Comment on Tesla loses Autopilot wrongful death case in $329 million verdict
TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today 3 weeks agoI feel like calling it AutoPilot is already risking liability, Full Self Driving is just audacious. There’s a reason other companies with similar technology have gone with things like driving assistance. This has probably had lawyers at Tesla sweating bullets for years.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
From an aviation point of view, Autopilot is pretty accurate to the original aviation reference. The original aviation autopilot released in 1912 for aircraft would simply hold an aircraft at specified heading and altitude without human input where it would operate the aircraft’s control surfaces to keep it on its directed path. However, if you were at an altitude that would let you fly into a mountain, autopilot would do exactly that. So the current Tesla Autopilot is pretty close to that level of functionality with the added feature of maintaining a set speed too. Note, modern aviation autopilot is much more functional in that it can even land and takeoff airplanes for specific models
I agree. I think Musk always intended FSD to live up to the name, and perhaps named it that aspirationally, which is all well and good, but most consumers don’t share that mindset and if you call it that right now, they assume it has that functionality when they buy it today which it doesn’t. I agree with you that it was a legal liability waiting to happen.
Auli@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
So your comparing a we well say 2020 technology to the 1915 version of autopilot and not the kind in the 2020s that is much more advanced. Yah what BS.
atrielienz@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Because it still basically does what’s they said. The only new advent for the autopilot system besides maintaining speed, heading, and altitude is the ability to use and set a GPS heading, and waypoints (for the purposes of this conversation). It will absolutely still fly into a mountain if not for other collision avoidance systems. Your average 737 or A320 is not going to spontaneously change course just because of the elevation of the ground below it changed. But you can program other systems in the plane to know to avoid a specific flight path because there is a known hazard. I want you to understand that we know a mountain is there. They don’t love around much in short periods of times. Cars and pedestrians are another story entirely.
There’s a reasons we still have air traffic controllers and even then pilots and air traffic control aren’t infallible and they have way more systems to make flying safe than the average car (yes even the average Tesla).