Tesla's Autopilot system is in the spotlight at a Miami trial over a student killed while stargazing
Tesla's Autopilot system is in the spotlight at a Miami trial over a student killed while stargazing
A federal court in Miami began considering Monday whether Elon Musk's car company should share blame for the death of a stargazing university student after a runaway Tesla sent her flying 75 feet through the air and severely injured her boyfriend.
Lawyers for the plaintiff argue that Tesla’s driver-assistance feature called Autopilot should have warned the driver and braked when his Model S sedan blew through flashing red lights, a stop sign and a T-intersection at nearly 70 miles an hour in the April 2019 crash. Tesla lays the blame solely on the driver, who was reaching for a dropped cell phone.
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The driver, George McGee, was sued separately by the plaintiffs. That case was settled.
Good. Fuck that driver. Unless the "flashing red lights"; "a stop sign"; and a "T-intersection" were all on the same junction (or even if they weren't), scrambling for a poxy phone while you're propelling a tonne of metal at 70mph is a fucking disgraceful excuse.
That said, as much as I hate Musk, I can't really see if this case has any legs to be fair. FSD is always "coming next year" so it's little more than a driver aid rather than a driver substitute.
But yeah, fuck that guy.
Musk has intentionally been creating false expectations about the capabilities of these cars for years with the intent of increasing sales. Most people who buy them believe what he says and what they see, or think they see, in the ads. These people almost never read the manuals. If I were on the jury, I would surely have an open mind about finding Tesla liable depending on what else is revealed at trial.
I get ya but it apparently did not detect multiple very general traffic things that should be easy to detect. Im not sure they should be allowed to call anything autopilot if it can't stop at a red light or stop sign.
Im not sure they should be allowed to call anything autopilot if it can’t stop at a red light or stop sign.
...Or a school buy with flashing lights and stop arm out, and a child shaped/sized target running out in front of it, during various tests.
Wow, thanks. It's rare that I get to laugh along with Fox News rather than just laughing at it.
i mean half of the local news folk are drama kids says "aw fuck why do i gotta do journalism" but y'know
that to.
while you’re propelling a tonne of metal
The Model S weighs 2 tonnes in fact, or 2.2 US tons. Electric cars are insanely heavy, so much so that existing traffic safety items like guard rails aren't really designed to handle the heavier ones.
Not sharing to be Pedantic Internet User, just mind-boggling how heavy those things are.
Guard rails can’t handle two tons?
Pickup up trucks weigh between 4 and 6 tons.
It was just an overblown article trying to fear monger. A guard rail can't handle a direct, perpendicular impact from something that heavy at a high rate of speed, but most guard rails are parallel to the road and only see glancing blows from EVs, ICE vehicles, and semis.
Ahh got it!
yeah nah absolutely happy for the correction!
Fuck me, two tonnes? I bought myself an EV a few months back in an estate shape to replace my diesel estate, and honestly I hadn't noticed much of a difference. I assume the drivetrains are a bit lighter but the batteries are a lot heavier than a tank full of dino juice.
They have all that weight from the battery, but they can carry it very low in the body of the car. That combined with the great low-end torque of electric motors can make them feel a lot more nimble than an ICE car sandbagged to the same weight.
Actually, this is one of the arguments for discouraging EV mass adoption in favor of wider public transit options. More heavy vehicles like this seriously increases wear and tear on roadways, and more importantly BRIDGES. If most of your bridge traffic now weighs double what it did when you threw the thing up in the 80s, that's going to be an issue for your stress calculations.
I believe the Hummer EV is around 9,000lbs.
We were just at Pearl Harbor and the submarine on display there had batteries weighing in at 450,000lbs and that only propelled it for ~100 miles depending on the speed. The diesel engines could propel it for 18,000 miles before refueling. This was of course 1940s technology.
It could have been a single intersection. The article has no useful info. Somehow, the car entered a space where people were standing/laying still stargazing, so, presumably, not the middle of the road. I have definitely seen some more rural areas use both a stop sign and a flashing red light overhead. Sometimes an all-way stop, sometimes one road has a flashing yellow to take the right of way. A leg of a tee would almost definitely get the red/stop while the crossroad could get either, if any sense was used in traffic planning. Leaving the tee via the nonexistent leg could certainly risk a car entering a people space.
Regardless, they are still 3+ separate items that should not have been missed, as you stated. A stop sign, a flashing red light, and leaving the road should all be condemnable as each is a normal circumstance. I'd agree, the speed limit likely did not allow 70mph, either
Fuck that driver indeed. 70 mph on a road with flashing reds and a stop sign? On a rural road near Key West? I can only assume "rural road" implies not US-1, and while I haven't driven the area outside of US-1, I can't imagine there's too many roads with speed limits over 45.
The limit on US-1 itself is 45. On rural roads chances are it's 25. And it says the driver didn't just hit the girl and send her flying, but hit her vehicle which spun it hard enough so that HER car is what hit her and sent her flying!
Fuck that driver indeed, indeed.