The police reported that the Model 3 “failed to drive in a single lane, left the roadway and struck the residence” at a “high rate of speed.” The crash involved a woman, Martha Avila, who was inside the house. She was transported to a local hospital where she was pronounced dead “due to injuries she sustained from the crash,” police said. The police release said there were “no signs of intoxication” from the driver, who was also cooperative during the investigation.
Okay let’s be clear that I fuckin hate AI but this still seems like user error rather than the car’s autopilot killing someone? Like… you can still slam the brakes even if you’re in autopilot mode. It’s basically souped up cruise control.
Again, I hate AI passionately, but let’s try to use our higher reasoning too, or else we’re no better than the assholes who ask ChatGPT for relationship advice and basic math
I agree with you, but I think both Tesla and the “driver” should be liable. Tesla should be liable for how they market their vehicles “self driving” features. The driver for not making a reasonable attempt to prevent an accident.
Tesla has turned off their self driving right before crashes to avoid liability.
Im not saying that’s what happened here but they have done this before.
I hadn’t heard this specifically, but I am interested if you’ve got a link?
https://futurism.com/tesla-nhtsa-autopilot-report
https://electrek.co/2025/03/17/tesla-fans-exposes-shadiness-defend-autopilot-crash/
I’ll have a look. Thank you!
Tesla was also recently caught fudging the safety data in order to be approved in Europe. Chances are they’ve done this everywhere.
Yeah I saw the article about that. I factored it into my belief that Tesla is at least partially liable but I also couldn’t remember granular details. Thanks for bringing it up.
The driver must be the one responsible, right? Otherwise it would need to be the manufacturer, I would imagine.
Really, we need to stop letting them diffuse the responsibility so much that nobody is held accountable. When we force somebody to put their name to this I bet people will suddenly stop believing in it so much.
Depends on jurisdiction. In the States, some States allow more than one party to be liable. But others are single liability States.
But basically, if you market a product as being able to do specific tasks and the person using the product uses it that way, and it kills someone or harms them, I think it comes down to who is the person or entity who’s actions directly lead to the event/could have been forseen to lead to such an event. Tesla has a lot of data on their vehicles and every day there seems to be a new report about what they knew about the safety of the “self driving” features. Specifically things like repainting the lines on roadways to get the results they wanted and potentially fabricating data or modifying it to present their vehicles as having specific capabilities. But that doesn’t mean the driver is off the hook.
So for instance the person behind the wheel could argue that they didn’t know that the vehicle could act on its own to leave the roadway and crash into a home because it’s marketed to have safety features to prevent or mitigate a collision. And the court would have to decide if they indeed had time to slam on the brakes or take over the wheel. If they did have time and they didn’t do anything to try to prevent the crash they are definitely on the hook.
I hear that. I think Tesla’s “self driving car” bullshit needs to stop until we have actual self-driving vehicles… but then, I don’t want self driving cars, I want public transport that functions so that we don’t need or want self driving cars
It’s musk’s MO he lies about what he’s selling.
Look at space X stock ge comically overvalued his company and said it’s not a rocket company anymore it’s an AI company.
He lies and should be in jail.
The funny thing is what their end goal is is too have self driving taxies so most people won’t actually own the vehicle.
Public transportation ( if it’s good) solves this and it’s better for the environment.
I think it’s China that’s experimenting with Smart cars all talking to each other so if one stops suddenly or hits a hazard they all stop at the same time.
Basically they are all linked together.
That’s what I always imagined when the idea of self-driving cars first came up - y’know, something to prevent 50 car pile-ups, that sort of thing. Not this BS :/ Now I just want a better bus system and less cars so there can be more bikes.
Watch the video. The car was FLYING. The problem with 500hp high torque EVs is if things go wrong, they can slam you back in the seat and in a second, it’s all over.
I drive a Rivian and jfc it’s so fast especially for how big it is. People who don’t drive EVs do not understand the torque and speeds and play.
You don’t get to say your car has self driving, full or otherwise, if it can fuck up so hard that it crashes into someone’s house and kills a person who wasn’t even on the fucking road.
Yeah absolutely. It’s not self driving and they shouldn’t make people think it’s self driving. Fuck Tesla
It’s Schrodinger’s self-driving car. When it drives well, it’s full self driving, when it crashes, it’s suddenly assisted self driving