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> The company must pay $329 million in damages to victims and survivor, including compensatory and punitive damages. > A Tesla owner named George McGee was dri

> The company must pay $329 million in damages to victims and survivor, including compensatory and punitive damages. > A Tesla owner named George McGee was driving his Model S electric sedan while using the company’s Enhanced Autopilot, a partially automated driving system. > While driving, McGee dropped his mobile phone that he was using and scrambled to pick it up. He said during the trial that he believed Enhanced Autopilot would brake if an obstacle was in the way. His Model S accelerated through an intersection at just over 60 miles per hour, hitting a nearby empty parked car and its owners, who were standing on the other side of their vehicle. On one hand I don't think you can apply a price to a human life, but on the other 329 million feels too high, especially since Tesla is only partially to blame, it wasn't FSD, and the driver wasn't using the system correctly. Had the system been being used correctly and Tesla was assigned more of the blame, would this be a 1 billion dollar case? This doesn't hold up logically unless I'm missing something, certainly the victim wouldn't be getting fined 329 million if it was decided to be his fault for not looking at the road

IdSayThatllDoIt 1y ago
I imagine the jury heard "autopilot" and then assigned blame to the company that called it that. "[Plaintiffs] claimed Tesla’s Autopilot technology was flawed and deceptively marketed."
- ajross 1y ago
  As gets pointed out ad nauseum, the very first "cruise control" product in cars was in fact called "Auto-Pilot". Also real "autopilot" systems in aircraft (where the term of art comes from!) aren't remotely supervision-free. This is a fake argument (post hoc rationalization): It invents a meaning to a phrase that seems reasonable but that has never been rigorously applied ever, and demands that one speaker, and only that one speaker, adhere to the ad hoc standard.
  - EA-3167 1y ago
    As is also pointed out ad nauseam, the claims made about autopilot (Tesla) go far beyond the name, partly because they sold a lot of cars on lies about imminent "FSD" and partly because as always Elon Musk can't keep his mouth shut. The issue isn't just the name, it's that the name was part of a full-court-press to mislead customers and probably regulators.
    - ajross 1y ago
      Everyone here seems to think this is a case about full self driving. That product didn't exist yet when the car in question was manufactured. No one was making the claims you believe were made.
  - aaomidi 1y ago
    That’s why we have a jury. Autopilot quite literally means automatic pilot. Not “okay well maybe sometimes it’s automatic”. This is why a jury is made up of the average person. The technical details of the language simply does not matter.
    - ratelimitsteve 1y ago
      Couldn't agree more. This thing where words have a common definition and then a secret custom definition that only applies in courts is garbage. Everyone knows what "full self driving" means, either deliver that, come up with a new phrase or get your pants sued off for deceptive marketing.
      - ajross 1y ago
        > Everyone knows what "full self driving" means Sadly most people don't know that this case involved a comparatively ancient Tesla that did not have FSD. Seems like better attention to the "meaning of words" (like, the ones in the article you seem not to have read) might have helped things and not hurt them?
        ratelimitsteve 1y ago
        The crash took place in 2019, which is the year that FSD went into beta in the model s. Older vehicles were capable of being retrofitted with FSD. https://www.autopilotreview.com/tesla-now-offering-fsd-hardware-3-upgrades-on-model-s-and-x/ https://www.autopilotreview.com/tesla-now-offering-fsd-hardw...
        ajross 1y ago
        The car didn't have it. They weren't advertising it at the time of the crash. You couldn't buy it yet. And the upgrades wouldn't ship for months. I think I stand by what I said. Your attempt to make this about FSD seems to be basically a lie, no?
    - lotsofpulp 1y ago
  - metabagel 1y ago
    The dictionary definition for Americans is: > A navigation mechanism, as on an aircraft, that automatically maintains a preset course. https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=automatic+pilot https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=automatic+pilot Note that “autopilot” and “automatic pilot” are synonyms. https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=Autopilot https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=Autopilot An autopilot is supposed to be an automatic system, which doesn’t imply supervision. https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=automatic https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=automatic > Self-regulating: an automatic washing machine.
    - SoftTalker 1y ago
      Notably, an aircraft autopilot will NOT avoid hitting anything in its path, or slow down for it, or react to it in any way. It's just that the sky is very big and other aircraft are very small, so random collisions are extremely unlikely.
      - metabagel 1y ago
        Airplanes and automobiles differ in a number of ways.
      - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
