234 points

The real crime is marketing the driver assist capability under the name autopilot when it is anything but that.

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187 points

Oh no, it’s even worse than that.

It’s the CEO and other staff repeatedly speaking of the system as if it’s basically fully capable and it’s only for legal reasons why a driver is even required. Even saying that the car could drive from one side of the US to the other without driver interaction (only to not actually do that, of course).

It’s the company never correcting people when they call it a self driving system.

It’s the company saying they’re ready for autonomous taxis and saying owner’s cars will make money for them while they aren’t driving it.

It’s calling their software subscription Full Self Driving

It’s honestly staggering to me that they’re able to get away with this shit.

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89 points

I love my Model 3, but everything you said is spot on. Autopilot is a great driver assist, but it is nowhere near autonomous driving. I was using it on the highway and was passing a truck on the left. The road veered left and the truck did as well, keeping in its lane the entire time. The car interpreted this as the truck merging over into my lane and slammed the brakes. Fortunately, I was able to figure out what went wrong and quickly accelerated myself so as to not become a hazard to the cars behind me.

Using Autopilot as anything more than a nice dynamic cruise control setting is putting your life, and other lives, in danger.

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57 points

Holy shit. My car doing that once and I’d be a nervous wreck just thinking about using it again.

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8 points

Something like that happened to me while using adaptive cruise control on a rental Jeep Renegade, it slammed the brakes twice on the highway but for no clear reason. I deactivated it before it tried a third one.

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7 points

Your cars actions could kill someone.

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1 point

The auto cruise on the Priuses at work do this a lot. If the freeway curves to the left or something it will panic and think I’m about to hit the cars in the lane next to me also going through the Curve

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-3 points

The road veered left and the truck did as well, keeping in its lane the entire time. The car interpreted this as the truck merging over into my lane and slammed the brakes.

Even dynamic cruise control must never do such dangerous mistakes!

You should claim that they fix this on warranty, and they should prove that this is never going to happen again.

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38 points

I think the real crime is vehicular manslaughter, especially the SECOND one.

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27 points

Tesla should be playing wrongful death suits every time autopilot kills someone. Their excuses don’t excuse the blatant marketing that leads people to believe it’s a self driving car.

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10 points

But you see that wasn’t the vehicle’s fault. It’s been programmed perfectly. What happened was the fault of the pedestrians and driver for not properly predicting what the car would do.

maybe /s maybe not.

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9 points

no you see the issue is that the auto pilot stopped right before the accident so obviously it was entirely drivers fault, please don’t check how much time was between it stopping and the accident

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23 points

Do we need to go through what autopilot in a plane or boat actually does again?

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36 points

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24 points
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-3 points

To probably 90% of people “autopilot” means “drive automatically”.

Based on what?

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17 points

If we do, then they shouldn’t have picked a name that most people think does something it doesn’t.

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2 points

When you drive a Tesla, it’s pretty clear what autopilot is. The name is a marketing term, you can’t engage it everywhere and anytime, you’ve got to keep your hands on the wheel or it disables itself, won’t stop at stop signs and red lights, won’t do line changes, etc.

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7 points

do we need to go through the differences in training, aptitude and intelligence between pilots, captains and your neighbor Greg again? Marketing it as “autopilot” to anyone who can sign a car loan is reckless and has killed people and will continue to kill people until they stop

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-3 points

Yep, just like “cruise control” made tons of people drive their car into the ocean thinking they could sail it to popular island destinations.

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7 points

What does full self driving mean ?

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1 point

Full Self Driving and Autopilot are two totally separate systems.

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1 point

Depends entirely on the type of autopilot.

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11 points
*

It’s a common misunderstanding that an autopilot system in an airplane does everything or even a lot of things. The most basic ones keep the wings level and nothing else. Of course Tesla is probably counting on that misconception to sell this feature, but actual pilots using any kind of autopilot are still on the hook to pay attention 100% of the time.

