[HomeGear]

Here’s an important part:

>Riad had initially set his car’s speed to 77 mph; he then set it to 78 mph, and then finally changed the speed to 75 mph. At the time of the crash, the car was going approximately 74 mph.

For me, I’d convict. This isn’t a case of ‘autopilot’ as much as it’s a case where a person purposely (with intent) set his speed above legal limits and did not maintain the attention while doing so.. causing the death of two individuals on their first date.

Tragic.

[danso]

> ...and did not maintain the attention while doing so

IANAL, but exceeding the speed limit wouldn't be enough for a prosecutor to want to prove felony vehicular manslaughter. Even when DUI is involved, juries can still decide that the driver tragically f-cked up, e.g. underestimated how drunk they were, but not in a "grossly negligent" way. Even though virtually everyone knows that drunk driving is illegal.

But how many potential jury members know or believe that violating the fine print of using Autopilot is illegal or wrong? Or that a Tesla owner should be convicted of a felony because they "obviously" should have known better? I'd assume far fewer in a jury pool have strong knowledge and opinions on Autopilot versus drinking-while-driving.

[phkahler]

Just replace the term "autopilot" with "cruise control" because that's all it really is with a bit of lane keeping added. Now does it seem reasonable for someone to set that to 75mph in a 45mph zone? was it 45 or less?

[danso]

The article says the driver on a freeway, and had set Autopilot 20 minutes prior to the crash. Obviously there would've been a speed zone before the traffic light intersection, but presumably the speed limit was 65+ at the time the driver set Autopilot.

Is it understandable for you to set your traditional cruise control at 75mph and not expect things to change for 20+ minutes? I don't think so — I wouldn't trust CC to keep me on the road for more than 2 minutes without my direct guidance. Is it understandable that you might trust Autopilot to handle the road for 2o minutes, because you were confused or misled by Autopilot's capabilities? That feels like a substantively different question.

[LegitShady]

>Is it understandable that you might trust Autopilot to handle the road for 2o minutes, because you were confused or misled by Autopilot's capabilities? That feels like a substantively different question.

If you program a robot to commit an illegal act and someone dies, is it the robot manufacturer's fault?

[ghaff]

Of course, there's at least some question of what gets presented to a jury. The defense will presumably try to make this at least in part a question of "confusion" about the car's capabilities. However, I'd expect the prosecution to make a case for that all being irrelevant just as it would be for regular cruise control.

[vineyardmike]

> However, I'd expect the prosecution to make a case for that all being irrelevant just as it would be for regular cruise control.

I can imagine this being a major issue in this case. Elon isn’t known for keeping his mouth shut, especially when it comes to bragging about Tesla. I can imagine that his statements and Tesla marketing being compared to the fine print on Autopilot. Or worse, he tweets counter points live.

Especially complex if Tesla gets involved further as part of data discovery.

[sandworm101]

Exactly. Most of the legal issues here were actually hashed out decades ago as courts addressed cruise control. Yes, the machine was running the throttle for you, but you are still responsible for instructions given to the machine. You are responsible for speeding and you are responsible if that speeding leads to accidents even though your foot was not actually on the accelerator.

[mleo]

He was on a freeway when it was set, but still above since the speed is 65. The freeway transitions into a surface street and this seemingly occurred at the first light after the transition.

[shadowgovt]

Exactly. And from a systems standpoint, if we're blaming the autopilot we should also consider how much blame should be allocated to the traffic engineer that clubbed a 65MPH California freeway directly into a 45MPH local business street with no traffic-calming measures or other mechanism to signal to a sleepy human brain that the rules of the road had changed besides a lone speed limit sign and a "Good luck sport!" attitude. It'd be interesting to pull history on that first stoplight and see how many accidents have occurred there in the past five years.

(It turns out that's possible. California provides a GIS data digest of fatal accidents maintained by UC Berkeley. Data collection ends at 2021, but the 2016-2021 data set shows 22 crashes coming up on that intersection. https://tims.berkeley.edu/tools/gismap/).

Or we could limit the assignation of blame to the individual who is solely responsible for controlling his multi-ton high-speed vehicle at all times when operating in public thoroughfares.

[Timshel]

There is multiple warnings that the highway will stop starting 1mile before, but the only speed change I could find was less than 50m from the intersection : https://www.google.com/maps/@33.8728257,-118.2900246,3a,75y,...

[jdmichal]

There's two signs before that notifying of both the upcoming speed change and the traffic signal:

https://www.google.com/maps/@33.8729084,-118.2881048,3a,75y,...

I'm also extremely surprised that there's a 20 mph drop. While it's only a recommendation, the Uniform Vehicle Code and Model Traffic Ordinance suggests never changing the speed more than 10 mph at a time, and having no more than six such changes in a mile.

See page 28 of this PDF, as I was looking for this information specifically in relation to the Florida DOT, which does a pretty good job of following this rule:

https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/speedmgt/ref_mats/fhwasa1304/res...

[mikeryan]

how much blame should be allocated to the traffic engineer that clubbed a 65MPH California freeway directly into a 45MPH local business street with no traffic-calming measures or other mechanism to signal to a sleepy human brain that the rules of the road had changed besides a lone speed limit sign and a "Good luck sport!" attitude.