        > an aircraft autopilot will NOT avoid hitting anything in its path, or slow down for it, or react to it in any way TAWS (terrain) and ACAS (traffic) are built into modern autopilots. And Tesla lied about its autopilot’s capabilities in proximity to this crash: “In 2016, the company posted a video of what appears to be a car equipped with Autopilot driving on its own. ‘The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons,’ reads a caption that flashes at the beginning of the video. ‘He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.’ (Six years later, a senior Tesla engineer conceded as part of a separate lawsuit that the video was staged and did not represent the true capabilities of the car.” https://www.npr.org/2025/07/14/nx-s1-5462851/tesla-lawsuit-autopilot-florida https://www.npr.org/2025/07/14/nx-s1-5462851/tesla-lawsuit-a...
  - cosmicgadget 1y ago
    Is there any contextual difference between the first instance of cruise control (which has since been relabeled cruise control, perhaps with reason), automatic flight control, and a company whose CEO and fanboys incessantly talk about vehicle autonomy?
  - guywithahat 1y ago
    It's also worth mentioning he would have been required to keep his hands on the wheel while using autopilot, or else it starts beeping at you and eventually disables the feature entirely. The system makes it very clear you're still in control, and it will permanently disable itself if it thinks you're not paying attention too many times (you get 5 strikes for your ownership duration).
    - indemnity 1y ago
      The strikes reset after a week, they do not persist for the duration of your ownership of the vehicle. https://www.tesla.com/support/autopilot https://www.tesla.com/support/autopilot - section “How long does Autopilot suspension last?”
    - salawat 1y ago
      >you get 5 strikes for your ownership duration). It isn't ownership of the device disables things against you. That's licensing at best.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > real "autopilot" systems in aircraft (where the term of art comes from!) aren't remotely supervision-free Pilot here. If my G1000’s autopilot were flying and I dropped my phone, I’d pick it up. If my Subaru’s lane-keeping were engaged and I dropped me phone, I might try to feel around for it, but I would not go spelunking for several seconds.
    - ajross 1y ago
      I can't tell which side of the argument you're on here. The driver in the Tesla case didn't "drop a pen". Your Subaru is a recent car and not a 2018 Tesla Model S (which was launched before the Full Self Driving product everyone here seems to think they're arguing about existed!). And... no pilot is allowed to operate any automatic pilot system without supervision, I genuinely can't imagine that's what you're implying[1]. [1] Your "drop a pen" example seems deliberately constructed to invent a scenario where you think you're allowed to stop supervising the aircraft because it sounds harmless. It's not. You aren't. And if the FAA traces that post to your license I bet anything they'll suspend it.
  - tzs 1y ago
    The market Tesla is advertising to is not airplane pilots. It is the general car buying public. If they are using any terms in their ads in ways other than the way the people the ads are aimed at (the general car buying public) can reasonably be expected to understand them, then I'd expect that could be considered to be negligent. Much of the general public is going to get their entire idea of what an autopilot can do from what autopilots do in fiction.
  - gamblor956 1y ago
    The first cruise control system in cars was released in 1908, before planes and was called a "governor." It maintained throttle position. The first modern cruise control (tied to speed) was released in 1948, and was called a "speedostat." The first commercial use of the speedostat was in 1958, where the speedostat was called "Auto Pilot" in select Chrylser luxury models. Chrysler almost immediately renamed "autopilot" to "cruise-control" the following year in 1959, because the use of the term "auto pilot" was deemed misleading (airplane autopilots in 1959 could maintain speed and heading). Or in other words...the history of cruise control is that the name "auto pilot" was explicitly rejected because of the dangerous connotations the term implied about the vehicle's capabilities. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/sightless-visionary-who-invented-cruise-control-180968418/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/sightless-visionar...
- Hamuko 1y ago
  "Autopilot" isn't even the most egregious Tesla marketing term since that honour goes to "Full Self-Driving", which according to the fine text "[does] not make the vehicle autonomous". Tesla's self-driving advertising is all fucking garbage and then some George McGee browses Facebook while believing that his car is driving itself.
- close04 1y ago
  > I imagine the jury heard "autopilot" and then assigned blame to the company that called it that. It's only fair. If the name was fine when it was attracting the buyers who were mislead about the real capabilities, it must be fine when it causing the same to jurors. There's another similar argument to be made about the massive amount awarded as damages, which maybe will be lowered on appeal. If people (Tesla included) can make the argument that when a car learns something or gets an "IQ" improvement they all do, then it stands to reason that when one car is dangerous they all are (or were, even for a time). There are millions of Teslas on the road today so proportionally it's a low amount per unsafe car.
