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Comment by trident5000 | Hacker News Reader

The NYT is more than capable of making a clear headline. These are not stupid people. But they do have goals.

The headline is perfectly clear and is not using language in a new way. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issues recalls for safety related issues. The way the manufacture resolves the issues can differ.

If the average user on HN needs an explanation that a word in a title actually has a completely different effective meaning, I'd say that it is unlikely to be a clear title.

I agree, Tesla should change the name of their driver assistance suite.

I see no evidence that the average user on HN needed an explanation. I think a small minority needed one.

Here is Tesla's recall page: https://www.tesla.com/support/annual-and-recall-service

Several of these were fixed with OTA updates. Tesla doesn't seem to be confused on the meaning of the word. This very site has had these exact OTA recall submissions for years.

I would say on HN you're far more likely to get some "whell ahcktuwally" comments in the most counterproductive way, particularly because there are so many Tesla and Musk fans that immediately become defensive vs any negative news or criticism of each and engage in semantic quibbling to deflect.

Recall is the correct word to use for this sort of NTSC action. Most people understand what it means and don't care about OTA vs plugging in an ODB port.

> Most people […] don't care about OTA vs plugging in an ODB port.

Yes, they do.

For the former, you just let the car autoupdate and that’s it. For the latter, you gotta drive to a dealership/service center and leave your car there so that the service center employees can resolve it via “plugging in an ODB port.”

One requires much more work and effort than the other on the part of the driver. For one, I think most people would care about having to potentially take a day off work + figure out their transportation while the recall issue is being resolved at the service center.

I am of course aware of that. We're talking about the semantics of the word recall however.

Sure, you're technically correct, but when the average person reads "recall" they typically assume something very different. Doubly so since this isn't even a bug fix, just a new requirement to add additional safety checks above and beyond the ones already there.

There's no reason the headline couldn't have read something like "Tesla Issues Software Update at Request of NHTSA", which would be less likely to confuse the average reader, but also less attention-grabbing.

In the old days, recalls meant the car had to go back to the dealer for a fix. Then "recall" got a legal meaning, and as we moved to cars that could be updated at home, the term stuck because it is now enshrined in official regulation. It is just anachronistic terminology now like "hang up the phone."

The average person can learn what the term means when they get the notification in the mail from Tesla (which will state that there is a recall and it will be handled by an OTA update). Or they could read the article and not rely on the headline to get their full understanding of the issue. If the average user panics from the headline... good. This is a safety issue and they should be made aware of it.

The average person understands “recall” to mean “something about my car may be unsafe, I should read it”. If you’ve owned a car, you’ve gotten plenty of these and many of them are minor - for example, when I lived in San Diego I did not race to the dealership when Subaru put out a recall telling you to have the underbody inspected for defects which could cause elevated corrosion with frequent exposure to road salt because I knew my vehicle didn’t fall into that category. The recall mechanism meant I got it taken care of a year later when I had other work being done.

The only people claiming to be confused here appear to be Tesla fans who are reacting emotionally to their favorite company getting negative attention. I see no sign that any of them were concerned about a standard industry term before today.

In this case, the goal is using the industry standard term to refer to a specific action defined under U.S. law. It’s called a recall because that’s the term used by the legislation delegated to the NHTSA by the Congress:

https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/documents/unders...

The only confusion I see on this point is from people who based on their history appear to be Tesla fans and presumably are letting their loyalties to the company trigger a defensive reaction.

what do you think their goals are? where do they get them?

I actually dont think this article/headline is that egregious. But in general anything having to do with Musk/Tesla is going to be put in a negative light. And I think we all know why. Election season, twitter ownership, etc etc.

As an observer:

Elon is a cringey based edgelord, accelerated the decline of their favorite platform (Twitter), re-platforms and signal boosts people/grifters with dangerous ideas, and all of that outweighs, in their estimation, whatever good will he earned with Tesla/SpaceX in the prior decade.

Oh, he’s also a generationally wealthy South African. They’re on one side of the culture war, he’s (newly?) on the other.

They want him stripped of influence. Or maybe they’re just really big fans of Kia and Volkswagen, dunno.

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