Family of man killed by his Model X on autopilot sues Tesla

[FratStar]

3 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

 

 

Let's go over this again: you are telling me Tesla is surprised that people thought "autopilot" meant "self-driving"... after decades of seeing how regular folks think "autopilot" means "self-driving planes"? In other words, to use the name that is proven to confuse people?

If people think planes have been flying themselves since 1912 then they are woefully ignorant. That is THEIR problem

[Thaldor]

1 minute ago, Sauron said:

You'd only know that if you had some knowledge of how these systems work. It also doesn't matter if technically it isn't lying - what matters is what the public perceives and there are reports showing that the average customer is mislead.

Well, the average human that makes into news in the 21st century has IQ that can be counted with fingers, and dissapointingly those people probably can't even count high enough to count theirs. It isn't advertisers fault that the customer is too stupid to even read clear words.

[The Benjamins]

26 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

 

 

Let's go over this again: you are telling me Tesla is surprised that people thought "autopilot" meant "self-driving"... after decades of seeing how regular folks think "autopilot" means "self-driving planes"? In other words, to use the name that is proven to confuse people?

You are telling me, when Tesla warns users multiple times, and its car constantly nags users to pay attention, they some how lose the responsibility they have been informed about multiple times.

[Drak3]

6 minutes ago, Thaldor said:

It isn't advertisers fault that the customer is too stupid to even read clear words.

It is when they're calling something by a name that it is verifiably not.

[XR6]

1 hour ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

Then maybe, just maybe, they could call it and market it as "assisted drive", "cruise control" (hey, even "Advanced/Enhanced cruise control" ), "drive-by-wire", or a similar form that basically coincides with what they want it to mean? Rather than calling it something else and then complain that "people don't get it" when the lawsuits come in?

 

Assisted direction and ABS also make your driving easier. They're just not called "auto-direction" nor "auto-braking"

The name is not the issue (although I can see why it would cause some misunderstandings).

The issue lies with the user, if they think that 'autopilot' is 100% autonomous and is capable of driving the car without any human intervention then they're ignorant.

It shows they haven't even bothered to do the slightest bit of research about Autopilot, nor have they heeded the warnings that display on the dashboard when you engage Autopilot.. It is their fault, not Tesla's.  

 

Tesla has said time and time again that their cars are not fully autonomous, the car repeatedly tells you to pay attention and to keep your hands on the wheel.

 Isn't that enough for the driver to realize their car is not fully autonomous and that they should pay attention?

[Blademaster91]

1 minute ago, The Benjamins said:

You are telling me, when Tesla warns users multiple times, and its car constantly nags users to pay attention, they some how lose the responsibility they have been informed about multiple times.

Well people usually don't listen to some screen annoying them, and when Tesla markets their assisted driving feature as being an "autopilot" most are going to assume it will completely drive for them with no input needed.

[Sauron]

8 minutes ago, Thaldor said:

Well, the average human that makes into news in the 21st century has IQ that can be counted with fingers, and disappointingly those people probably can't even count high enough to count theirs.

Yes, I'm sure

Apple engineer Walter Huang

had an IQ in the single digits.

 

pls

[The Benjamins]

1 minute ago, Blademaster91 said:

Well people usually don't listen to some screen annoying them, and when Tesla markets their assisted driving feature as being an "autopilot" most are going to assume it will completely drive for them with no input needed.

the car constantly requires input, or it will brake and put on the flashers. The users actively ignores the facts is not Tesla fault. If a pot of boiling water is sitting on a table with the sticker on it saying caution hot, the person not reading the label is not automatically absolved of responsibility if they get hurt by the water if they touch it due to them not reading it.

[IamNotorious]

4 hours ago, TVwazhere said:

If this is all true, in my mind this clears Tesla of most charges. The only way I can see this being Tesla's fault is if the autopilot CAUSED the crash, as most of the material I've seen on these cars says "driver participation is still needed" we're not yet at the point where we can tune out for half an hour. 

I agree with you, there are multiple warnings. Although it is horrible that a family lost its father it honestly is natural selection. Not to mention you can find hundreds of videos since then proving that Tesla's autopilot has since improved. Its like seat belts in my opinion, in some awful cases they can cause you to die instead of saving you but lifes saved overall is net positive and just because someone didn't follow the instructions shouldn't stop tesla from making it safer and safer. Maybe at the time of crash autopilot was only as good as a belt that only goes around your waist but it now is as good as 3 point. Eventually it will be as good as 5 point. Still sad it happened though. Also i should not that tesla rewrote their entire neural net 3-6 months ago so the autopilot in this case is entirely different from the ground up.

[Fasauceome]

5 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

Well people usually don't listen to some screen annoying them, and when Tesla markets their assisted driving feature as being an "autopilot" most are going to assume it will completely drive for them with no input needed.

