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No matter the cause of this accident or previous ones, Tesla's response highlights why I'll never buy one of their cars. When an accident occurs, the response

No matter the cause of this accident or previous ones, Tesla's response highlights why I'll never buy one of their cars. When an accident occurs, the response by Tesla should be nothing more than "we will provide any and all data we have concerning this incident to the appropriate authorities when we receive a valid request for that information." Musk tweeting about whether or not the driver purchased certain features is insane. He shouldn't have access to that data, let alone be allowed to publicize the information.

ben_w 5y ago
I’m not so sure. I recognise the risk — these days I assume that entirely innocuous facts about me today can become socially unacceptable in the future, having witnessed this happen to multiple people in my life already. I also recognise that if Tesla doesn’t get out in front of every single incident, it may set back the replacement of human drivers with safer AI drivers. I also also recognise that Musk is wildly overpromising on the self driving tech, and really only trust him as a rocket scientist and salesman (be the thing he’s selling cars or visions of the future), not digital privacy. I don’t really trust any famous person for privacy, because they necessarily don’t have even close to as much of it as a normal person.
- chrischen 5y ago
  There's a very real risk that half-assed "AI" driving just leads to worse human drivers that stop paying enough attention to driving normally. Sensors are definitely better than humans at reacting to collisions though.
  - bellyfullofbac 5y ago
    Hah, I thought you meant worse drivers outside of the Tesla. I guess if I wanted to be an ass, I can cut off most Teslas because they have the auto-brake feature. (Well most modern cars have it).
    - brianwawok 5y ago
      You can, but if you cause an accident - you now have 8 cameras recording your every move. I bet I know how that goes down in court.
- tallanvor 5y ago
  >I also recognise that if Tesla doesn’t get out in front of every single incident, it may set back the replacement of human drivers with safer AI drivers. Tesla doesn't need to get out in front of every incident. Musk feels the need to because of the outlandish claims he continues to make about how close Tesla is to having autonomous vehicles. This is something Tesla's board should have reined him in on long ago. >I don’t really trust any famous person for privacy, because they necessarily don’t have even close to as much of it as a normal person. I agree that famous people have less privacy, and there's a lot of unfairness around that. But even if Musk hadn't chosen to become a public spectacle, that doesn't give him the right to treat others the same way.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    > But even if Musk hadn't chosen to become a public spectacle, that doesn't give him the right to treat others the same way. Of course. What I’m saying is, I don’t expect the famous to be able to empathise with the rest of us, not that it’s good that they can’t.
  - DennisP 5y ago
    In this case he felt the need due to outlandish and incorrect claims about the nature of the accident.
  - sumedh 5y ago
    > Tesla doesn't need to get out in front of every incident. Tesla has been attacked in the past so maybe Elon takes such issues personally.
- rtpg 5y ago
  You know who’s making real progress on AI driving? Waze is. I don’t want to be too dismissive of EV progress thanks to Tesla but I feel like there’s no contest about who is pushing forward AI driving beyond the status quo. And Waze doesn’t need a professional troll to go around garnering media support 24/7.
  - bogota 5y ago
    Do you mean Waymo?
    - rtpg 5y ago
      Yes
  - brianwawok 5y ago
    * Waymo not Waze * Operates in a tiny geographically fenced area * Despite success, has not expanded to any new areas or rolled out any further. * As a consumer, I have no access to buy Waymo, but I can buy at least the current implementation of Tesla Autopilot.
    - rtpg 5y ago