- ratelimitsteve 1y ago
  do you think they heard "autopilot" or "full self driving"?
  - MBCook 1y ago
    You really think the defense wouldn’t have objected if the wrong term was used, or that the judge would allow its continued use?
  - mort96 1y ago
    I don't think these terms are meaningfully different in the heads of most people. I know autopilot in airplanes is a set of assistive systems which don't remotely pretend to replace or obsolete humans. But that's not typically how it's used colloquially, and Tesla's marketing benefits heavily from the colloquial use of "autopilot" as something that can pilot a vehicle autonomously.
bko 1y ago
> On one hand I don't think you can apply a price to a human life Yes, although courts do this all the time. Even if you believe this as solely manufacturer error, there are precedents. Consider General Motors ignition switch recalls. This affected 800k vehicles and resulted in 124 deaths. > As part of the Deferred Prosecution Agreement, GM agreed to forfeit $900 million to the United States.[4][51] GM gave $600 million in compensation to surviving victims of accidents caused by faulty ignition switches So about $5m per death, and 300m to the government. This seems excessive for one death, even if you believe Tesla was completely at fault. And the fact that this is the only such case (?) since 2019, seems like the fault isn't really on the manufacturer side. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_ignition_switch_recalls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_ignition_switch...
- panarky 1y ago
  If you you make a manufacturing error without intentionally deceiving your customers through deceptive naming of features, you have to pay millions per death. If you intentionally give the feature a deceptive name like "autopilot", and then customers rely on that deceptive name to take their eyes off the road, then you have to pay hundreds of millions per death. Makes sense to me.
  - bangaladore 1y ago
    Wouldn't that logic mean any automaker advertising a "collision avoidance system" should be held liable whenever a car crashes into something? In practice, they are not, because the fine print always clarifies that the feature works only under specific conditions and that the driver remains responsible. Tesla's Autopilot and FSD come with the same kind of disclaimers. The underlying principle is the same.
    - bko 1y ago
      Right, this is the frustrating thing about court room activism and general anger towards Tesla. By any stretch of the imagination, this technology is reasonably safe. It has over 3.6 billion miles, currently about 8m miles per day. By all reasonable measures, this technology is safe and useful. I could see why plaintiffs go after Tesla. They have a big target on their back for whatever reason, and activist judges go along. But I don't get how someone on the outside can look at this and think that this technology or marketing over the last 10 years is somehow deceptive or dangerous. https://teslanorth.com/2025/03/28/teslas-full-self-driving-surpasses-3-6-billion-miles-driven/ https://teslanorth.com/2025/03/28/teslas-full-self-driving-s...
pengaru 1y ago
If anyone's confused about what to expect of autopilot and/or FSD, it's Tesla's doing and they should be getting fined into oblivion for the confusion and risks they're creating.
marcosdumay 1y ago
The US justice system uses punitive damages very heavily. And Tesla should absolutely get some punishment here. On most other places you'd see it paying hundreds of millions in fines and a few millions in damages.
thorum 1y ago
The product simply should not be called Autopilot. Anyone with any common sense could predict that many people will (quite reasonably) assume that a feature called Autopilot functions as a true autopilot, and that misunderstanding will lead to fatalities.
- nullc 1y ago
  A true autopilot is a system on a boat or aircraft that keeps it on a set heading. ISTM in this case that's what the autopilot did.
  - metabagel 1y ago
    Boats and aircraft are both different from automobiles. They have full freedom of movement. You can't set a course in the same way with an automobile, because the automobile will need to follow a roadway and possibly make turns at intersections. Boats and aircraft can have waypoints, but those waypoints can be mostly arbitrary, whereas a car needs to conform its path to the roadway, traffic, signage, etc. It's an entirely different domain.
    - nullc 1y ago
      Yes, an autopilot is not what you need on a car.
- bangaladore 1y ago
  > feature called Autopilot functions as a true autopilot What's a "true autopilot"? In airplanes, autopilot systems traditionally keep heading, altitude, and speed, but pilots are still required to monitor and take over when necessary. It's not hands-off or fully autonomous. I would argue you are creating a definition of "autopilot" that most people do not agree with.
  - metabagel 1y ago
    What matters is the definition which most people use. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44761341 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44761341
deleted 1y ago
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furyofantares 1y ago
