Comment by macinjosh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by macinjosh | Hacker News Reader

I checked out this intersection on maps and street view.

1. The traffic lane the victims were turning into is in addition to the ending freeway's traffic lanes (i.e. it is one lane further to the right than the right-most through lane). So someone had to be crossing lanes one way or the other for the collision to occur in the first place. Maybe not, I am not a traffic expert or familiar with the area, but that is how it looks to me as an experienced driver.

2. If "Autopilot" was engaged why didn't the Tesla react to the obstruction? Perhaps the timing was too sudden and it didn't have time to reach before being smashed to pieces?

3. Was the victim driver tested for intoxication? Perhaps they were not following all traffic laws as well? Sometimes accidents are the culmination of multiple drivers' mistakes. Not trying to victim blame though. May they RIP.

I think it is clear the Tesla driver was being reckless here because of the speeding. It is unclear if he ran the red light or not. I'd say at the very least revoke the guy's license permanently.

Tesla is, to me, clearly reckless as well with their marketing tactics and their failure to tamp down unrealistic expectations and the hype-machine surrounding "FSD".

> So someone had to be crossing lanes one way or the other for the collision to occur in the first place. Maybe not, I am not a traffic expert or familiar with the area, but that is how it looks to me as an experienced driver.

The victims were making a left turn to get to the other side of the road to head east, the defendant was heading west.

> Perhaps they were not following all traffic laws as well?

They were the fourth car turning left. If the light was extremely short, maybe the light had turned red and they were late, in which case they were in the intersection illegally. NB that were that the case, they still would have right of way as they had entered the intersection before the Tesla. The defendant would still be fully culpable.

I don't see any situation in which the defendant was not driving recklessly. He was almost certainly driving at 74 mph directly at a red light, unless all four cars ran a red light across multiple lanes. When the light turned green he had at most a second or two to have stopped, if it had not changed. He did not even touch the brake.

Realistically, he was driving with his eyes closed because it was 1230 and he was tired. Emergency braking would not have saved the two people he killed. Evasive driving would have still caused a crash at that speed. The only thing that could have saved their lives was respecting the red light, and the car was not programmed to do that.

Even if the car was fully self-driving, the "hands on steering wheel" thing is a very clear "pay attention" signal. There's a valid argument that complacency is a natural result regardless, but this was not complacency. He had zero awareness of what was happening outside the vehicle, and that is reckless.

Autopilot deliberately ignores stationary objects.

That's simply false and is proven false by any number of videos on youtube.

Both comments are false. Reality is more complex as _sometimes_ it ignores: [0]

0: https://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/have-you-seen/2022/04/2...

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