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3 points

In an airplane that is fine as pilots are specifically trained on the planes they fly (at least in theory). No one gets a special course in how to drive a specific (non industrial) car…

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-14 points

Way to ignore the death of two people, and hijack the discussion for your own opinions. Good job /s

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125 points

The guy was going through a suburb at 75 mph blowing through stop lights. Ofcourse he has to pay, im surprised hes not getting jail time. This has nothing to do with the car, thats just gross negligence

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50 points

My tesla doesn’t let me use autopilot or FSD if I set it over 5% of the posted speed limit. How is this guy going 75 in the burbs?

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44 points

I wonder if Tesla had this section of road mapped as freeway. Especially since it rolled through a red.

“Suburb” in LA is a very loose term

I would think that the guy is just lying, but Tesla would call that out REAL quick.

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19 points

That is unfortunately a configurable option.

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25 points

My interpretation of the title is “only has to pay…”. 23K is nothing.

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122 points

2 murders, 23 grand. The mafia charge more.

If you wanna kill somebody, use a car.

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37 points

The $11,500 “murder” add-on

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16 points

Involuntary manslaughter ≠ murder

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105 points

Wow the value of a life I guess. I don’t really know what can come close to the value of a life, but this doesn’t seem like it.

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28 points

What would be the value of life then? I’ll save you the answer: no matter how big the number you say, someone else will say bigger. Until it becomes priceless, which is the answer.

However death and accidental death isn’t always avoidable. And when we pin the fault on someone we cannot expect to say “priceless” is what they owe the victim’s family. So we assign an amount of money or time that hurts, and call it good.

Doesn’t mean life is worth that. And saying so doesn’t help anyone.

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60 points

Sure but even looking a only the financial produce of one person for a family dwarfs the comical 23k here. And that’s not even looking at the emotional side of things. 23k is straight insulting imho.

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24 points

Two people were killed, so you’re really talking 11.5k.

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11 points
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Deleted by creator
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-1 points

That’s life insurances job, this would be on top of life insurance, and is more about where the money comes than where it is going.

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11 points

The U.S. uses the value of statistical life VSL. Here are the numbers from the Department of Transportation over the last 10 years or so.

So, it is interesting and egregious that the driver needs only pay $23K and Tesla pays nothing at all!

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2 points

So according to this, the DoT values a life at $12.5M in 2022? I’m curious about their methodology.

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6 points

True. But what if Tesla has to pay a billion for producing software that runs people over? They probably would not have beta software on the road.

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5 points

That was the penalty for the felony charge for the driver of the car that ran off the highway into a surface street. It’s almost certain that drivers insurance also paid out their maximum.

In addition, Tesla is recalling all those cars to change the system that pretends to ensure a driver using autopilot is actually paying attention.

And a civil suit will likely follow from the 2 victims families.

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4 points

That is just the fine, the families are suing the driver and Tesla. Here’s hoping the Tesla suit gives them the real prize: the death of a company.

(I know it won’t happen but a guy can dream.)

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4 points
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deleted

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1 point
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88 points

If you want to kill someone in the US with little consequences, run them over with a car.

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21 points

Germany the same. Small fine, three month without license, that’s it for killing a human being.

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7 points

If we’re talking about an honest accident then how long do you think the jail term should be?

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16 points

“honest accident” is the crux of the question. If the driver was doing everything perfectly and some other party was entirely responsible for the accident, not much (maybe none?).

But, at least in my corner of Canada, most drivers are not behaving responsibly or adhering to the law. Speeding, following too closely, illegally passing, and using phones while driving are common. If a driver kills someone while doing something overtly dangerous, they deserve jail time.

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5 points

If it were an honest accident then nothing. If it were due to neglect or lack of due diligence then maybe a few months of of weekend jail or month of full time jail.

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1 point

In the US that’s called “involuntary manslaughter” and presumably the sentences are shorter, but also still exist so people can’t throw up their hands and go “whoops! That was totes an accident” and get off scot-free.

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5 points

Holy shit, really? Never looked into it but judging by how people drive here (lots of people on their phones while driving, missing red lights all the time) it certainly doesn’t seem like there are severe consequences for any wrongdoings.

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