      Tesla autopilot is not a comparable product though! It operates nowhere at Waymo capacity. My understanding is that Tesla is extremely behind on these fronts compared to Waymo, and that gap keeps widening every day. I know who I would bet on
      - majic 5y ago
        But they aren't trying to solve the same problem. I believe Waymo works better in a pre scanned area, where there are no construction sites or major changes, but in a general context you can atleast attempt to use Autopilot, which you can't with Waymo. Thus I would not say that Waymo is miles better.
    - Vvector 5y ago
      Waymo believes that the the roads need to be fully 3d mapped, with crosswalks, street lights and signs before their car can autopilot safely on it. More mapping will happen if/when the AI autopilot is ready.
- Amezarak 5y ago
  I'm not convinced that 'autonomous' driving will ever be better than non-distracted/drunk drivers. Suppose this is a task that, short of overhauling all our road infrastructure, ultimately requires GAI? I think we generally have way too much confidence that cars will ever drive better than people, at least on the current road system. I am not saying that they definitely won't, only that I'm not sure we should take the attitude that anything that gets in the way of autonomous driving is sacrificing human lives. We don't know that. I also worry that mixing autonomous systems with people will result in more accidents, both in the case of drivers nodding off instead of supervising the car, and in the case of other drivers being surprised by the autonomous car's behavior. On top of this, it would not be surprising if autonomous car accidents were more psychologically devastating - they would likely commit different categories of error than human drivers. Conversely, if the tech industry wanted to save lives on the road, easily the most impactful thing they could do is shut off any phone screen moving faster than five miles an hour. This would inconvenience passengers, but we did after all survive for many years without phones in the car.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    > Suppose this is a task that, short of overhauling all our road infrastructure, ultimately requires GAI? I would be surprised if level 5 self driving requires an AI smarter than a mouse or an eagle — freeform environment, arbitrary weather, hostile others, camouflage(!), long range navigation. The rest of your points I broadly agree with though.
    - davrosthedalek 5y ago
      How many birds have crashed into your windows? At my parents house, this happens a couple of times a year.
      - ben_w 5y ago
        One, over my lifetime. I don’t think this a great comparison. Firstly, sheets of glass are not a common road obstruction, and even if they were cars have the added advantage of more sensor types (doesn’t require much more brain, it’s equivalent to just another ‘colour’); Secondly, I’ve also been hit by a car driven by a human. The driver had stopped at a give-way (major-minor junction) [0], then failed to look in my direction and pulled out into me as I was turning into that road. [0] right where this unrelated white van is in this Google street view photo: https://goo.gl/maps/Xe87aruFbbUazXhp7 https://goo.gl/maps/Xe87aruFbbUazXhp7
fastball 5y ago
The only reason Musk immediately starts defending Tesla is because the media immediately blames Tesla when anything goes wrong.
- dangerbird2 5y ago
  If that were true, he should just shut up and wait for the NTSB results to speak for itself
  - fastball 5y ago
    Honestly I'm not sure how that follows from my comment at all.
  - rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
    The media does not care about the accident itself (nor the NTSB findings) so the results wouldn't make headlines. Let's see how many newspaper will retract their fake news about this particular accident... What they care about is all the rage they can spark from anything seemingly bad that can be associated with Tesla and/or Musk. I'm sure they would change their coverage if Tesla were paying billions to them through advertising. But they don't, so here we go.
- pWFk41mFfie1NOd 5y ago
