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Comment by belval | Hacker News Reader

I'll go against the general opinion in this thread and say that this is not something that I'd expect to be blamed on Tesla. Especially considering this:

> The driver said she was using Autopilot, that an OTA update had had a problem earlier in the day, and that she had actually had the same kind of collision on Autopilot previously!

Autopilot might be an absolute dumpster fire, but what you are describing is similar to an adaptive cruise control failure and the liability is still with the driver. She rear ended you while you were at a red light, make sure that her insurance pays and that's it. If she wishes to sue Tesla she can obviously do so.

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I have adaptive cruise control, and it behaves the exact same today as it did on the day I test drove the car. It doesn't change behavior unpredictably with OTA updates!

How was the driver supposed to know that the previous issue was not some rare fluke?

Tesla is recklessly rolling out software, and amazingly has pushed off the liability to the drivers willing to try it. Sadly we are all part of the beta, like it or not, if there are are Teslas driving around on public streets.

I'm mostly shocked that insurance rates have not skyrocketed for FSD beta testers.

To clarify, I was responding to the OP with regard to the "investigation" part. Authorities won't launch an investigation on someone rear-ending someone else on the basis that "autopilot did it". As a wronged individual he should make sure that he is properly compensated as non-responsible for the crash. The driver herself can (and maybe should!) at least contact Tesla to inquire about the whole thing.

If truly Teslas with FSD are causing more accidents than another car then yes at some point some government body will investigate but they won't care about a single incident with only material damages.

> I have adaptive cruise control, and it behaves the exact same today as it did on the day I test drove the car. It doesn't change behavior unpredictably with OTA updates!

I do too on a non-Tesla. I've seen differing behaviors not just due to updates but due to the time of day!

Yes mine tends to fail more during winter because the sun is much lower in the sky. It also doesn't like heavy fog, what a surprise, or ignores once in a while uncommon vehicles such as trucks carrying weird cargo.

I have a tesla - I could be wrong but I don't think that autopilot has seen any updates in quite some time. The exception to this is people who have the FSD Beta - this is a very small percentage of people who were able to get a impossibly high driving score. Getting into an accident would have made it impossible for this lady to get the FSD Beta

Responsibility and who pays are certainly important, but isn’t it equally concerning that there isn’t an investigation initiated directly to determine if there’s malfunctioning technology?

At scale not really, how many cars get rear-ended daily in the US? Insurance companies will forward the info to another government body which will launch an investigation if there is a significant deviation from the norm.

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