If the driver classifies the instructions as "annoying" and ignores them, then makes false assumptions about what autopilot can do, that's not Tesla's fault.

[The Benjamins]

4 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Yes, I'm sure

Apple engineer Walter Huang

had an IQ in the single digits.

 

pls

as a person who is been around many different engineers, some are smart, some are dumb. A engineer is still a person and they can still make stupid choices.

[Sauron]

12 minutes ago, The Benjamins said:

as a person who is been around many different engineers, some are smart, some are dumb. A engineer is still a person and they can still make stupid choices.

Yes, but they aren't the lowest common denominator who wouldn't understand a word of what you were saying no matter how clear the ads were.

What is your point here? Yes, people can be wrong and in a perfect world everyone would know exactly what everything they use does and what the risks are, but I bet you don't even read the EULA when you install a program - and if you do you may be the only person on Earth who does - that's not an excuse for misleading advertisements. Why would it be such a big deal for Tesla to change the name to "driving assist" if they thought people weren't being mislead into paying to act as lab rats?

[The Benjamins]

1 minute ago, Sauron said:

Yes, but they aren't the lowest common denominator who wouldn't understand a word of what you were saying no matter how clear the ads were.

What is your point here? Yes, people can be wrong and in a perfect world everyone would know exactly what everything they use does and what the risks are, but I bet you don't even read the EULA when you install a program - and if you do you may be the only person on Earth who does - that's not an excuse for misleading advertisements. Why would it be such a big deal for Tesla to change the name to "driving assist" if they thought people weren't being mislead into paying to act as lab rats?

It doesn't matter what its named, people will still get complacent and become to trusting of things which will cause accidents. Just like how many accidents happen now. nearly all distracted driving accidents is done by people that know its wrong and dangerous, but they think I got this, its not going to happen to me.

 

This engineer could of know it was a assisting system, but been using they system for a long time, figured it hasn't gone wrong yet, gave it to much trust and allowed it to drive with out supervision many times. (it was reported that he was use to letting it do its own thing) 

 

Bottom line is changing the name would not have save his life, or stop people from becoming complacent. 

 

And this is not like ignoring a EULA, if he does not pay attention the car will break, and stop with hazards on, you have to ACTIVELY circumvent the safety feature. 

[SpaceGhostC2C]

59 minutes ago, fasauceome said:

Again, the name is completely inconsequential, if people assume it means something and then ignore the directions given to the driver, that is user error, plain and simple. 

 

58 minutes ago, FratStar said:

If people think planes have been flying themselves since 1912 then they are woefully ignorant. That is THEIR problem

 

35 minutes ago, The Benjamins said:

You are telling me, when Tesla warns users multiple times, and its car constantly nags users to pay attention, they some how lose the responsibility they have been informed about multiple times.

 

33 minutes ago, XR6 said:

The name is not the issue (although I can see why it would cause some misunderstandings).

The issue lies with the user, if they think that 'autopilot' is 100% autonomous and is capable of driving the car without any human intervention then they're ignorant.

It shows they haven't even bothered to do the slightest bit of research about Autopilot, nor have they heeded the warnings that display on the dashboard when you engage Autopilot.. It is their fault, not Tesla's.  

 

You all keep going back to the blame game. You just keep repeating "it's X's fault" if not worse, like it solves anything.

In all honesty, I'm an empiricist: I don't care much for your judgments. Instead, I'm more interested by facts: the company took a course of action of predictable consequences. Should that make them liable in court? That's a different story. The question remains, though: do you undertake an action that your "stupid customers" will predictably misunderstand? To which end? I mean, OK, maybe if you are 12 years old, you do it just to then tell everyone how it's actually their fault and feel smart, but if you are running a company, do you? Like those companies pulling ads from Youtube when it's obvious they don't actually support any criminal activity, adsense bla blah bah, but they pull the ads anyway, because stupid or not, it's predictable?

 

 

 

(And make no mistake, I agree with you that we're dealing with fairly low levels of intelligence here. After all, they bought a Tesla  )

[Sauron]

1 minute ago, The Benjamins said:

It doesn't matter what its named, people will still get complacent and become to trusting of things which will cause accidents. Just like how many accidents happen now. nearly all distracted driving accidents is done by people that know its wrong and dangerous, but they think I got this, its not going to happen to me.

But then it won't be Tesla's fault - at least not due to misleading ads. I still think using paying customers as guinea pigs is insane; betas for something like this should lack features, not try to kill you.

3 minutes ago, The Benjamins said:

This engineer could of know it was a assisting system, but been using they system for a long time, figured it hasn't gone wrong yet, gave it to much trust and allowed it to drive with out supervision many times. (it was reported that he was use to letting it do its own thing)

So what? He felt a level of confidence that wasn't warranted and Tesla did nothing to dissuade him other than write a warning in the EULA.