None. The answer to how much culpability the traffic engineer should have is "none". Freeways end that's what they do and there's no expectation that they won't have a light, or a traffic jam or a deer or some other obstacle in front of you that you'll have to stop for. Lights crossing two-lane highways happen all the time outside of urban areas.

Drivers are, appropriately supposed to be alert enough to see a red light up ahead. Of the twenty-two accidents you cited how many do you think would have been prevented with more signs?

For that matter it's not the autopilot's fault either its the fault of the idiot driving (or not driving as it were).

[shadowgovt]

I agree with your thinking; invoking the responsibility of the highway engineer was intended as a counter-example.

And when you dig into the five-year numbers, you find that while 22 is quite a bit, there have been more on the straightaway highways north-southbound east of the intersection and on the cloverleafs (If I were to hazard a wild-ass guess, based on California driving experience: driver going highway speed failing to realize traffic came to a standstill on the highway due to back-pressure of people exiting the cloverleaf at rush-hour).

[pmoriarty]

"we should also consider how much blame should be allocated to the traffic engineer"

Has a traffic engineer ever been held legally responsible for accidents that result from their design?

[vineyardmike]

In a “simple” case of a road that causes crashes? Probably. Theoretically, they can held liable, but this is a pretty “small” issue to bring a suit.

In this sense the term “engineer” is someone that requires a license and training (like MDs or lawyers). States require engineers to “stamp” designs that they are taking responsibility for. Sometimes “city planners” LARP as (unlicensed) civil engineers and make designs that get built, which is somewhat problematic but happens.

Stamping and signing off on a design means legally accepting liability. How often they get prosecuted is rare. One famous example is Boston’s Big Dig fatal tunnel collapse. Of course politics and money had a big role in that case.

[supportlocal4h]

Indeed, these machines are crazy dangerous. They should require operators to be trained and licensed.

[nradov]

You can just check the Transportation Injury Mapping System (TIMS) to pull the history of serious crashes at any location in California.

https://tims.berkeley.edu/

[zip1234]

And Tesla should not allow setting autopilot above the speed limit...

[shadowgovt]

Successfully executing on that design requires way more global data than the autopilot system alone requires.

... which is not to say they shouldn't do it. In fact, in the 21st century with ubiquitous communication we could even consider mandating that of all cruise controls. But if we were to codify that into law, we'd want a data source a touch more reliable than whatever Google, Apple, an Waze have cooked up as the speed limits on each road in the map (since those limits are currently at the safety threshold of "advisory to estimate travel times," not "someone could die if these numbers are wrong").

[zip1234]

I don't understand why limiting the upper bound of speed when a user is using autopilot would be difficult at all? These cars can already recognize speed limit signs and have settings for 'how much over the speed limit do you want to be'.

[shadowgovt]

> These cars can already recognize speed limit signs

Do you mean they're actually reading the signs as they pass on the road, or they have a map associating the current position on the road to a speed limit for that road?

If the former, the cutting edge of that technology I'm aware of isn't good enough to trust it to a safety system. And that's before we factor in added risks like "speed limit sign was obscured by a passing truck while the car drove past it so the car maintained speed."

If the latter, that's possible but it's not where Tesla is right now. Tesla doesn't own its maps, it's trusting Google, which doesn't certify the speed limits are correct enough in its map data to wire a safety system to that output.

[Jerrrry]

bullshit

all the maps have built in speedometers with an alarming red rectangle when you are speeding.

the data for what the speed limit is is generally public, or very obviously derivable from principles-first, common sense engineering

autopilot has more than enough data to know its not on a freeway, and shouldn't be doing 60mph+ between nodes on a graph

[sigstoat]

> or very obviously derivable from principles-first, common sense engineering

do you actually drive in the US?

there's no shortage of stretches of perfectly straight road where the speed limit drops for no apparent reason.

[shadowgovt]

> all the maps have built in speedometers with an alarming red rectangle when you are speeding

By "all the maps," do you mean "Apple, Google, and Waze?" If so, see my previous statement; they're offering a driver-assist, but they're not ultimately responsible for your safety so their data doesn't need to be fully accurate. Tesla is pulling its data for the in-car map from Google. Nobody is going to try and sue Google if they're in a crash because "the little red box that tells me I'm speeding didn't show up, Your Honor." And Google has made clear that it indemnifies itself from such liability in provision of the map data (i.e. "You're holding it wrong" if you wire Google's idea of what speed limits are directly into the control plane a life-or-death machine).

So Tesla would have to take ownership of that problem directly... Put its own fleet of cars on the road to drive around and photograph speed limits. They could actually hypothetically do that given the cameras on the Teslas if they push data from the driver back to HQ. What's the data licensing agreement look like on owning a Tesla? Does it already grant Tesla that privilege by virtue of someone owning their car?

> the data for what the speed limit is is generally public, or very obviously derivable from principles-first, common sense engineering

Public, yes, but must be consolidated, validated, and kept up-to-date. And the principles-first "common sense engineering" does not describe how America's roads are actually labeled and structured, sadly.

