Ruling clears way for lawsuit brought against company over fatal crash in 2019 in which Stephen Banner was killed near Miami

A judge has found “reasonable evidence” that Elon Musk and other executives at Tesla knew that the company’s self-driving technology was defective but still allowed the cars to be driven in an unsafe manner anyway, according to a recent ruling issued in Florida.

Palm Beach county circuit court judge Reid Scott said he had found evidence that Tesla “engaged in a marketing strategy that painted the products as autonomous” and that Musk’s public statements about the technology “had a significant effect on the belief about the capabilities of the products”.

The ruling, reported by Reuters on Wednesday, clears the way for a lawsuit over a fatal crash in 2019 north of Miami involving a Tesla Model 3. The vehicle crashed into an 18-wheeler truck that had turned on to the road into the path of driver Stephen Banner, shearing off the Tesla’s roof and killing Banner.

  • RushingSquirrel@lemm.ee
    0·
    9 months ago

    To me, autonomous vehicles are like AI (it actually is AI in the case of Tesla): the public perception is that it’s way better than it really is because it’s really good in 80% of cases. But to get to 90-95% will take many many years still. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use them, neither abandon them. To progress, we have to keep using them with caution. Learn the limits and work within it. Don’t start firing people to be replaced with AI because in a few months and years you’ll realize that the 20% left to improve will be hurting more than your thought. The same way you shouldn’t remove drivers just yet.