Tesla wins first US Autopilot trial involving fatal crash | Hacker News Reader

Tesla wins first US Autopilot trial involving fatal crash

reuters.com

19 pointspseudolus14 comments

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“Tesla denied liability, saying Lee consumed alcohol before getting behind the wheel.”

Assuming this is true, the decision seems fair.

What was the drivers BAC? Does anyone know?

This other article says .05% but not sure about sources, validity etc.

https://electrek.co/2023/10/31/tesla-prevails-in-first-autop...

NY Times also reports that the driver's BAC was below the legal limit, but does not give a figure.

I feel it is also significant that the vehicle suddenly swerved off the road for no apparent reason. As far as I know, this is not the sort of thing that usually happens when drunk drivers cause crashes, at least unless they are completely shitfaced. More typically they create dangerous situations through poor judgement and/or fail to react to a situation requiring action.

> NY Times also reports that the driver's BAC was below the legal limit, but does not give a figure.

Many US jurisdictions you can still be charged for DUI/DD while being under the legal limit if you're judged to be impaired, which I don't think nearly enough people realize.

Speaking for myself it's realized. Very steep legal hill to climb when there's substances involved in a case like this, for better or worse.

> Assuming this is true, the decision seems fair.

If Tesla was able to live up to their marketing (calling the feature "Autopilot" and "self driving") it shouldn't have mattered what the occupants BAC was.

If I turn on autopilot on my plane and get shitfaced, it will crash and it would be my fault. I think Tesla’s marketing is over the top and their refusal to use radar frustrating. But I’m surprised this case made it to a jury, assuming he was actually drunk versus had a drink at one point in the day.

It would seem, believing marketing lies is worthy of death.

The alcohol is a red herring and everyone knows it. Unless you have police verifying his BAC is over the legal limit, you aren't making a salient point -- you are speculating irresponsibly.

The car veered off the road like a maniac took the wheel, that maniac was software written by Tesla. I certainly wouldn't trust my family's safety with this, whether I had a drink of alcohol or not.

Good on Tesla's legal team for winning in a case where they're so obviously at fault that they identified and fixed the issue -- "we don't have a bug, but if we did we fixed it." I mean this sincerely, it's a masterclass in misdirection to energy bend a jury's feelings about "drunk drivers" to their advantage to completely shut down the question as to whether that fact mattered at all to the crash.

But god I hope regulators bring down the banhammer on this garbage, every time it's tested humans can't take over control of the car in emergency situations fast enough by a huge margin. The car needs to handle its own shit in emergency situations or not offer self driving at all. Human supervised has to mean the car can pull over and say, "I'm not confident enough to drive safely here, help" and not "jesus take the wheel" two seconds before impact.

The electric-vehicle maker also argued it was unclear whether Autopilot was engaged at the time of the crash.

What???

The lawyers will innovate long before the tech does

tl;dr: Tesla won’t be held liable for misleading marketing or buggy software because humans are capable of being distracted

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