> autopilot has more than enough data to know its not on a freeway

Does it? I don't think Autopilot has any concept of what road it's on; it's not consolidated with the Tesla's navigation map. It's viewing the road directly and looking for local lane markers and obstacles.

Such a consolidation with the global data to understand current speed limit would imply new design safety constraints for both the Autopilot and the onboard map systems.

[michaelmrose]

Consumer gps doesn't always know which road one is on and could trivially decide to use an adjacent street with a wildly different speed.

It's also sometimes unclear about where transitions happen.

It also never accounts for actual speed of travel diverging substantially because citizens including Police have collectively decided that a different speed is more reasonable.

Basically such a system would probably be completely useless enough to ruin all cruise control.

[supportlocal4h]

My onboard map doesn't have red rectangles when speeding. And the little speed limit overlay is wrong at least 25% of the time.

[KerrAvon]

- they’d never sell another car in California - why isn’t it smart enough to slow down to safe speeds on its own?

[pmoriarty]

"Tesla should not allow setting autopilot above the speed limit"

This is likely where we're headed... especially with fully autonomous vehicles.

It'll probably still be possible to hack them to go any speed you want, though... and certain cars like emergency and military vehicles will have no limit.

[ericd]

Until driving behavioral norms change significantly nationwide, yeah no.

[zip1234]

What would the reasoning be for this? Trucks are already limited in this regard and it doesn't cause catastrophe. Why should a company be allowed to knowingly break the law?

[dahfizz]

> Why should a company be allowed to knowingly break the law?

That's an extremely strong assertion. Do you believe all car makers are breaking the law by making cars that can drive 80+ mph? By having cruise control that can be set at 80+mph?

[ericd]

Why do you think this is the company breaking the law? It does what the driver tells it to do, the driver is fully in control of the speed it goes.

I can't speak to what trucks do, but those are commercial vehicles, and have very different performance characteristics from cars.

[jnwatson]

The latest BMWs have a feature where you can have the cruise control speed automatically adjusted to be the current speed limit.

In the US, that is an almost universally useless feature. Standard freeway speed is 10 over the limit.

[ghaff]

>Standard freeway speed is 10 over the limit.

It really depends. In my experience in the Northeast, when speed limits are 70-75 mph in more rural locations, I don't see most cars traveling at 85.

[jazzyjackson]

> traffic-calming measures

like a stop light?

[shadowgovt]

No, precisely not. A stop-light as a traffic-calming measure is like "calming" traffic via an invisible wall-of-death that is sometimes present and sometimes not. It requires more higher-level thinking of the driver, not less.

The purpose of a traffic calming measure is to force slower driving via involuntary driver behavior or physics. Things like painting obstacle-like objects in the road to startle unattentive drivers, rumble strips, unnecessary curvature onto soft embankments so failure to make the turn doesn't risk injury, unnecessary narrowing of the road via cones or soft baffles (because people will subconsciously drive slower when they feel like their vehicle is inches from a barrier).

A common mis-design of highways is to assume traffic lights are sufficient for that purpose, and the result is creation of a high-crash location.

[MBCook]

I wondered why he was going so fast on a surface street. That makes more sense. Thanks for the context.

[banannaise]

Speed limits in the United States are generally set such that, unless there is heavy traffic, nearly everyone is speeding. Using that as a pretext for charges is generally questionable.

(He was going 75 on a freeway; the freeway suddenly became a surface street, which is bad design, regardless of whether he should have been paying more attention.)

[pmoriarty]

"Speed limits in the United States are generally set such that, unless there is heavy traffic, nearly everyone is speeding"

Not only that, but you can get a ticket for going too slow.

You also usually get tailgated if you're not driving over the speed limit -- just like everybody else.

[ghaff]

You'll only get ticketed unless you're going really slow for no good reason. But in general if you're poking along even in the right lane at 10mph under the speed limit and below the flow of traffic you're basically causing a whole lot of lane changes as everyone tries to flow around you.

One of the reasons I hardly ever use conventional cruise control is it makes you drive in a way that minimizes speed changes rather than doing what makes sense in the context of other traffic.

[sva_]

Isn't 74 a pretty normal speed to drive on a highway? (Only drove there once)

It sounds to me like he was coming off the highway and didn't notice that he was leaving into an intersection with a red traffic light, where the accident occured. Not that I'm saying it is okay for him to not have noticed it.

> Riad was driving on the 91 freeway, heading west into Gardena. The freeway empties out into Artesia Boulevard at Vermont, but Riad, seemingly unaware of that transition, did not appear to react — and neither did his Tesla.

[judge2020]

> He argued that Riad’s actions — driving 74 mph on a surface street — did not rise to “gross negligence” and should not be considered a felony.

Surface street apparently. Maybe a 45/50/55mph zone.

[sva_]

Is the highway exit not a surface street?

[Dylan16807]

It was a highway.

[judge2020]

To add, this must _just_ be adaptive cruise and not autosteer since autosteer (referred to as 'autopilot') explicitly won't drive more than 5 mph over the limit except on highways.

[_ea1k]

Its hard to say for sure. Some non-highways somehow get classified as highways and don't get restricted.