7 ms·

True, but let's not blame the victim.

joenathanone 9y ago
He wouldn't be a victim in that case. If he had killed someone else in addition to himself, I'm sure you would be more keen on holding him responsible.
- fwip 9y ago
  Still a victim even if he made a bad decision. Dude died.
gowld 9y ago
The operator of a vehicle is responsible for operating it. Somewhere between 7-10 iterations of the same dangerous failure mode, it's time to stop betting your life that the failure won't repeat. > Walter complained "7-10 times the car would swivel toward that same exact barrier during auto-pilot." This still doesn't diminish Tesla's obligation to make their autopilot system behave properly.
- debt 9y ago
  "The operator of a vehicle is responsible for operating it." But he wasn't operating it.
  - steve_musk 9y ago
    Well he should have been considering he was the driver...
  - testb 9y ago
    I think most of us would be more keen on not dying regardless of who is legally responsible
  - asdsa5325 9y ago
    But he should have been. Tesla's cars are not self-driving. The automated driving features are supposed to assist the driver, not replace.
    - ForHackernews 9y ago
      Yeah! Isn't it obvious that a feature named "autopilot" means you have to watch it like a hawk, keep your eyes on the road and your hands on the wheel?
      - Piskvorrr 9y ago
        Should be. Obviously people get their notion of "autopilot" from science fiction, not from aviation.
        MBCook 9y ago
        Which is why I’ve always maintained it was a very misleading name and would lead to dangerous accidents. Which it seems to have on a number of occasions. Of course people may have abused the system if it had a more sensible name anyway. But names competitors use like Automatic Cruise Control or SuperCruise seem much more descriptive of the system’s actual abilities.
        ghfbjdhhv 9y ago
        It’s a car, not a plane. Why is the definition from aviation more relevant than the definition from science fiction (which also happens to be closer to the plain English understanding of the phrase)?
        inferiorhuman 9y ago
        Because the technology is more similar to that of aviation than science fiction.
        Piskvorrr 9y ago
        Because it's science fiction. As in, "this is not real." But well, I guess that if Moon landing was fake and wrestling is real, then science fiction is also real ;) (In other words, that the perception matters more than reality)
  - twblalock 9y ago
    If a Tesla on autopilot hit your car, would you be happy with an outcome in which the driver did not accept any blame? Would it make a difference if you learned that the driver knew there were problems with autopilot and was using it anyway?
  - telchar 9y ago
    That's entirely speculation at this point. Tesla are the only ones who could confirm or deny that and it's possible that they will never be able to determine it depending on the condition of the computer hard ware.
- totalZero 9y ago
  I think the point is that the guy passed away, and we gain nothing by asserting (based on our limited knowledge) that he lacked common sense. Tesla should improve its systems regardless of whether it was the first such error, the seventh, or the tenth.
  - MBCook 9y ago
    It’s a mitigating factor is Tesla’s favor. But mostly... I just don’t understand it. It seems like such an odd decision by the driver I don’t know what to make of it. It’s very unfortunate that he died, but that doesn’t mean we can’t ask questions/criticize what may have gone on.
- sixothree 9y ago
  The lesson here is that Tesla does not take complaints seriously and someone died as a result. It sounds just as likely to me that another person using autopilot would have had the same issue at that location.
  - forgotmysn 9y ago
    While that might be the case, I'm not sure we have enough information yet to assume that's true.
  - Angostura 9y ago
    Or they had a team investigating why this combination of road features caused problems.
  - telchar 9y ago
    It's too early to draw that conclusion. Note that the claims in the article are coming from the family and haven't been corroborated by Tesla yet. It's possible they are incorrect about aspects of the story they're telling for various reasons.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - enraged_camel 9y ago
    >>The lesson here is that Tesla does not take complaints seriously and someone died as a result. That may be what you extracted from this incident, but it's definitely not "the lesson".
- literallycancer 9y ago
  Holding the passenger responsible for what the car does sure won't be good for adoption.
- eanzenberg 9y ago
  This is some intense libertarian leaning. Tesla of course is responsible. Their marketing is full-bore "Welcome to self-driving car country." They're selling the feature, they are responsible.
cornholio 9y ago
It's not blame, he was simply dealing with a bug that was hard to reproduce in a production environment.
- MBCook 9y ago
  That seems odd to me. If it happens so much how hard is it to have techs just drive a car through the area repeatedly on various days to get sensor data and reproduce it? If they only tried at the dealership and not the actual place... that seems like a big mistake on their part.
barrkel 9y ago
Rightness is defined with respect to a system of rules. If being "right" leaves you dead, were you really right? Maybe in a legal sense, but is that the system that matters?
