe. But that’s not actually good enough, it doesn’t keep an aircraft flying when it’s missing a large chunk of wing for example. https://taskandpurpose.com/tech-tactics/1983-negev-mid-air-c...

Instead, you’re talking about the happy path and if we accept the happy path as enough there’s the weekend equivalents of self driving cars built using minimal effort, however being production worthy is about more than being occasionally useful.

Autopilot is difficult because you need to do several things well or people will defiantly die. Self driving cars are far more forgiving of occasional mistakes but again it’s the or people die bits that makes it difficult. Tesla isn’t actually ahead of the game, they are just willing to take more risks with their customers and the general public’s lives.

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