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Comment by tacon | Hacker News Reader

>A Tesla factory is a much safer place to be than a Home Depot or a Costco, and many other businesses open in California today.

No, Tesla has a history of higher injury rates than similar factories, and of trying to hide their high injury rates. There are multiple stories about this, very easy to find. Here is a podcast episode on injuries at Tesla[0]. Tesla has a history of being cavalier about worker safety.

[0] https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/working-through-the-pain...

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This is independent of opening the factory during COVID or not. By this logic, Tesla should never be allowed to open their factory - COVID or not. And that doesn't seem to be the county's position - by far.

If Tesla cannot properly account for safety pre-covid, why should they be trusted to properly account for safety post covid? Especially when the guy insisting on opening the factory has been downplaying the risk of covid consistently from the beginning ("The coronavirus panic is dumb", "Based on current trends, probably close to zero new cases in US too by end of April", etc.)

Because they already did it in Shanghai

I find the theoretical consideration more compelling than specific facts. If Tesla demonstrably is above the law, then incentives to do the right thing seem to be lacking. Whenever people get into an argument about whether someone or something is good or bad, my reaction is, what is the mechanism that would force them to be good? If the answer is absolutely nothing, then I'm going to bet that the people saying they are bad are correct (and of course if there are huge incentives, then the people saying they are good are likely correct). Either way, I don't think it makes sense to shrug and say they're probably as good or bad as everyone else.

They ask for voluntary compliancy as any court challenge against their orders would see the orders revoked. The county will not push Tesla on this as they know they will lose the court case.

No. Higher rates are due to stricter regulations/enforcement. No other company manufactures cars in CA.

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