- rdiddly 9y ago
  It's the one that matters for the rest of us who aren't dead!
  - barrkel 9y ago
    It's precisely because you're not dead yet that you should act rightly according to the correctly chosen system. I'm a biker. I can drive, but only ever drive rentals; motorcycles are my primary mode. A sense of righteousness for being in the right on a bike will get you killed. You ride within the margin of not just your own error, but also those of other road users, and your own machine, with your best judgement and risk preference tradeoff. If your machine has a known tendency to do something bad in some situation, you avoid that situation, even if you have someone else to blame. Blame doesn't keep you alive.
    - bookofjoe 9y ago
      "A sense of righteousness for being in the right on a bike will get you killed." Well put. When I was a boy growing up in Milwaukee in the 50s/60s, there was a public service announcement on TV for the Wisconsin Dept. of Motor Vehicles that ended "Don't be dead right." I liked it then and find its lesson has stayed with me and helped me avoid trouble many times outside the driving space.
MBCook 9y ago
I honestly worried about that when writing the comment. The car should have avoided it (based on Tesla’s usual claims). But Tesla and everyone else says the owner is still ultimately responsible because AutoPilot isn’t a 100% situation. If my car did something funky like randomly accelerate or turn hard at a given intersection and the manufacturer refused to fix it I’d stop driving through there. Why push your luck? I truly don’t like blaming the victim. I’ve been very critical of Tesla lately for their claims and safety issues. But I don’t understand this man’s decision at all. It doesn’t seem reasonable. I wish I knew why he kept using the system in that area. The ONLY idea I can think of is when the car got an update he would try again to see if it was fixed and of the tries was sadly the last.
- lopmotr 9y ago
  We adapt to weird behavior all the time. I once found my brake pedal went right to the floor while driving. Then it fixed itself. I drove carefully after that but still kept using it. The other day my engine started revving up uncontrollably until I pulled over and turned it off. It's been fine since. I still drive it. Would you blame someone if their check engine light was on or the steering felt a bit wobbly?
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    Please get your vehicle looked at!
  - Baeocystin 9y ago
    100% serious answer- if what you are saying is true, and you do not immediately stop driving your car on public roads and take it to a mechanic for a thorough inspection, you are toying with both your own and other people's lives. Cars do not fix themselves, and brakes that drop to the floor are seriously compromised. The next time that happens, there may not be enough fluid left in the reservoir to repressurize the system. As for blame, the check engine light is for emissions gear, and will not effect safe vehicle operation. A wobbly front end, however, can indicate a serious problem, and yes, it is the driver's responsibility to operate a safe vehicle on public roads, and it would in fact be their fault if something happened because they did not perform proper maintenance.
UncleEntity 9y ago
> True, but let's not blame the victim. I don't even think that even applies in this case. If TFA is correct and there is a problem in this particular spot and you still rely on autopilot then who is left to blame except the person who entrusted their life to a system known to be faulty?
twblalock 9y ago
I'd definitely blame an airline pilot who crashed because he relied on autopilot in a situation he knew was not handled well by the autopilot. (I would also blame the autopilot.) I don't see why the driver of a car with any kind of semi-automated system should be held to a lesser standard. It sucks that the driver died, and it sucks that the Tesla autopilot system had problems handing that kind of situation, but that does not mean the driver is blameless. He put himself and the people in the cars around him at risk by using the autopilot feature on a stretch of road where he knew it did not work well.
- mirimir 9y ago
  They typically are blamed.
- asddddd 9y ago
  Are drivers trained to use these semi-automated systems?
- veemjeem 9y ago
  If a plane crashes, the survival rate is pretty low. Most likely everyone on the plane is dead. People get into car accidents often enough to feel that crashing one's car rarely leads to death. Walter probably felt safe enough to use autopilot knowing that if the car crashed, he could still walk away from it.
  - greedo 9y ago
    Completely untrue. The survival rate for plane crashes is extremely high.[1] 1.https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NTSB_releases_statistics_on_aircraft_accident_survivability.aspx https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NTSB_releases...
    - fourthark 9y ago
      Most of those crashes probably on the ground though?
    - 9y ago
smoyer 9y ago
There are definitely times when the victim is to blame - in this case I think it's too early to assign blame to anyone (or anything?) so if your warning was against speculating on the cause of the crash, I'm in agreement.
Natsu 9y ago
There's an old rhyme about that: "He was right, dead right, as he drove along, but he's just as dead as if he were wrong."