> This doesn't hold up logically unless I'm missing something, certainly the victim wouldn't be getting fined 329 million if it was decided to be his fault for not looking at the road I hope we haven't internalized the idea that corporations should be treated the same as people. There's essentially no difference $3M and $300M fine against most individuals, but $3M means very little to Tesla. If you want Tesla's behavior to change - and other automakers take notice and not repeat the behavior - then the fine must be meaningful to them. That's another difference - fining an indivisible is not going to change risks much, the individual's behavior changing is not that meaningful compared to Tesla's behavior changing. And it's not like a huge fine is gonna make a difference in other drivers deciding to be better, whereas other automakers will notice a huge fine.
- deleted 1y ago
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- ratelimitsteve 1y ago
  >I hope we haven't internalized the idea that corporations should be treated the same as people. Only when it comes to rights. When it comes to responsibilities the corporations stop being people and go back to being amorphous, abstract things that are impossible to punish.
  - dontlaugh 1y ago
    Would be nice to see executions of corporations as punishment.
    - tialaramex 1y ago
      Perhaps better to achieve symmetry by ceasing to execute humans. You're never going to make executing the wrong corporation as thoroughly wicked as the numerous occasions on which we've executed the wrong human, so you can't make the scores even but you can stop putting more on the total for human misery. Historically it was impractical to permanently warehouse large number of humans, death was more practical = but the US has been doing it for all sorts of crap for decades so that's not a problem here. The US would still have much harsher punishments than Western Europe even without the death penalty, because it routinely uses life-means-life sentences where no matter what you're never seeing the outside again.
colingauvin 1y ago
Tesla was found partially liable for this crash. The reason they were liable was they sold something claiming (practically speaking) that it could do something. The customer believed that claim. It failed to do that thing and killed people. So the question then is - how much did Tesla benefit from claiming they could do this thing? That seems like a reasonable starting point for damages.
- onlyrealcuzzo 1y ago
  And the fine needs to be high enough to prevent them from just saying - oh, well, we can make money if we keep doing it. If you could only fine a person for committing murder, you wouldn't fine a billionaire $5m, and then hope he wouldn't go on killing everyone he thinks he'd rather have dead than $5m.
blargey 1y ago
The fault with an individual can be reasonably constrained to the one prosecuted death they caused. The fault with "autopilot by Tesla", a system that was marketed and deployed at scale, cannot. And if you want to draw parallels with individuals, an individual driver's license would be automatically suspended and revoked when found at fault for manslaughter. Would you propose a minimum 1~3 year ban on autopilot-by-Tesla within the US, instead?
beambot 1y ago
On the flip side: Penalties should be scaled relative to one's means so that the wealthy (whether people or corporations) actually feel the pain & learn from their mistakes. Otherwise penalties for the wealthy are like a cup of coffee for the average Joe -- just a "cost of business." I'm also a big proponent of exponential backoff for repeat offenders.
abeppu 1y ago
I think the conceptually messed up part is, when such an award includes separate components for compensatory damages and punitive damages, the plaintiff receives the punitive damages even if they're part of a much broader class that was impacted by the conduct in question. E.g. how many people's choice to purchase a Tesla was influenced by the deceptive marketing? How many other people had accidents or some damages? I think there ought to be a mechanism where the punitive portion rolls into the beginning of a fund for a whole class, and could be used to defray some costs of bringing a larger class action, or dispersed directly to other parties.
- MBCook 1y ago
  So if I make a lawsuit and prove there is a small possibility my toaster can cause my arm to be cut off, because that’s what it did to me, and win $400,000,000 I should only get $400 if it turns out they sold 1 million units? It’s not a class action lawsuit. If they want their cash they should sue too. That’s how our system works.
  - Dylan16807 1y ago
    No, you misread that pretty significantly. They're only talking about splitting up the punitive damages. Using the tesla numbers you'd get somewhere between 43 and 129 million dollars personally, plus a share of the 200 million. And your share of the 200 million would probably be a lot higher than someone merely defrauded. And the 200 million would probably get a lot bigger in a proper class action. If you want numbers for your theoretical you'll have to specify how much was compensatory and how much was punitive.
somerandomqaguy 1y ago
I just did some googling around: > The case also included startling charges by lawyers for the family of the deceased, 22-year-old, Naibel Benavides Leon, and for her injured boyfriend, Dillon Angulo. They claimed Tesla either hid or lost key evidence, including data and video recorded seconds before the accident. > Tesla has previously faced criticism that it is slow to cough up crucial data by relatives of other victims in Tesla crashes, accusations that the car company has denied. In this case, the plaintiffs showed Tesla had the evidence all along, despite its repeated denials, by hiring a forensic data expert who dug it up. Tesla said it made a mistake after being shown the evidence and honestly hadn’t thought it was there. -https://lasvegassun.com/news/2025/aug/01/jury-orders-tesla-to-pay-more-than-200-million-in/ https://lasvegassun.com/news/2025/aug/01/jury-orders-tesla-t... Nothing enrages a judge faster then an attempt to conceal evidence that a court has ordered be turned over during discovery. If this is then I suspect the punitive damages have to do as much about disregard to the legal process as it is the case itself.
