Re:Tesla hacker reveals what driver-facing camera is looking...
by dragonwriter on Monday October 05, 2020 @09:58PM
(#24694091)
> The driver is always truly at fault in the current legal environment.
That's...not entirely and exclusively true.
> A driver can't just blame it on the car to escape liability.
If it was provably due to a manufacturing defect that the driver could not reasonably have known about, I think you are wrong.
If a manufacturing defect is involved, then whether or not the driver is also liable, the manufacturer and every party in the chain of commerce (both upstream—such as suppliers of the defective component—and downstream from the vehicle manufacturer, such as dealers, etc., which are mostly irrelevant for Tesla) is liable.
Re:Tesla hacker reveals what driver-facing camera is looking...
by slg on Monday October 05, 2020 @10:24PM
(#24694211)
You are right about the exception of a defective product. I should have included that disclaimer in my original comment. However defective is an important qualifier. Autopilot is not designed to be the primary driver of the car. A Tesla on Autopilot rear-ending another driver is no more defective than any other car on cruise control rear-ending someone. Autopilot would likely need to overrule human action to be considered defective. I was assuming that is an unlikely enough case to avoid mentioning it. Even if that did occur, that would be evident in other logs the car keeps so this attention monitor wouldn't be relevant.
The driver is always truly at fault in the current legal environment. A driver can't just blame it on the car to escape liability. The comments here talking about the legal ramifications for these tags are misguided. For these tags to matter, there would need to be legislative changes to shift the liability to the autonomous system and that would likely only happen once we reach at least level 4 autonomy. Plus once we get to that point, whether the driver is paying attention or not shouldn't matter anyway.