That's a tough one. Yeah they sell it as autopilot. But anyone seeing a steering wheel and pedals should reasonably assume that they are there to override the autopilot. Saying he thought the car would protect him from his mistake doesn't sound like something an autopilot would do. Tesla has done plenty wrong, but this case isn't much of an example of that.
this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2025
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Yeah, the problem is that the US has no consumer protections, and somehow this court is trying to make up for it, but it shouldn't be in such court cases where the driver was clearly not fit to drive a car.
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This is gonna get overturned on appeal.
The guy dropped his phone and was fiddling for it AND had his foot pressing down the accelerator.
Pressing your foot on it overrides any braking, it even tells you it won't brake while doing it. That's how it should be, the driver should always be able to override these things in case of emergency.
Maybe if he hadn't done that (edit held the accelerator down) it'd stick.
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Surprisingly great outcome, and what a spot-on summary from lead attorney:
"Tesla designed autopilot only for controlled access highways yet deliberately chose not to restrict drivers from using it elsewhere, alongside Elon Musk telling the world Autopilot drove better than humans," said Brett Schreiber, lead attorney for the plaintiffs. "Tesla’s lies turned our roads into test tracks for their fundamentally flawed technology, putting everyday Americans like Naibel Benavides and Dillon Angulo in harm's way. Today's verdict represents justice for Naibel's tragic death and Dillon's lifelong injuries, holding Tesla and Musk accountable for propping up the company’s trillion-dollar valuation with self-driving hype at the expense of human lives," Schreiber said.
Holding them accountable would be jail time. I'm fine with even putting the salesman in jail for this. Who's gonna sell your vehicles when they know there's a decent chance of them taking the blame for your shitty tech?
Don't you love how corporations can be people when it comes to bribing politicians but not when it comes to consequences for their criminal actions? Interestingly enough, the same is happening to AI...
You'd have to prove that the salesman said exactly that, and without a record it's at best a he said / she said situation.
I'd be happy to see Musk jailed though, he's definitely taunted self driving as fully functional.
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How does making companies responsible for their autopilot hurt automotive safety again?
There's actually a backfire effect here. It could make companies too cautious in rolling out self driving. The status quo is people driving poorly. If you delay the roll out of self driving beyond the point when it's better than people, then more people will die.
Even if self driving cars kill less people, they'll still destroy our quality of life.
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Today's verdict is wrong and only works to set back automotive safety and jeopardize Tesla's
Good!
... and the entire industry
Even better!
Did you read it tho? Tesla is at fault for this guy overriding the safety systems by pushing down on the accelerator and looking for his phone at the same time?
I do not agree with Tesla often. Their marketing is bullshit, their cars are low quality pieces of shit. But I don't think they should be held liable for THIS idiot's driving. They should still be held liable when Autopilot itself fucks up.
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Yes. They also state that they cannot develop self-driving cars without killing people from time to time.
"Some of you will die, but that's a risk I'm willing to take."
Brannigan is way smarter than Mush.
Farquaad said this, not Brannigan iirc
When I'm command, son, every mission is a suicide mission.
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Some of you will be forced through a fine mesh screen for your country. They will be the luckiest of all.
I mean, that's probably strictly true.
I don't know, most experimental technologies aren't allowed to be tested in public till they are good and well ready. This whole move fast break often thing seems like a REALLY bad idea for something like cars on public roads.
Well, the Obama administration had published initial guidance on testing and safety for automated vehicles in September 2016, which was pre-regulatory but a prelude to potential regulation. Trump trashed it as one of the first things he did taking office for his first term. I was working in the AV industry at the time.
That turned everything into the wild west for a couple of years, up until an automated Uber killed a pedestrian in Arizona in 2018. After that, most AV companies scaled public testing way back, and deployed extremely conservative versions of their software. If you look at news articles from that time, there's a lot of criticism of how, e.g., Waymos would just grind to a halt in the middle of intersections, as companies would rather take flak for blocking traffic than running over people.
But not Tesla. While other companies dialed back their ambitions, Tesla was ripping Lidar sensors off its vehicles and sending them back out on public roads in droves. They also continued to market the technology - first as "Autopilot" and later as "Full Self Driving" - in ways that vastly overstated its capabilities. To be clear, Full Self Driving, or Level 5 Automation in the SAE framework, is science fiction at this point, the idea of a computer system functionally indistinguishable from a capable human driver. Other AV companies are still striving for Level 4 automation, which may include geographic restrictions or limitations to functioning on certain types of road infrastructure.
Part of the blame probably also lies with Biden, whose DOT had the opportunity to address this and didn't during his term. But it was Trump who initially trashed the safety framework, and Telsa that concealed and mismarketed the limitations of its technology.
You got me interested, so I searched around and found this:
So, if I understand this correctly, the only fundamental difference between level 4 and 5 is that 4 works on specific known road types with reliable quality (highways, city roads), while level 5 works literally everywhere, including rural dirt paths?
I'm trying to imagine what other type of geographic difference there might be between 4 and 5 and I'm drawing a blank.
I think this chart overcomplicates it a bit. Almost a decade ago, I worked on a very short project that touched on this topic. One expert explained to me that the difference between level 4 and 5 is that you don’t need a steering wheel or pedals anymore. L5 can drive anywhere, anytime in all situations.
Yes, that's it. A lot of AV systems are dependent on high resolution 3d maps of an area so they can precisely locate themselves in space. So they may perform relatively well in that defined space but would not be able to do so outside it.
Level 5 is functionally a human driver. You as a human could be driving off road, in an environment you've never been in before. Maybe it's raining and muddy. Maybe there are unknown hazards within this novel geography, flooding, fallen trees, etc.
A Level 5 AV system would be able to perform equivalently to a human in those conditions. Again, it's science fiction at this point, but essentially the end goal of vehicle automation is a system that can respond to novel and unpredictable circumstances in the same way (or better than) a human driver would in that scenario. It's really not defined much better than that end goal - because it's not possible with current technology, it doesn't correspond to a specific set of sensors or software system. It's a performance-based, long-term goal.
This is why it's so irresponsible for Tesla to continue to market their system as "Full self driving." It is nowhere near as adaptable or capable as a human driver. They pretend or insinuate that they have a system equivalent to SAE Level 5 when the entire industry is a decade minimum away from such a system.
I was working in the AV industry at the time.
How is you working in the audio/video industry relevant? ...or maybe you mean adult videos?
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I wonder if a lawyer will ever try to apply this as precedent against Boeing or similar...
Whoa there, pardner. Boeing has people murdered when they go against the company. Tesla only kills customers (so far, at least).
Seems like jury verdicts don't set a legal precedent in the US but still often considered to have persuasive impact on future cases.
This kinda makes sense but the articles on this don't make it very clear how impactful this actually is - here crossing fingers for Tesla's down fall. I'd imagine launching robo taxis would be even harder now.
It's funny how this legal bottle neck was the first thing AI driving industry research ran into. Then, we kinda collectively forgot that and now it seems like it actually was as important as we thought it would be. Let's say once robo taxis scale up - there would be thousands of these every year just due sheer scale of driving. How could that ever work outside of places like China?
What jury results do is cost real money - companies often (not always) change in hopes to avoid more.
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"Today’s verdict is wrong"
I think a certain corporation needs to be reminded to have some humility toward the courts
Corporations should not expect the mercy to get away from saying the things a human would
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