jackmottatx 1y ago
[dead]
polotics 1y ago
329 million too high? if you had the money and handing it over would save your life, would you rather keep the money as a corpse?
- thfuran 1y ago
  So wrongful death liability should be infinite, or maybe just equal to the money supply (pick one, I guess)?
dzhiurgis 1y ago
Let's fine Apple too, since they allow smartphones to be using while driving.
fuoqi 1y ago
>I don't think you can apply a price to a human life Not only we can, but it also done routinely. For example, see this Practical Engineering video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQbaVdge7kU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQbaVdge7kU
HWR_14 1y ago
329 million is not just compensatory damages (the value of the human life) but also punitive damages. That number floats up to whatever it takes to disincentivize Tesla in the future.
Simulacra 1y ago
It's sort of like with the Prius acceleration debacle we had, people always want to blame the car and not their own actions.
scoofy 1y ago
It's the sum of damages and punitive damages.
recursivecaveat 1y ago
*Punitive damages*. From another article: "They claimed Tesla either hid or lost key evidence, including data and video recorded seconds before the accident." If Tesla is destroying evidence then yeah they ought to feel the pain, and those personally responsible should be charged as well. If you make it cheaper to evade the law than comply, what good is the court at all?
motorest 1y ago
> On one hand I don't think you can apply a price to a human life, but on the other 329 million feels too high, (...) Let me stop you right there. That's not how damages work. Damages have two goals: compensate victims, and dissuade offenders from repeating the same mistakes. The latter involves punishments that discourage repeat offenses. That's where these high values come from. They are intended to force the likes of Tesla to not ignore the lives they are ending due to their failures. If damages were low, the likes of Tesla would do absolutely nothing and absorb them as operational expenses, and continue to cause deaths claiming they are unavoidable. Once the likes of Tesla are forced to pay significant volumes of cash in damages, they suddenly find motives to take their design problems seriously.
- lblume 1y ago
  I tend to agree, however the government is not an unincentivized incentivizer. By being able to impose such fines, the government is potentially itself incentivized to not prevent these accidents for they potentially cause this kind of revenue. There are ways to mitigate this, such as forcing the government to use these revenues in a way that is relevant to the issue at hand, i.e. creating safety jobs, strengthening control authorities, or something else. You could also say that the amount is insignificant, but that could of course change with every lawsuit, and it of course accumulates. Or one could speculate that the interests are not really monetarily aligned at all (e.g. prisons), or that the judicial system is independent enough to stop propagation of these incentives. I think it is still needed to consider and try to controlledly align these motives between the relevant actors.
  - gamblor956 1y ago
    The government does not receive any portion of this damage award. There is no incentive for them here.
- Dylan16807 1y ago
  > Damages have two goals: compensate victims, and dissuade offenders Let me stop you right there. Just the compensatory damages were 129 million. And most of that was charged to the driver, no corporate boost there.
bryant 1y ago
If there's an argument to be made that the damages are too high (I'm not making this argument, to be clear), it might be with the compensatory damages prescribed by the jury at $129 million, but then that begs the question of what the cost of a human life is. Money won't bring someone back, but if you're in a courtroom and forced to calculate this figure, it's better to just overestimate IMO. But the punitive damages at $200 million are appropriate — it's what the jury thought would be appropriate to discourage Tesla's behaviors.
1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago
"This doesn't hold up logically unless I'm missing something, certainly the victim wouldn't be getting fined 329 millioon if it was decided to be his fault for not loooking at the road" There was no "329 million fine" There was a (a) 59 million compensatory damages award to the representative of the estate of the deceased and (b) 70 million compensatory damages award to her boyfriend who survived The punitive damages were likley the result of Tesla's misconduct in deliberately concealing evidence, not its percentage of fault in causing the accident HN front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44787780 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44787780 Why would Tesla conceal evidence. That question is left as one for the reader Indeed, the HN commenter missed several things

