Elon Musk and Tesla ignored Autopilot’s fatal flaws, judge says evidence shows

Tesla may owe punitive damages to victim as key trial over Autopilot proceeds.

See full article...

 

[dimathiel]

What level of punitive damages is likely in this case? Company destroying levels?

One can hope but unlikely.

 

[dimathiel]

Request from non-USAian: What part of of the trial is this? It reads like the judge is making a finding, for good or bad, but it's not the trial?

The bit where both sides hash out what can actually be presented to the jury as evidence aka discovery.

 

[dimathiel]

Whatever they want to be called, I'd guess.

But it seems reasonable for somebody living in a country with "America" in its name to want to be called an "American", don't you think?

My bank in the bit of the form for disclosing tax information has a section asking if you are a US person.

 

[dimathiel]

Specifically, the text immediately above the video on the page at the URL you reference (page title is also "Autopilot", BTW) reads:



It's not until over halfway down the page, after a section titled "Advanced Sensor Coverage" (which for some strange reason only mentions 8 cameras), one titled "Processing Power Increased 40x" detailing the onboard computer running a Tesla-developed neural net, and one titled "Tesla Vision" describing how "each Tesla car has a powerful set of vision processing tools" that you finally get a section named "Autopilot" that includes the lines "Autopilot enables your car to steer, accelerate and brake automatically within its lane." and "Current Autopilot features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous." After that are sections on "Navigate on Autopilot", "Autosteer", "Smart Summon", and "Full Self-Driving Capability".

As Tesla famously has neither a public relations department nor conventional advertising, outside of the types of people who consume car and/or tech-focused media, what the average person will know about Autopilot will come from the famously reliable word-of-mouth or that webpage. Everything about that page is designed to blur the lines between "Autopilot" and "FSD" in the mind of the viewer.

Tesla has a defacto PR department in the form of Elon Musk.

 

[dimathiel]

I guess the US went with America for one of two reasons
1. They had hoped to take over the entire 2 continents as in manifest destiny
or
2. They gave up trying to convince themselves they were the United States.

Or both

 

[dimathiel]

Historically, the USA actually wanted to go with Columbia. Thus the District of Columbia, which in turn led to the name for Washington State. Of course, the name Columbia was already occupied by another country.

Isn’t that one spelt Colombia though?

 

[dimathiel]

In the old Usenet days we'd use 'Merkin' as the term..

(Don't check the meaning at work if they have profanity filters on web use.. it's only very mildly NSFW though.)

Isn’t a merkin a hair piece for your nether regions?

 

[dimathiel]

There’s also a difference, in my experience, that the americano is the drink you order if you despise having unburnt flesh in your mouth.

Ever heard of the concept of letting something cool before consuming?

 

[dimathiel]

That is actually a specific legal term. It means: people who are either US citizens (anywhere in the world), or people (of any nationality) on US soil. I'm not sure if it also includes US nationals if they are outside the US.

It does, because the US government insists on knowing where all its residents keep their money anywhere in the world