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Comment by detourdog | Hacker News Reader

What about not handing the tar ball to the police looking for data. Do you see that as a problem?

It seems they waited for a subpoena. Would you prefer automakers send the police a notification anytime the car records a traffic infraction, or maybe they should just set up direct billing for municipalities?

I would prefer automakers to not pretend that they don't have telemetry that they actually do.

It isn't clear that Tesla pretended anything aside from a claim in the article. The article: 1) does not directly cite an original source; 2) walks back the claim to "acted as if". The police had access to everything in vehicle the entire time. The civil lawsuit plaintiffs also had access to everything as evidenced by their forensic expert's access. That Tesla also received a copy of the vehicle's data is not relevant.

Don't Talk to the Police: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

The police reached out to Tesla legal within days and asked if they needed a subpoena. The Tesla lawyer said no, but then directed the police to make their request in a specific way that hid relevant data from police and the victims. It took 5 years to get the data, and only then after a forensic engineer proved Tesla uploaded it by finding logs on the cars black box and after the court was leveling sanctions.

Should companies be intentionally misleading to law enforcement about what data they have on fatal accidents like Tesla?

I hadn’t listened to the below video in a while but I did again today and the above comment’s assumptions of fact perfectly illustrate the point of the video.

This comment takes as fact a claim made by the police, which might be wrong, either by error or purpose.

One thing is for certain though, the police’s initial investigation was criminal. That is to say it was to establish the fact of who was the driver, etc. It was totally separate from the civil litigation that later established Tesla to be at 30% fault for the wreck using computer records establishing that ADAS was engaged.

Leaving Tesla out of it, suppose there was some other automaker with some other problem. A cop comes to them and says “what do I need to ask you to establish the facts about an accident?” Since when do police just accept “oh, the potentially adversarial lawyer gave me advice on what they can tell me without getting a subpoena. Guess that’s all I can do?” That’s absurd.

Don’t talk to the police: https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE

That's obviously problematic. I am only commenting on the belief in a conspiracy of programmers here. The overwhelmingly most likely reason that a temporary file would be unlinked after use is that is what any experienced systems programmer always does as a matter of course.

What "belief in a conspiracy of programmers?"

I've made no contention, but if I had, it would be that whoever signed off on this design had better not have a PE license that they would like to keep, and we as an industry would be wise not to keep counting on our grandfather-clause "fun harmless dorks" cultural exemption now that we manufacture machines which obviously kill people. If that by you is conspiracy theory, you're welcome.

There are not PEs signing software changes for ancillary equipment in consumer vehicles.

ETA: Restate your conspiracy theory in the hypothetical case that they had used `tar | curl` instead of the intermediate archive file. Does it still seem problematic?

"Ancillary" is quite a term for crash reporting after a crash. That is, for a system responding as designed to a collision which disabled the vehicle.

I'm not going to argue with someone who throws gratuitous insults. Rejoin me outside the gutter and we'll continue, if you like. But the answer to your question is trivially yes, that is as professionally indictable, as might by now have been clarified had you sought conversation rather than - well, I suppose, rather than whatever this slander by you was meant to be. One hopes we'll see no more of it.

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