IdSayThatllDoIt 1y ago

I imagine the jury heard "autopilot" and then assigned blame to the company that called it that. "[Plaintiffs] claimed Tesla’s Autopilot technology was flawed and deceptively marketed."

ajross 1y ago
As gets pointed out ad nauseum, the very first "cruise control" product in cars was in fact called "Auto-Pilot". Also real "autopilot" systems in aircraft (where the term of art comes from!) aren't remotely supervision-free. This is a fake argument (post hoc rationalization): It invents a meaning to a phrase that seems reasonable but that has never been rigorously applied ever, and demands that one speaker, and only that one speaker, adhere to the ad hoc standard.
- EA-3167 1y ago
  As is also pointed out ad nauseam, the claims made about autopilot (Tesla) go far beyond the name, partly because they sold a lot of cars on lies about imminent "FSD" and partly because as always Elon Musk can't keep his mouth shut. The issue isn't just the name, it's that the name was part of a full-court-press to mislead customers and probably regulators.
  - ajross 1y ago
    Everyone here seems to think this is a case about full self driving. That product didn't exist yet when the car in question was manufactured. No one was making the claims you believe were made.
- aaomidi 1y ago
  That’s why we have a jury. Autopilot quite literally means automatic pilot. Not “okay well maybe sometimes it’s automatic”. This is why a jury is made up of the average person. The technical details of the language simply does not matter.
  - ratelimitsteve 1y ago
    Couldn't agree more. This thing where words have a common definition and then a secret custom definition that only applies in courts is garbage. Everyone knows what "full self driving" means, either deliver that, come up with a new phrase or get your pants sued off for deceptive marketing.
    - ajross 1y ago
      > Everyone knows what "full self driving" means Sadly most people don't know that this case involved a comparatively ancient Tesla that did not have FSD. Seems like better attention to the "meaning of words" (like, the ones in the article you seem not to have read) might have helped things and not hurt them?
      - ratelimitsteve 1y ago
        The crash took place in 2019, which is the year that FSD went into beta in the model s. Older vehicles were capable of being retrofitted with FSD. https://www.autopilotreview.com/tesla-now-offering-fsd-hardware-3-upgrades-on-model-s-and-x/ https://www.autopilotreview.com/tesla-now-offering-fsd-hardw...
        ajross 1y ago
        The car didn't have it. They weren't advertising it at the time of the crash. You couldn't buy it yet. And the upgrades wouldn't ship for months. I think I stand by what I said. Your attempt to make this about FSD seems to be basically a lie, no?
  - lotsofpulp 1y ago
- metabagel 1y ago
  The dictionary definition for Americans is: > A navigation mechanism, as on an aircraft, that automatically maintains a preset course. https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=automatic+pilot https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=automatic+pilot Note that “autopilot” and “automatic pilot” are synonyms. https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=Autopilot https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=Autopilot An autopilot is supposed to be an automatic system, which doesn’t imply supervision. https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=automatic https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=automatic > Self-regulating: an automatic washing machine.
  - SoftTalker 1y ago
    Notably, an aircraft autopilot will NOT avoid hitting anything in its path, or slow down for it, or react to it in any way. It's just that the sky is very big and other aircraft are very small, so random collisions are extremely unlikely.
    - metabagel 1y ago
      Airplanes and automobiles differ in a number of ways.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > an aircraft autopilot will NOT avoid hitting anything in its path, or slow down for it, or react to it in any way TAWS (terrain) and ACAS (traffic) are built into modern autopilots. And Tesla lied about its autopilot’s capabilities in proximity to this crash: “In 2016, the company posted a video of what appears to be a car equipped with Autopilot driving on its own. ‘The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons,’ reads a caption that flashes at the beginning of the video. ‘He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.’ (Six years later, a senior Tesla engineer conceded as part of a separate lawsuit that the video was staged and did not represent the true capabilities of the car.” https://www.npr.org/2025/07/14/nx-s1-5462851/tesla-lawsuit-autopilot-florida https://www.npr.org/2025/07/14/nx-s1-5462851/tesla-lawsuit-a...
- cosmicgadget 1y ago
  Is there any contextual difference between the first instance of cruise control (which has since been relabeled cruise control, perhaps with reason), automatic flight control, and a company whose CEO and fanboys incessantly talk about vehicle autonomy?