He wouldn't be a victim in that case. If he had killed someone else in addition to himself, I'm sure you would be more keen on holding him responsible.

fwip 9y ago
Still a victim even if he made a bad decision. Dude died.

gowld 9y ago

The operator of a vehicle is responsible for operating it. Somewhere between 7-10 iterations of the same dangerous failure mode, it's time to stop betting your life that the failure won't repeat. > Walter complained "7-10 times the car would swivel toward that same exact barrier during auto-pilot." This still doesn't diminish Tesla's obligation to make their autopilot system behave properly.

debt 9y ago
"The operator of a vehicle is responsible for operating it." But he wasn't operating it.
- steve_musk 9y ago
  Well he should have been considering he was the driver...
- testb 9y ago
  I think most of us would be more keen on not dying regardless of who is legally responsible
- asdsa5325 9y ago
  But he should have been. Tesla's cars are not self-driving. The automated driving features are supposed to assist the driver, not replace.
  - ForHackernews 9y ago
    Yeah! Isn't it obvious that a feature named "autopilot" means you have to watch it like a hawk, keep your eyes on the road and your hands on the wheel?
    - Piskvorrr 9y ago
      Should be. Obviously people get their notion of "autopilot" from science fiction, not from aviation.
      - MBCook 9y ago
        Which is why I’ve always maintained it was a very misleading name and would lead to dangerous accidents. Which it seems to have on a number of occasions. Of course people may have abused the system if it had a more sensible name anyway. But names competitors use like Automatic Cruise Control or SuperCruise seem much more descriptive of the system’s actual abilities.
      - ghfbjdhhv 9y ago
        It’s a car, not a plane. Why is the definition from aviation more relevant than the definition from science fiction (which also happens to be closer to the plain English understanding of the phrase)?
        inferiorhuman 9y ago
        Because the technology is more similar to that of aviation than science fiction.
        Piskvorrr 9y ago
        Because it's science fiction. As in, "this is not real." But well, I guess that if Moon landing was fake and wrestling is real, then science fiction is also real ;) (In other words, that the perception matters more than reality)
- twblalock 9y ago
  If a Tesla on autopilot hit your car, would you be happy with an outcome in which the driver did not accept any blame? Would it make a difference if you learned that the driver knew there were problems with autopilot and was using it anyway?
- telchar 9y ago
  That's entirely speculation at this point. Tesla are the only ones who could confirm or deny that and it's possible that they will never be able to determine it depending on the condition of the computer hard ware.
totalZero 9y ago
I think the point is that the guy passed away, and we gain nothing by asserting (based on our limited knowledge) that he lacked common sense. Tesla should improve its systems regardless of whether it was the first such error, the seventh, or the tenth.
- MBCook 9y ago
  It’s a mitigating factor is Tesla’s favor. But mostly... I just don’t understand it. It seems like such an odd decision by the driver I don’t know what to make of it. It’s very unfortunate that he died, but that doesn’t mean we can’t ask questions/criticize what may have gone on.
sixothree 9y ago
The lesson here is that Tesla does not take complaints seriously and someone died as a result. It sounds just as likely to me that another person using autopilot would have had the same issue at that location.
- forgotmysn 9y ago
  While that might be the case, I'm not sure we have enough information yet to assume that's true.
- Angostura 9y ago
  Or they had a team investigating why this combination of road features caused problems.
- telchar 9y ago
  It's too early to draw that conclusion. Note that the claims in the article are coming from the family and haven't been corroborated by Tesla yet. It's possible they are incorrect about aspects of the story they're telling for various reasons.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- enraged_camel 9y ago
  >>The lesson here is that Tesla does not take complaints seriously and someone died as a result. That may be what you extracted from this incident, but it's definitely not "the lesson".
literallycancer 9y ago
Holding the passenger responsible for what the car does sure won't be good for adoption.
eanzenberg 9y ago
This is some intense libertarian leaning. Tesla of course is responsible. Their marketing is full-bore "Welcome to self-driving car country." They're selling the feature, they are responsible.

cornholio 9y ago

It's not blame, he was simply dealing with a bug that was hard to reproduce in a production environment.