  It is international news any time a Tesla crashes. This is not the case for any other manufacturer.
omarforgotpwd 5y ago
The story was widely reported as a driverless Tesla crash. In fact, there are no driverless Teslas. Furthermore the Autopilot driver assistance feature was not even used and could not have been used. It's too bad you will never buy one of their cars because of Musk trying to correct this story, because their cars are quite good.
brianwawok 5y ago
No way. I have my mom Texting me that I shouldn't drive my Tesla because of this, and I should sell it and buy something else. How many of those people will read the follow up paper from the NTSB? This is literally the definition of smear. Shout something bad about a successful X, and by the time the actual truth comes out, the damage is already done and people have moved on.
- tallanvor 5y ago
  This is a problem created entirely by Musk. He repeatedly makes claims about Tesla's technology that even their engineers say don't match reality [1]. No other car company gets the scrutiny Tesla does because no other CEO persists in making outlandish claims about the capabilities of their vehicles. Tesla needs Musk to do two things: 1) Stop wildly over-promising Tesla's FSD capabilities, and 2) stop publicly posting rebuttals to any news about accidents involving Teslas. Combine this with recreating a PR team for Tesla who can work to push out real information about what the cars can do plus respond appropriately when asked to comment on any accidents, and the public and media will move on before you know it. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/07/tesla-engineer-to-california-dmv-self-driving-may-not-come-this-year.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/07/tesla-engineer-to-california...
- nolok 5y ago
  You completly missed his point. You seem to complain about it being more based on a PR angle rather that facts and truth, but the whole point of what parent is saying is that this is a game Musk himself is pushing.
  - brianwawok 5y ago
    No, I did not. When the truth is the PR angle, it should be pushed. A lie shouldn't be made up to advance PR, but if someone is reporting an actual lie? Anyone speaking up their truth has my 1000% backing, even if I do not agree with that position. I am not willing to join the post-truth era of American politics.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
I agree, but that won't stop me from considering one when my next car purchase comes up. Overall they are much safer than your regular fossil vehicle
ASalazarMX 5y ago
> Musk tweeting about whether or not the driver purchased certain features is insane. He shouldn't have access to that data, let alone be allowed to publicize the information. I agree with you up to this phrase. A company knows exactly what you purchased from them, so knowing what a certain customer bought is just a call away, and not only for the CEO. Regarding publicizing if you bought a certain feature or not, I think withholding that information when the media, and even the police, were blaming the non-existent feature for the accident, is more than you could ask of most of us. Choosing between risking a fine for divulging shopping data, or a costly and unfair reputation hit while the police investigates. The decision seems obvious.
lawnchair_larry 5y ago
If you actually were a potential Tesla buyer before this, you'd certainly be in the minority if this is what changed your mind. Most people see the transparency as a good thing, especially people with concerns about whether their own car might kill them. By getting in front of the story, he's doing his job. Correcting a false and derogatory narrative that threatens your differentiating feature in an extremely competitive market is absolutely the most important thing he should be doing.
h0nd 5y ago
I am totally with you and this is the ideal situation in a perfect world. However, prior to any tweets by Musk, the media already claimed that autopilot was (likely) on as there was no person in the drivers seat. Is it possible that Tesla's response would have been different in case there were no such claims being made initially?