- guywithahat 1y ago
  It's also worth mentioning he would have been required to keep his hands on the wheel while using autopilot, or else it starts beeping at you and eventually disables the feature entirely. The system makes it very clear you're still in control, and it will permanently disable itself if it thinks you're not paying attention too many times (you get 5 strikes for your ownership duration).
  - indemnity 1y ago
    The strikes reset after a week, they do not persist for the duration of your ownership of the vehicle. https://www.tesla.com/support/autopilot https://www.tesla.com/support/autopilot - section “How long does Autopilot suspension last?”
  - salawat 1y ago
    >you get 5 strikes for your ownership duration). It isn't ownership of the device disables things against you. That's licensing at best.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > real "autopilot" systems in aircraft (where the term of art comes from!) aren't remotely supervision-free Pilot here. If my G1000’s autopilot were flying and I dropped my phone, I’d pick it up. If my Subaru’s lane-keeping were engaged and I dropped me phone, I might try to feel around for it, but I would not go spelunking for several seconds.
  - ajross 1y ago
    I can't tell which side of the argument you're on here. The driver in the Tesla case didn't "drop a pen". Your Subaru is a recent car and not a 2018 Tesla Model S (which was launched before the Full Self Driving product everyone here seems to think they're arguing about existed!). And... no pilot is allowed to operate any automatic pilot system without supervision, I genuinely can't imagine that's what you're implying[1]. [1] Your "drop a pen" example seems deliberately constructed to invent a scenario where you think you're allowed to stop supervising the aircraft because it sounds harmless. It's not. You aren't. And if the FAA traces that post to your license I bet anything they'll suspend it.
- tzs 1y ago
  The market Tesla is advertising to is not airplane pilots. It is the general car buying public. If they are using any terms in their ads in ways other than the way the people the ads are aimed at (the general car buying public) can reasonably be expected to understand them, then I'd expect that could be considered to be negligent. Much of the general public is going to get their entire idea of what an autopilot can do from what autopilots do in fiction.
- gamblor956 1y ago
  The first cruise control system in cars was released in 1908, before planes and was called a "governor." It maintained throttle position. The first modern cruise control (tied to speed) was released in 1948, and was called a "speedostat." The first commercial use of the speedostat was in 1958, where the speedostat was called "Auto Pilot" in select Chrylser luxury models. Chrysler almost immediately renamed "autopilot" to "cruise-control" the following year in 1959, because the use of the term "auto pilot" was deemed misleading (airplane autopilots in 1959 could maintain speed and heading). Or in other words...the history of cruise control is that the name "auto pilot" was explicitly rejected because of the dangerous connotations the term implied about the vehicle's capabilities. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/sightless-visionary-who-invented-cruise-control-180968418/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/sightless-visionar...
Hamuko 1y ago
"Autopilot" isn't even the most egregious Tesla marketing term since that honour goes to "Full Self-Driving", which according to the fine text "[does] not make the vehicle autonomous". Tesla's self-driving advertising is all fucking garbage and then some George McGee browses Facebook while believing that his car is driving itself.
close04 1y ago
> I imagine the jury heard "autopilot" and then assigned blame to the company that called it that. It's only fair. If the name was fine when it was attracting the buyers who were mislead about the real capabilities, it must be fine when it causing the same to jurors. There's another similar argument to be made about the massive amount awarded as damages, which maybe will be lowered on appeal. If people (Tesla included) can make the argument that when a car learns something or gets an "IQ" improvement they all do, then it stands to reason that when one car is dangerous they all are (or were, even for a time). There are millions of Teslas on the road today so proportionally it's a low amount per unsafe car.
ratelimitsteve 1y ago
do you think they heard "autopilot" or "full self driving"?
- MBCook 1y ago
  You really think the defense wouldn’t have objected if the wrong term was used, or that the judge would allow its continued use?
- mort96 1y ago
  I don't think these terms are meaningfully different in the heads of most people. I know autopilot in airplanes is a set of assistive systems which don't remotely pretend to replace or obsolete humans. But that's not typically how it's used colloquially, and Tesla's marketing benefits heavily from the colloquial use of "autopilot" as something that can pilot a vehicle autonomously.

