Tesla braces for its first trial involving Autopilot fatality::Tesla Inc is set to defend itself for the first time at trial against allegations that failure of its Autopilot driver assistant feature led to death, in what will likely be a major test of Chief Executive Elon Musk’s assertions about the technology.
Which is exactly what this case is claiming, that the software is defective.
And what happens when we progress beyond Level 2 or 3 automation? Then the car is making choices for the driver, choices the driver may not have any say in or realistically be capable of reacting to in an emergency?
Deferring responsibility to the driver under any scenario is a cop-out. We have a long history of engineering qualifications and regulations to ensure safety of the populace, engineers and architects design structures to be safe, plumbers have to plumb to code, heck even cars themselves have a mile long list of compliance requirements. All to ensure the thing that companies build aren’t killing the population, and when they do someone is responsible.
Yet as soon as we start talking about software, “not my problem dawg.”.
This is a guy who was using a glorified cruise control (which is all AP is) at high speed whilst watching a DVD instead of looking at the road.
The software can only help so much. There’s a reason why there are laws requiring attentiveness checks now… people are reckless
People are only reckless because they believe Teslas false marketing claims.
The car doesn’t “just drive itself”, it isn’t even close to “just driving itself”. The advertising claiming so is much more at fault than the driving watching a movie.