ben_w 5y ago

I’m not so sure. I recognise the risk — these days I assume that entirely innocuous facts about me today can become socially unacceptable in the future, having witnessed this happen to multiple people in my life already. I also recognise that if Tesla doesn’t get out in front of every single incident, it may set back the replacement of human drivers with safer AI drivers. I also also recognise that Musk is wildly overpromising on the self driving tech, and really only trust him as a rocket scientist and salesman (be the thing he’s selling cars or visions of the future), not digital privacy. I don’t really trust any famous person for privacy, because they necessarily don’t have even close to as much of it as a normal person.

chrischen 5y ago
There's a very real risk that half-assed "AI" driving just leads to worse human drivers that stop paying enough attention to driving normally. Sensors are definitely better than humans at reacting to collisions though.
- bellyfullofbac 5y ago
  Hah, I thought you meant worse drivers outside of the Tesla. I guess if I wanted to be an ass, I can cut off most Teslas because they have the auto-brake feature. (Well most modern cars have it).
  - brianwawok 5y ago
    You can, but if you cause an accident - you now have 8 cameras recording your every move. I bet I know how that goes down in court.
tallanvor 5y ago
>I also recognise that if Tesla doesn’t get out in front of every single incident, it may set back the replacement of human drivers with safer AI drivers. Tesla doesn't need to get out in front of every incident. Musk feels the need to because of the outlandish claims he continues to make about how close Tesla is to having autonomous vehicles. This is something Tesla's board should have reined him in on long ago. >I don’t really trust any famous person for privacy, because they necessarily don’t have even close to as much of it as a normal person. I agree that famous people have less privacy, and there's a lot of unfairness around that. But even if Musk hadn't chosen to become a public spectacle, that doesn't give him the right to treat others the same way.
- ben_w 5y ago
  > But even if Musk hadn't chosen to become a public spectacle, that doesn't give him the right to treat others the same way. Of course. What I’m saying is, I don’t expect the famous to be able to empathise with the rest of us, not that it’s good that they can’t.
- DennisP 5y ago
  In this case he felt the need due to outlandish and incorrect claims about the nature of the accident.
- sumedh 5y ago
  > Tesla doesn't need to get out in front of every incident. Tesla has been attacked in the past so maybe Elon takes such issues personally.
rtpg 5y ago
You know who’s making real progress on AI driving? Waze is. I don’t want to be too dismissive of EV progress thanks to Tesla but I feel like there’s no contest about who is pushing forward AI driving beyond the status quo. And Waze doesn’t need a professional troll to go around garnering media support 24/7.
- bogota 5y ago
  Do you mean Waymo?
  - rtpg 5y ago
    Yes
- brianwawok 5y ago
  * Waymo not Waze * Operates in a tiny geographically fenced area * Despite success, has not expanded to any new areas or rolled out any further. * As a consumer, I have no access to buy Waymo, but I can buy at least the current implementation of Tesla Autopilot.
  - rtpg 5y ago
    Tesla autopilot is not a comparable product though! It operates nowhere at Waymo capacity. My understanding is that Tesla is extremely behind on these fronts compared to Waymo, and that gap keeps widening every day. I know who I would bet on
    - majic 5y ago
      But they aren't trying to solve the same problem. I believe Waymo works better in a pre scanned area, where there are no construction sites or major changes, but in a general context you can atleast attempt to use Autopilot, which you can't with Waymo. Thus I would not say that Waymo is miles better.
  - Vvector 5y ago
    Waymo believes that the the roads need to be fully 3d mapped, with crosswalks, street lights and signs before their car can autopilot safely on it. More mapping will happen if/when the AI autopilot is ready.
Amezarak 5y ago
I'm not convinced that 'autonomous' driving will ever be better than non-distracted/drunk drivers. Suppose this is a task that, short of overhauling all our road infrastructure, ultimately requires GAI? I think we generally have way too much confidence that cars will ever drive better than people, at least on the current road system. I am not saying that they definitely won't, only that I'm not sure we should take the attitude that anything that gets in the way of autonomous driving is sacrificing human lives. We don't know that. I also worry that mixing autonomous systems with people will result in more accidents, both in the case of drivers nodding off instead of supervising the car, and in the case of other drivers being surprised by the autonomous car's behavior. On top of this, it would not be surprising if autonomous car accidents were more psychologically devastating - they would likely commit different categories of error than human drivers. Conversely, if the tech industry wanted to save lives on the road, easily the most impactful thing they could do is shut off any phone screen moving faster than five miles an hour. This would inconvenience passengers, but we did after all survive for many years without phones in the car.
- ben_w 5y ago
  > Suppose this is a task that, short of overhauling all our road infrastructure, ultimately requires GAI? I would be surprised if level 5 self driving requires an AI smarter than a mouse or an eagle — freeform environment, arbitrary weather, hostile others, camouflage(!), long range navigation. The rest of your points I broadly agree with though.
  - davrosthedalek 5y ago
    How many birds have crashed into your windows? At my parents house, this happens a couple of times a year.
    - ben_w 5y ago
      One, over my lifetime. I don’t think this a great comparison. Firstly, sheets of glass are not a common road obstruction, and even if they were cars have the added advantage of more sensor types (doesn’t require much more brain, it’s equivalent to just another ‘colour’); Secondly, I’ve also been hit by a car driven by a human. The driver had stopped at a give-way (major-minor junction) [0], then failed to look in my direction and pulled out into me as I was turning into that road. [0] right where this unrelated white van is in this Google street view photo: https://goo.gl/maps/Xe87aruFbbUazXhp7 https://goo.gl/maps/Xe87aruFbbUazXhp7

fastball 5y ago

The only reason Musk immediately starts defending Tesla is because the media immediately blames Tesla when anything goes wrong.