MBCook 9y ago
That seems odd to me. If it happens so much how hard is it to have techs just drive a car through the area repeatedly on various days to get sensor data and reproduce it? If they only tried at the dealership and not the actual place... that seems like a big mistake on their part.

barrkel 9y ago

Rightness is defined with respect to a system of rules. If being "right" leaves you dead, were you really right? Maybe in a legal sense, but is that the system that matters?

rdiddly 9y ago
It's the one that matters for the rest of us who aren't dead!
- barrkel 9y ago
  It's precisely because you're not dead yet that you should act rightly according to the correctly chosen system. I'm a biker. I can drive, but only ever drive rentals; motorcycles are my primary mode. A sense of righteousness for being in the right on a bike will get you killed. You ride within the margin of not just your own error, but also those of other road users, and your own machine, with your best judgement and risk preference tradeoff. If your machine has a known tendency to do something bad in some situation, you avoid that situation, even if you have someone else to blame. Blame doesn't keep you alive.
  - bookofjoe 9y ago
    "A sense of righteousness for being in the right on a bike will get you killed." Well put. When I was a boy growing up in Milwaukee in the 50s/60s, there was a public service announcement on TV for the Wisconsin Dept. of Motor Vehicles that ended "Don't be dead right." I liked it then and find its lesson has stayed with me and helped me avoid trouble many times outside the driving space.

MBCook 9y ago

I honestly worried about that when writing the comment. The car should have avoided it (based on Tesla’s usual claims). But Tesla and everyone else says the owner is still ultimately responsible because AutoPilot isn’t a 100% situation. If my car did something funky like randomly accelerate or turn hard at a given intersection and the manufacturer refused to fix it I’d stop driving through there. Why push your luck? I truly don’t like blaming the victim. I’ve been very critical of Tesla lately for their claims and safety issues. But I don’t understand this man’s decision at all. It doesn’t seem reasonable. I wish I knew why he kept using the system in that area. The ONLY idea I can think of is when the car got an update he would try again to see if it was fixed and of the tries was sadly the last.

lopmotr 9y ago
We adapt to weird behavior all the time. I once found my brake pedal went right to the floor while driving. Then it fixed itself. I drove carefully after that but still kept using it. The other day my engine started revving up uncontrollably until I pulled over and turned it off. It's been fine since. I still drive it. Would you blame someone if their check engine light was on or the steering felt a bit wobbly?
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  Please get your vehicle looked at!
- Baeocystin 9y ago
  100% serious answer- if what you are saying is true, and you do not immediately stop driving your car on public roads and take it to a mechanic for a thorough inspection, you are toying with both your own and other people's lives. Cars do not fix themselves, and brakes that drop to the floor are seriously compromised. The next time that happens, there may not be enough fluid left in the reservoir to repressurize the system. As for blame, the check engine light is for emissions gear, and will not effect safe vehicle operation. A wobbly front end, however, can indicate a serious problem, and yes, it is the driver's responsibility to operate a safe vehicle on public roads, and it would in fact be their fault if something happened because they did not perform proper maintenance.

UncleEntity 9y ago

> True, but let's not blame the victim. I don't even think that even applies in this case. If TFA is correct and there is a problem in this particular spot and you still rely on autopilot then who is left to blame except the person who entrusted their life to a system known to be faulty?

twblalock 9y ago

I'd definitely blame an airline pilot who crashed because he relied on autopilot in a situation he knew was not handled well by the autopilot. (I would also blame the autopilot.) I don't see why the driver of a car with any kind of semi-automated system should be held to a lesser standard. It sucks that the driver died, and it sucks that the Tesla autopilot system had problems handing that kind of situation, but that does not mean the driver is blameless. He put himself and the people in the cars around him at risk by using the autopilot feature on a stretch of road where he knew it did not work well.

mirimir 9y ago
They typically are blamed.
asddddd 9y ago
Are drivers trained to use these semi-automated systems?
veemjeem 9y ago
If a plane crashes, the survival rate is pretty low. Most likely everyone on the plane is dead. People get into car accidents often enough to feel that crashing one's car rarely leads to death. Walter probably felt safe enough to use autopilot knowing that if the car crashed, he could still walk away from it.
- greedo 9y ago
  Completely untrue. The survival rate for plane crashes is extremely high.[1] 1.https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NTSB_releases_statistics_on_aircraft_accident_survivability.aspx https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NTSB_releases...
  - fourthark 9y ago
    Most of those crashes probably on the ground though?
  - 9y ago

smoyer 9y ago

There are definitely times when the victim is to blame - in this case I think it's too early to assign blame to anyone (or anything?) so if your warning was against speculating on the cause of the crash, I'm in agreement.

Natsu 9y ago

There's an old rhyme about that: "He was right, dead right, as he drove along, but he's just as dead as if he were wrong."