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Comment by breadwinner | Hacker News Reader

If Tesla is not blameless, then it is not driver's fault 100%. Total blame cannot exceed 100%.

It's not like the juries of two different cases get together and decide how to proportion the penalty.

Depends on the jurisdiction. Some states allow fault to be apportioned to third parties, and some forbid it entirely. [1]

[1] https://pro.bloomberglaw.com/insights/litigation/contributor...

But it can and often does. They do not "share" the blame, but are both at fault (IMHO).

There is no law of conservation of blame. Why would there be?

Eh, not sure if I would say that. There are a lot of legal rules about how blame is assigned.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_and_several_liability

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_negligence

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributory_negligence

Liability for paying amounts of money is not at all the same thing as blame.

Are we talking about torts or crimes?

If we're talking about tort law, then yes, damages are measured in dollars. And those damages are absolutely subject to rules about how they are split when multiple people are liable.

If we're talking about crimes, then "percent of blame" is nonsensical. There is no percent liability for a crime, you either are guilty or you are not.

I feel like 100% is not meant to be taken literally here.

I vote for letting numbers be literal.

Well 100% of the votes went to not doing that.

If there was more than one tort or crime that happened, then yes, there could be.

There are plenty of situations where total blame adds up to less than 100%, where multiple people make honest mistakes.

This situation is the opposite of that, because multiple people were knowingly reckless.

Edit: By "multiple people" I mean the driver and Elon.

Ask some people on death row. 3-4 people were arrested and sentenced to death for the exact same crime.

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