Experts lay into Tesla safety in federal autopilot trial | Hacker News Reader

Experts lay into Tesla safety in federal autopilot trial

arstechnica.com

39 pointsduxup18 comments

For context, in 2019 Tesla's autopilot did not stop for any stop signs or red lights, it was just a lane-following traffic aware cruise control with an arguably deceptive name. It also has a mechanism to ensure that the driver stays alert while autopilot is on. The trial is thus about that mechanism, not about self-driving.

Right. This is not Full Self Driving at issue.

But then what is the trial about? A driver neglected to stop for a stop sign and somehow Tesla is at fault?

Surely the driver had to know his car did not take over these functions and if the software was not designed to do this, then it couldn't have malfunctioned.

> Surely the driver had to know his car did not take over these functions

“Before the crash, McGee had engaged the system that Tesla calls Autopilot, which can steer, brake and accelerate the car on its own.

…

Lawyers for the plaintiffs accuse the company of overpromising what its technology can do in order to sell cars.

…

In 2016, the company posted a video of what appears to be a car equipped with Autopilot driving on its own.

‘The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons,’ reads a caption that flashes at the beginning of the video. ‘He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.’ (Six years later, a senior Tesla engineer conceded as part of a separate lawsuit that the video was staged and did not represent the true capabilities of the car.)

https://www.npr.org/2025/07/14/nx-s1-5462851/tesla-lawsuit-a...

Did the driver know his car would not stop for stop signs?

If he knew it wouldn't, then Tesla obviously is innocent and all blame lies with the driver.

> If he knew it wouldn't

We wouldn’t be talking about it.

He obviously did know, and yet we are talking about it. Not stopping at every stop sign and red light is pretty obvious behavior. This wasn't the first stop sign the driver encountered in the Tesla.

> This wasn't the first stop sign the driver encountered in the Tesla

If the Tesla just blew a stop sign there wouldn’t be a suit.

My Subaru has collision avoidance. It markets this, albeit somewhat carefully. If the collision detection-and-avoidance system straight up didn’t work, and I got injured in an accident because of it, I’d hold both the driver and Subaru responsible. Because they sold me a thing that they claimed would do something it didn’t.

Tesla’s collision-avoidance system was marketed as an autopilot that didn’t need human supervision except for legal reasons. It didn’t work. And it failed in a way cars with collision-avoidance radars probable wouldn’t have.

Do you actually know this is not the first stop sign they drove through on autopilot?

And that was a valid defense when he was sued for the wrongful death? Or in his criminal case?

What functions does the Autopilot actually provide? Is that different to the capabilities that Tesla advertises?

I don't really get the description going through a stop sign and hitting pedestrians next to a stopped car. It sounds like 2 entirely independent errors in succession as no right of way, etc, is really affected by the stop?

It committed two extremely dangerous maneuvers in quick succession (one illegal), and the injuries to the people involved sound like they likely would have been much less if it had stopped as required by law.

Either way, it broke the law and killed someone. Does it matter if it was an act in 1 part or 5?

> Does it matter if it was an act in 1 part or 5?

If it had 5 errors 4 of which were not deadly due to random circumstances like no vehicle with right of way passing, then that is worse than if it committed one error that was deadly. I might fix the second implementation and scrap the first.

That is a yes for any legal definition of harm that results in death.

"it is my professional opinion that Tesla's Autopilot is defective because Tesla knowingly allows the car to be operated in operational domains for which it is explicitly not designed for."

Outrageous; compare to cruise control on other cars.

In line with the outrageous regulation kill-switch-on-all-new-cars-after-2026, inside the infrastructure and jobs bill passed in 2021.

I see there's a newer bill drafted called No Kill Switches in Cars Act, hope it gets moving.

Cruise control on other cars isn't called autopilot and people know what to expect.

Autopilot isn’t cruise control. It’s ADAS. Apples and oranges.

Other ADAS systems have much better driver monitoring. My 2016 Honda did. My 2021 Ford does.

The government has forced Tesla to strengthen their monitoring at least twice.

Tesla called it Autopilot. Tesla (seemingly) didn’t care about reckless behavior. Tesla repeatedly had misleading claims about being far safer than humans driving. Tesla didn’t even keep the data that would be needed to prove that for the first 2 years.

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