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Comment by gizmo686 | Hacker News Reader

Generally speaking, liability for a thing falls on the owner/operator. That person can sue the manufacturer to recover the damages if they want. At some point, I expect it to become somewhat routine for insurures to pay out, then sue the manufacturer to recover.

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Or at some point subscribing to a service may be easier than owning the damn thing.

All according to plan

It already doesn't make sense to own a car for me. It's cheaper to just call an Uber.

For some this is the case. For others, this is not the case.

some -> most ?

In west/east coast cities maybe.

Talk to anyone from the midwest about not owning a car and they'll laugh you out of the room.

Well, unless it's because youre proposing they switch to ATV's and Snowmobiles, in which case there some people can technically get by without a traditional automobile.

I'm guessing that's a fairly city viewpoint. My car is setup with roofrack and carries a lot of other gear I want. I'm regularly in places without reliable cell etc. Visiting friends can easily be an hour drive.

Yes, a city viewport. I usually just walk, but when I don't I most often take the subway, not even Uber. Though I feel like in Toronto the subway or some part thereof is closed or under maintenance or whatever way too often. It's not very reliable.

Depends how often.

Multiple Ubers per day are expensive. ($55 x 365 = $20,000)

All in, a budget car costs less than half of that per year.

But if you replace some of that with public transportation, or a car is otherwise impractical, the math changes.

If you take off the conspiracy hat, you will see that there are many advantages to not owning a product. Such as that the vendor's incentives are better aligned with yours. For example, if the thing breaks, it is in __their__ best interest to fix it (or to not let it break in the first place). This also has positive implications for sustainability.

It’s also in their best interest to set the price so as to maximize their own profits. If switching costs or monopoly power allow them to set a higher price, they will do so.

Have we learned nothing from a decade of subscription services?

Nobody said we should allow monopolies?

Especially Adam Smith. The claims are scattered throughout The Wealth of Nations, but he hated them with specificity. He said they raise prices and lower quality, misallocate capital, and corrupt politics, among other things.

but tesla is the operator

Aside from the human in the vehicle holding the steering wheel with a foot on the pedal, that is.

That’s today. If Tesla ever becomes fully autonomous, you won’t need that.

google what F stands for in FSD

If I ever marry Oprah I’ll be a rich man :)

Ah, but could one not argue that the owner of the self-driving car is _not_ the operator, and it is the car, or perhaps Tesla, which operates it?

Mercedes agrees. They take on liability when their system is operated appropriately.

They say they will, but until relevant laws are updated, this is mostly contractual and not a change to legal liability. It is similar to how an insurance company takes responsibility for the way you operate your car.

If your local legal system does not absolve you from liability when operating an autonomous vehicle, you can still be sued, and Mercedes has no say in this… even though they could reimburse you.

No. They don’t. It was vaporware made to fool people including you. You could never actually order it and it’s canceled now in favor of an L2 system.

All Tesla vehicles require the person behind the steering wheel to supervise the operations of the vehicle and avoid accidents at all times.

Also, even if a system is fully automated, that doesn’t necessarily legally isolate the person who owns it or set it into motion from liability. Vehicle law would generally need to be updated to change this.

But that might be considered a legal trick. Suppose that, when you pay for a taxi, the standard conditions of carriage would make it your responsibility to supervise the vehicle operation and alert the driver so as to avoid accidents. Would the taxi driver and taxi company be able to eschew liability through that formalism? Probably not. The fact that Tesla makes you sign something does not automatically make the signed document valid and enforceable.

It may be that it is; but then, if you are required to be watchful at all time, and be able to take over from the autonomous vehicle at all times, then - the autonomy doesn't really help you all that much, does it?

No, Tesla doesn’t assign you liability by making you sign something. The law makes the driver of a vehicle liable for the operation, as it always has.

My first sentence was to say that even if the law treats autonomous vehicles differently, Tesla doesn’t sell one.

> The law makes the driver of a vehicle liable for the operation, as it always has.

So, either those Tesla's don't really self-drive (which may be the case, I don't know, but then the whole discussion is moot), or they do, in which case, the human wasn't the one driving and may thus avoid liability.

Then of course there is the possibility that the court might be convinced the car was being drive collaboratively by the human and the car/the computer, in which case Tesla and the human might share the liability. IANA(US)L though.

> either those Tesla's don't really self-drive

All Teslas are level 2 ADAS and require the human behind the the wheel to monitor the vehicle and intervene when necessary.

> or they do, in which case, the human wasn't the one driving and may thus avoid liability.

That is not legally true. Automation does not absolve someone from liability. Owners of a piece of machinery have liability just by being the owner and placing it into operation.

Forget about cars for a second -- we already have many products that are entirely automated already, for example: an elevator. If you own a building with an elevator, and it hurts someone, the building owner is absolutely going to be sued over it, and "oh, it's automated" isn't a get-out-of-court free card.

There are still responsibilities that the owner has: did they properly maintain it? were they aware of an issue but decided to operate it anyway? were they in a position to intervene and avoid the accident, but failed to do so?

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