Comment on Judge finds evidence that Tesla, Musk knew about Autopilot defect
chiliedogg@lemmy.world 10 months agoIt’s a textbook case of what could trigger the depraved heart homicide rule.
The idea is that, in the case of someone knowingly and intentionally doing or allowing something extremely likely to cause serious injury or death, the “depraved indifference” to human life can be treated as intent to kill and elevate a negligent manslaughter charge to murder.
GaMEChld@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Do we have probability numbers yet for likelihood of accident? And if so, would that satisfy “extremely likely?” The letter of the law can be fickle.
chiliedogg@lemmy.world 10 months ago
When you have millions of units on the road, a one in a billion chance of the error killing someone on a drive is pretty much a guarantee.
GaMEChld@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I don’t know if that’s the reasoning that will hold up in court. That reasoning would apply to all cars in general wouldn’t it? Driving is potentially dangerous no matter what car you drive. People are guaranteed to die in car accidents everyday just by sheer volume and that would be true if Tesla didn’t exist.
chiliedogg@lemmy.world 10 months ago
It’s not that people die crashing them, or even that a manufacturing/software defect causes the deaths.
It’s that Tesla knew that there was a software error that would almost certainly cause somebody to die, and intentionally chose not to address the issues for financial reasons. That’s textbook depraved indifference.