US opens Tesla probe after more crashes involving its "full self-driving"

Re:US opens Tesla probe after more crashes involving its "fu... by bryanlarsen on Thursday October 09, 2025 @11:07AM (#45528770)

Your liability is covered by your insurance company. And it costs you on the order of $1000 a year for that privilege.

If the self-driving car company takes on that liability it'll save you the $1000/year. So assume they're either going to charge you an extra $10K up front or an extra $1000/year. For that kind of cash they should be quite willing to take on the risk or they can find an insurance company to do so, if their car is actually safer than an average driver.

This should work in most countries. Perhaps not the US with its pattern of massive punitive damage awards.

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Re:US opens Tesla probe after more crashes involving its "fu... by afavour on Thursday October 09, 2025 @11:18AM (#45528903)

Right, but the companies still aren't going to if they don't have to. Otherwise Tesla would be doing it today.

OP said:

> self driving will be statistically significantly better than human drivers, but because it isn't perfect we won't allow it anyway.

My contention is that it's not that everyone is a luddite, it's that while companies are legally allowed to provide quasi-self driving they have no liability for they will do exactly that. And that is what will hold us back.

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Re:US opens Tesla probe after more crashes involving its "fu... by bryanlarsen on Thursday October 09, 2025 @11:25AM (#45529023)

1. Tesla has been found liable in one case, there will be many more. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/tesla-autopilot-crash-t...

2. There's $1000/year of potential revenue they're missing out on by not assuming liability. That's a pretty powerful incentive.

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