Tesla driver who killed 2 people while using autopilot must pay $23,000 in restitution without having to serve any jail time
Tesla driver who killed 2 people while using autopilot must pay $23,000 in restitution without having to serve any jail time
The guy was going through a suburb at 75 mph blowing through stop lights. Ofcourse he has to pay, im surprised hes not getting jail time. This has nothing to do with the car, thats just gross negligence
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I wonder if Tesla had this section of road mapped as freeway. Especially since it rolled through a red.
"Suburb" in LA is a very loose term
I would think that the guy is just lying, but Tesla would call that out REAL quick.
That is unfortunately a configurable option.
My interpretation of the title is "only has to pay...". 23K is nothing.
2 murders, 23 grand. The mafia charge more.
If you wanna kill somebody, use a car.
The $11,500 "murder" add-on
Involuntary manslaughter ≠ murder
Wow the value of a life I guess. I don’t really know what can come close to the value of a life, but this doesn’t seem like it.
What would be the value of life then? I’ll save you the answer: no matter how big the number you say, someone else will say bigger. Until it becomes priceless, which is the answer.
However death and accidental death isn’t always avoidable. And when we pin the fault on someone we cannot expect to say “priceless” is what they owe the victim’s family. So we assign an amount of money or time that hurts, and call it good.
Doesn’t mean life is worth that. And saying so doesn’t help anyone.
Sure but even looking a only the financial produce of one person for a family dwarfs the comical 23k here. And that’s not even looking at the emotional side of things. 23k is straight insulting imho.
The U.S. uses the value of statistical life VSL. Here are the numbers from the Department of Transportation over the last 10 years or so.
So, it is interesting and egregious that the driver needs only pay $23K and Tesla pays nothing at all!
True. But what if Tesla has to pay a billion for producing software that runs people over? They probably would not have beta software on the road.
That was the penalty for the felony charge for the driver of the car that ran off the highway into a surface street. It's almost certain that drivers insurance also paid out their maximum.
In addition, Tesla is recalling all those cars to change the system that pretends to ensure a driver using autopilot is actually paying attention.
And a civil suit will likely follow from the 2 victims families.
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That is just the fine, the families are suing the driver and Tesla. Here’s hoping the Tesla suit gives them the real prize: the death of a company.
(I know it won’t happen but a guy can dream.)
If you want to kill someone in the US with little consequences, run them over with a car.
Germany the same. Small fine, three month without license, that's it for killing a human being.
If we're talking about an honest accident then how long do you think the jail term should be?
Holy shit, really? Never looked into it but judging by how people drive here (lots of people on their phones while driving, missing red lights all the time) it certainly doesn’t seem like there are severe consequences for any wrongdoings.
For fuck's sake I doubt if that would cover funeral expenses.
It won't even fix their car.
Anyone else tired of beta testing Tesla’s garbage just by being outside on the roads near these vehicles?
Human beings controlling cars are extremely dangerous. Drunk drivers, racing, going through red lights and stops, speeding, not paying attention, etc. No need for autopilot for the streets to be dangerous for pedestrians. Autopilot keeps the car in line, which is already way safer than most 100% human-controlled accidents.
And again, the driver is responsible to keep their eyes on the road, even when using cruise-control or any sort of driving assistance.
There's this saying about how if something is punishable by a fine, then it's only illegal for poor people.
I don't even have to finish this do I
I love this
There’s a joke that if you want to murder someone in America, make sure you do it in a car. Our courts are specifically tailored to avoid penalizing drivers for “accidentally” killing people.
Civil suit. He's already been proven guilty
Fines = legal for a price.
Same as it ever was Kill a Pedestrian, Pay a $500 Fine
Come join the war on cars. !fuckcars@lemmy.world
the problem here is the law. there should be actual consequences, not fines. jail time for murder.
Part of the reason why you don’t lose your license for killing someone with a car in the US is because it’s much more of a ‘punishment’ because of how car dependent the US is.
Also, keep in mind a lot of trips are 3 miles or less in the US, and most drive it, despite wanting alternatives to driving.
If someone is trying to get from A to B in a 2 mile trip and the government basically mandates people to drive that, can you really blame them if they end up killing someone accidentally? What if they accidentally kill themselves smashing into a tree? You might assign some of the blame to their driving, but would that solve anything in the long term? a large part of the blame should be assigned to this insane transportation system we’ve built where everyone needs to drive 2 miles to pick up a bag of milk.
TLDR prevention, not blame will reduce traffic violence.
You honor, I actually didn't wack anyone with this self actuating axe. I bought it and I told it to go chop wood. The people just happened to be too close to the axe. Yeah I was holding the axe but I wasn't actually putting any pressure. The tail was wagging the dog in other words.
