Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by JohnFen 939 days ago
You say this as if it were fact, when it's really speculation of a possible future. Not unfounded speculation, but speculation nonetheless.

In the meantime, in the here and now, these things are obviously hazardous and shouldn't be on the public roads. Even if they would lead to a better future, no company has the right to endanger unconsenting others now to accomplish it.

1 comments

If they are shown to be endangering people you have a point. If some drunk asshole plows into someone on autopilot I don't put that on Tesla.

No one even bats an eye when this happens on cruise control, and no the name autopilot doesn't make people think it's okay to be inattentive while driving. I have a Tesla and the number of nags warnings beeps admonishments you get is more than enough to let you know to pay attention.

>If some drunk asshole plows into someone on autopilot I don't put that on Tesla.

Is that what happened here? No

Some guy drove into the side of a truck. Tesla is highly aware that the system is not perfect, that's why it nags you, beeps and flashes at you, kicks you off autopilot for repeatedly ignoring warnings AND makes you acknowledge that if you use it you are completely liable for any crashes.

If I drove into the side of a truck I would not blame my car.

You could easily extend the line of thinking in this article to all cars. All companies are aware their designs are flawed, but they let people use their cars anyway.

He didn't drive into the truck, Autopilot did.

> AND makes you acknowledge that if you use it you are completely liable for any crashes

This is just Tesla's deficient legal wrangling - it's certainly not a good point for you to stand on. Tesla is a product manufacturer and cannot waive away their liability for selling a defective product, nor gross negligence.

Nah. It's either autopilot or ot's not. You cannoy take the credit when it works and blame the driver when it fails. That's not how life works and how self driving cars should work. It's not self-driving and the stupid deceptive marketing makes it hard for legit tech to actually get adopted.
If a drunk asshole plows into someone, the drunk asshole is responsible. Period.

If a "self-driving" car plows into someone who is responsible?

I'm not sure that's true. Even if the cops show up and give someone a DUI, I'd imagine civil courts would still do a proximate cause analysis in a negligence case.

>If a "self-driving" car plows into someone who is responsible?

If the car was driving itself, then I'd think the manufacturer of the self-driving feature would be. I still think there would be a proximate cause analysis in this situation too.