4 minutes ago, The Benjamins said:

Bottom line is changing the name would not have save his life, or stop people from becoming complacent.

That's speculation, it doesn't change the fact that misleading advertisements make Tesla partly complicit in these accidents. Change that and nobody will be harping on their door over this anymore (though again, regardless of how clearly it's advertised Tesla can't just deploy potentially dangerous vehicles on a public road and entrust the full responsibility of what happens to the driver).

[Fasauceome]

Just now, SpaceGhostC2C said:

You all keep going back to the blame game. You just keep repeating "it's X's fault" if not worse, like it solves anything

This is a court case involving a lawsuit, the objective of the case is to settle the blame for some kind of compensation. While Tesla could technically choose a more suitable name, I don't believe they should be held responsible for user error. Early in the life cycle of Tesla autopilot, the case could be made that the instructions and outlined features of it were too obscure, but now that Tesla has rectified those issues, it's no longer their fault when problems like this happen.

[Curious Pineapple]

This is like people driving too fast and braking too late because most cars now have traction control, stability control and anti-lock brakes. Traction control does nothing until grip is lost, same with anti-lock brakes. Stability control again has no effect on the vehicle until wheels start to loose grip, at that point it applies the brakes on them wheels to help keep them from sliding. Do we blame manufacturers for these morons bad driving? After all, they are all features marketed towards avoiding loss of control, except when control is lost, it's major.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

1 minute ago, fasauceome said:

This is a court case involving a lawsuit, the objective of the case is to settle the blame for some kind of compensation. While Tesla could technically choose a more suitable name, I don't believe they should be held responsible for user error. Early in the life cycle of Tesla autopilot, the case could be made that the instructions and outlined features of it were too obscure, but now that Tesla has rectified those issues, it's no longer their fault when problems like this happen.

Sure, but I'm going a step earlier and asking how they got in this kind of lawsuits in the first place, regardless of whether they win or lose.

If a decision within my company triggers a predictable cascade of lawsuits, we may win them all, but still a few heads are going to roll. Unless, of course I chose to test the boundaries in the first place...

[Fasauceome]

8 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

Sure, but I'm going a step earlier and asking how they got in this kind of lawsuits in the first place, regardless of whether they win or lose.

If a decision within my company triggers a predictable cascade of lawsuits, we may win them all, but still a few heads are going to roll. Unless, of course I chose to test the boundaries in the first place...

Their prior lawsuits aren't a factor here, their autopilot has changed since they were last taken to court over it.

[RejZoR]

1 hour ago, The Benjamins said:

the car constantly requires input, or it will brake and put on the flashers. The users actively ignores the facts is not Tesla fault. If a pot of boiling water is sitting on a table with the sticker on it saying caution hot, the person not reading the label is not automatically absolved of responsibility if they get hurt by the water if they touch it due to them not reading it.

Remember the McDonald's hot coffee case? Because without a label HOT it's apparently not abundantly clear that freshly brewed coffee is HOT. Somehow.

[Blademaster91]

1 hour ago, The Benjamins said:

the car constantly requires input, or it will brake and put on the flashers. The users actively ignores the facts is not Tesla fault. If a pot of boiling water is sitting on a table with the sticker on it saying caution hot, the person not reading the label is not automatically absolved of responsibility if they get hurt by the water if they touch it due to them not reading it.

Yeah it requires hands to be on the wheel or looking forward often enough or else the assisted driving system turns off like most cars do with assisted driving systems so its just autonomous level 2 driving at best, except Tesla is marketing it as "autopilot" which to most users would imply it being automated driving. Tesla shouldn't be pushing an automated driving feature which clearly isn't ready for public road use especially when it puts peoples lives at risk.

[Curious Pineapple]

9 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Remember the McDonald's hot coffee case? Because without a label HOT it's apparently not abundantly clear that freshly brewed coffee is HOT. Somehow.

The USA seems to be swarming with utter morons. They call the UK a "nanny state" for our rather strict H&S laws, then sue for a lack of warning labels on chainsaws, coffee, hammers, explosives and god knows what else. When there are repeated warnings that something should or shouldn't be done, there's too many warnings and people ignore them, leading to a lawsuit over needing more warnings.

[Drak3]

13 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Remember the McDonald's hot coffee case? Because without a label HOT it's apparently not abundantly clear that freshly brewed coffee is HOT. Somehow.

It wasn't just because it wad hot. It was because it was hit enough to cause severe burns.

[Curious Pineapple]

2 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

It wasn't just because it wad hot. It was because it was hit enough to cause severe burns.

So is a coffee I make at home with, ya know, boiling water.

[Drak3]

Just now, Curious Pineapple said:

So is a coffee I make at home with, ya know, boiling water.

You're making it wrong if you can give someone 3rd degree burns from spilling a little of your coffee on them.

 

And they would be right to sue you.