dangerbird2 5y ago
If that were true, he should just shut up and wait for the NTSB results to speak for itself
- fastball 5y ago
  Honestly I'm not sure how that follows from my comment at all.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
  The media does not care about the accident itself (nor the NTSB findings) so the results wouldn't make headlines. Let's see how many newspaper will retract their fake news about this particular accident... What they care about is all the rage they can spark from anything seemingly bad that can be associated with Tesla and/or Musk. I'm sure they would change their coverage if Tesla were paying billions to them through advertising. But they don't, so here we go.
pWFk41mFfie1NOd 5y ago
It is international news any time a Tesla crashes. This is not the case for any other manufacturer.

omarforgotpwd 5y ago

The story was widely reported as a driverless Tesla crash. In fact, there are no driverless Teslas. Furthermore the Autopilot driver assistance feature was not even used and could not have been used. It's too bad you will never buy one of their cars because of Musk trying to correct this story, because their cars are quite good.

brianwawok 5y ago

No way. I have my mom Texting me that I shouldn't drive my Tesla because of this, and I should sell it and buy something else. How many of those people will read the follow up paper from the NTSB? This is literally the definition of smear. Shout something bad about a successful X, and by the time the actual truth comes out, the damage is already done and people have moved on.

tallanvor 5y ago
This is a problem created entirely by Musk. He repeatedly makes claims about Tesla's technology that even their engineers say don't match reality [1]. No other car company gets the scrutiny Tesla does because no other CEO persists in making outlandish claims about the capabilities of their vehicles. Tesla needs Musk to do two things: 1) Stop wildly over-promising Tesla's FSD capabilities, and 2) stop publicly posting rebuttals to any news about accidents involving Teslas. Combine this with recreating a PR team for Tesla who can work to push out real information about what the cars can do plus respond appropriately when asked to comment on any accidents, and the public and media will move on before you know it. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/07/tesla-engineer-to-california-dmv-self-driving-may-not-come-this-year.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/07/tesla-engineer-to-california...
nolok 5y ago
You completly missed his point. You seem to complain about it being more based on a PR angle rather that facts and truth, but the whole point of what parent is saying is that this is a game Musk himself is pushing.
- brianwawok 5y ago
  No, I did not. When the truth is the PR angle, it should be pushed. A lie shouldn't be made up to advance PR, but if someone is reporting an actual lie? Anyone speaking up their truth has my 1000% backing, even if I do not agree with that position. I am not willing to join the post-truth era of American politics.

stjohnswarts 5y ago

I agree, but that won't stop me from considering one when my next car purchase comes up. Overall they are much safer than your regular fossil vehicle

ASalazarMX 5y ago

> Musk tweeting about whether or not the driver purchased certain features is insane. He shouldn't have access to that data, let alone be allowed to publicize the information. I agree with you up to this phrase. A company knows exactly what you purchased from them, so knowing what a certain customer bought is just a call away, and not only for the CEO. Regarding publicizing if you bought a certain feature or not, I think withholding that information when the media, and even the police, were blaming the non-existent feature for the accident, is more than you could ask of most of us. Choosing between risking a fine for divulging shopping data, or a costly and unfair reputation hit while the police investigates. The decision seems obvious.

lawnchair_larry 5y ago

If you actually were a potential Tesla buyer before this, you'd certainly be in the minority if this is what changed your mind. Most people see the transparency as a good thing, especially people with concerns about whether their own car might kill them. By getting in front of the story, he's doing his job. Correcting a false and derogatory narrative that threatens your differentiating feature in an extremely competitive market is absolutely the most important thing he should be doing.

h0nd 5y ago

I am totally with you and this is the ideal situation in a perfect world. However, prior to any tweets by Musk, the media already claimed that autopilot was (likely) on as there was no person in the drivers seat. Is it possible that Tesla's response would have been different in case there were no such claims being made initially?