Ok so $10,000.00. Fine? Oh alright I guess that'll teach me not to buy autonomous axes.
uh is that it?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A Tesla driver will pay more than $23,000 in restitution for the deaths of two people during a 2019 car crash in a Los Angeles suburb, a decision announced the same day that the automaker recalled nearly all vehicles sold in the U.S.
Wednesday’s court hearing wrapped up a case believed to be the first time in the U.S. prosecutors brought felony charges against a motorist who was using a partially automated driving system.
The recall affects more than 2 million Tesla vehicles and will update software and fix a defective system that’s supposed to ensure drivers are paying attention when using Autopilot.
The Tesla driver in the Los Angeles case, Kevin Aziz Riad, pleaded no contest to two counts of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence.
Authorities say Aziz Riad, a limousine service driver, was at the wheel of a Tesla Model S that was moving at 74 mph (119 kph) when it left a freeway and ran a red light on a local street in Gardena, California, on Dec. 29, 2019.
The Tesla, which was using Autopilot at the time, struck a Honda Civic at an intersection, and the car’s occupants, Gilberto Alcazar Lopez and Maria Guadalupe Nieves-Lopez, died at the scene.
The original article contains 364 words, the summary contains 198 words. Saved 46%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Why so low penalties? Were the victims black or brown?
the car’s occupants, Gilberto Alcazar Lopez and Maria Guadalupe Nieves-Lopez, died at the scene.
Yeaaaaaah…
oh, it is another crash...
the driver was really a victim of the tesla/uber experiment. first - someone in tesla or uber decided to turn off the emergency brake assistent because it was giving out what they considered too many false positive alarms. the car at the moment of the accident knew about the pedestrian and tracked him, but the emergency brake which should have engaged was turned off. and then the driver was thrown under the bus by uber.
it is really hard to pay attention as a driver when there is really nothing to pay attention to. hard to blame the driver.
Do you think higher penalties would make people less prone for accidents?
When the accident is caused by a blatant lack of paying attention, I believe it would. Not paying attention, causing death of someone? 2 years in jail. You're responsible of what you do.
What do you consider an appropriate fine for someone who's using a product in the manner approved by laws and the manufacturer when the product malfunctions and kills someone?
They're not using the product in the manner approved by the manufacturer at all. Driver is 100% responsible in this case and 23k is an absolute insult to the victims and the judicial system.
We are missing some info regarding why the penalty was so low, though. With the details from the article, the sentence doesn't make any sense.
Oh come on, only two people?
The real crime is marketing the driver assist capability under the name autopilot when it is anything but that.
Oh no, it's even worse than that.
It's the CEO and other staff repeatedly speaking of the system as if it's basically fully capable and it's only for legal reasons why a driver is even required. Even saying that the car could drive from one side of the US to the other without driver interaction (only to not actually do that, of course).
It's the company never correcting people when they call it a self driving system.
It's the company saying they're ready for autonomous taxis and saying owner's cars will make money for them while they aren't driving it.
It's calling their software subscription Full Self Driving
It's honestly staggering to me that they're able to get away with this shit.
I love my Model 3, but everything you said is spot on. Autopilot is a great driver assist, but it is nowhere near autonomous driving. I was using it on the highway and was passing a truck on the left. The road veered left and the truck did as well, keeping in its lane the entire time. The car interpreted this as the truck merging over into my lane and slammed the brakes. Fortunately, I was able to figure out what went wrong and quickly accelerated myself so as to not become a hazard to the cars behind me.
Using Autopilot as anything more than a nice dynamic cruise control setting is putting your life, and other lives, in danger.
I think the real crime is vehicular manslaughter, especially the SECOND one.
Tesla should be playing wrongful death suits every time autopilot kills someone. Their excuses don't excuse the blatant marketing that leads people to believe it's a self driving car.
But you see that wasn't the vehicle's fault. It's been programmed perfectly. What happened was the fault of the pedestrians and driver for not properly predicting what the car would do.
maybe /s maybe not.
Do we need to go through what autopilot in a plane or boat actually does again?
If we do, then they shouldn't have picked a name that most people think does something it doesn't.
What does full self driving mean ?
do we need to go through the differences in training, aptitude and intelligence between pilots, captains and your neighbor Greg again? Marketing it as "autopilot" to anyone who can sign a car loan is reckless and has killed people and will continue to kill people until they stop
Depends entirely on the type of autopilot.
It's a common misunderstanding that an autopilot system in an airplane does everything or even a lot of things. The most basic ones keep the wings level and nothing else. Of course Tesla is probably counting on that misconception to sell this feature, but actual pilots using any kind of autopilot are still on the hook to pay attention 100% of the time.
In an airplane that is fine as pilots are specifically trained on the planes they fly (at least in theory). No one gets a special course in how to drive a specific (non industrial) car...
Way to ignore the death of two people, and hijack the discussion for your own opinions. Good job /s