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Judge finds ‘reasonable evidence’ Tesla knew self-driving tech was defective
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2023
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
A judge has found “reasonable evidence” that Elon Musk and other executives at Tesla knew that the company’s self-driving technology was defective but still allowed the cars to be driven in an unsafe manner anyway, according to a recent ruling issued in Florida.
The lawsuit, brought by Banner’s wife, accuses the company of intentional misconduct and gross negligence, which could expose Tesla to punitive damages.
The ruling comes after Tesla won two product liability lawsuits in California earlier this year focused on alleged defects in its Autopilot system.
“It would be reasonable to conclude that the Defendant Tesla through its CEO and engineers was acutely aware of the problem with the ‘Autopilot’ failing to detect cross traffic,” the judge wrote.
Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor, told Reuters that the judge’s summary of the evidence was significant because it suggests “alarming inconsistencies” between what Tesla knew internally, and what it was saying in its marketing.
“This opinion opens the door for a public trial in which the judge seems inclined to admit a lot of testimony and other evidence that could be pretty awkward for Tesla and its CEO,” Smith said.
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If that's what this centers I don't think this necessarily a correct ruling
That semi was moving fairly slowly as it was crossing the road as any semi would from a stop.
Radar does not detect stationary objects at high speeds, which this slow moving cross traffic vehicle could look like. I imagine there's some limit where a cross traffic item moving very slowly would appear for all intents and purposes stationary as it fills the entire roadway horizontally and not just a portion of it.
The car explicitly warns you that Radar won't detect stationary objects at high speeds. Other manufacturers explicitly warn about this very same problem as well.
It'll be interesting to see what happens with this case, but if that's what it hinges on, IMO, it doesn't look good for the plaintiff.
Doesn't Tesla only use cameras and image processing though? As in no radar at all?
This was in 2019 when radar was a more primary than vision, or vision only.
Here’s the basis of the finding:
The bot that parses the articles creates a worse summary than you’d get by just reading random sentences.
In any case, we should note that this finding was reached after the recent media disclosures that Musk and Tesla deliberately created a false impression of the reliability of their autopilot capabilities. They were also deceptive in the capabilities of vehicles like the cybertruck and their semi, as well as things like range estimation, which might show a pattern of deliberate deception - demonstrating that it is a Tesla company practice across product lines. The clickthrough defense compared to what the CEO says on stage on massively publicized announcements sounds to me a bit like Trump’s defense that he signed his financial statements but noted that by doing so he wasn’t actually confirming anything and the people who believed him are the ones to blame.
Given his groundless lawsuit against media matters and his threats against the ADL, I think Elon might have started circling the drain.
Ah, that makes a lot more sense. Shouldn't trust the bot.
I'd only add that the "click through" is actually a well laid out screen with info graphic showing the problem and a few lines of text.
They'd be hard pressed to say that warning was difficult or hard for anyone to read or understand.
Unrelated but relevant, but like GDPR where privacy explanations need to be short, concise and easy to understand, I'd say the click through thing was more than adequate and would exceed those.
But as you point out, that's only a part of it.
Edit: trying to find an image of it for reference, but my GoogleFu is failing me :(
Edit: to further clarify, I'm only talking about the radar and stopped vehicles in terms above. The whole agreement I think was larger in some places, but my memory is a little foggy on that without images.