bko 1y ago

> On one hand I don't think you can apply a price to a human life Yes, although courts do this all the time. Even if you believe this as solely manufacturer error, there are precedents. Consider General Motors ignition switch recalls. This affected 800k vehicles and resulted in 124 deaths. > As part of the Deferred Prosecution Agreement, GM agreed to forfeit $900 million to the United States.[4][51] GM gave $600 million in compensation to surviving victims of accidents caused by faulty ignition switches So about $5m per death, and 300m to the government. This seems excessive for one death, even if you believe Tesla was completely at fault. And the fact that this is the only such case (?) since 2019, seems like the fault isn't really on the manufacturer side. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_ignition_switch_recalls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_ignition_switch...

panarky 1y ago
If you you make a manufacturing error without intentionally deceiving your customers through deceptive naming of features, you have to pay millions per death. If you intentionally give the feature a deceptive name like "autopilot", and then customers rely on that deceptive name to take their eyes off the road, then you have to pay hundreds of millions per death. Makes sense to me.
- bangaladore 1y ago
  Wouldn't that logic mean any automaker advertising a "collision avoidance system" should be held liable whenever a car crashes into something? In practice, they are not, because the fine print always clarifies that the feature works only under specific conditions and that the driver remains responsible. Tesla's Autopilot and FSD come with the same kind of disclaimers. The underlying principle is the same.
  - bko 1y ago
    Right, this is the frustrating thing about court room activism and general anger towards Tesla. By any stretch of the imagination, this technology is reasonably safe. It has over 3.6 billion miles, currently about 8m miles per day. By all reasonable measures, this technology is safe and useful. I could see why plaintiffs go after Tesla. They have a big target on their back for whatever reason, and activist judges go along. But I don't get how someone on the outside can look at this and think that this technology or marketing over the last 10 years is somehow deceptive or dangerous. https://teslanorth.com/2025/03/28/teslas-full-self-driving-surpasses-3-6-billion-miles-driven/ https://teslanorth.com/2025/03/28/teslas-full-self-driving-s...

pengaru 1y ago

If anyone's confused about what to expect of autopilot and/or FSD, it's Tesla's doing and they should be getting fined into oblivion for the confusion and risks they're creating.

marcosdumay 1y ago

The US justice system uses punitive damages very heavily. And Tesla should absolutely get some punishment here. On most other places you'd see it paying hundreds of millions in fines and a few millions in damages.

thorum 1y ago

The product simply should not be called Autopilot. Anyone with any common sense could predict that many people will (quite reasonably) assume that a feature called Autopilot functions as a true autopilot, and that misunderstanding will lead to fatalities.

nullc 1y ago
A true autopilot is a system on a boat or aircraft that keeps it on a set heading. ISTM in this case that's what the autopilot did.
- metabagel 1y ago
  Boats and aircraft are both different from automobiles. They have full freedom of movement. You can't set a course in the same way with an automobile, because the automobile will need to follow a roadway and possibly make turns at intersections. Boats and aircraft can have waypoints, but those waypoints can be mostly arbitrary, whereas a car needs to conform its path to the roadway, traffic, signage, etc. It's an entirely different domain.
  - nullc 1y ago
    Yes, an autopilot is not what you need on a car.
bangaladore 1y ago
> feature called Autopilot functions as a true autopilot What's a "true autopilot"? In airplanes, autopilot systems traditionally keep heading, altitude, and speed, but pilots are still required to monitor and take over when necessary. It's not hands-off or fully autonomous. I would argue you are creating a definition of "autopilot" that most people do not agree with.
- metabagel 1y ago
  What matters is the definition which most people use. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44761341 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44761341

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furyofantares 1y ago

> This doesn't hold up logically unless I'm missing something, certainly the victim wouldn't be getting fined 329 million if it was decided to be his fault for not looking at the road I hope we haven't internalized the idea that corporations should be treated the same as people. There's essentially no difference $3M and $300M fine against most individuals, but $3M means very little to Tesla. If you want Tesla's behavior to change - and other automakers take notice and not repeat the behavior - then the fine must be meaningful to them. That's another difference - fining an indivisible is not going to change risks much, the individual's behavior changing is not that meaningful compared to Tesla's behavior changing. And it's not like a huge fine is gonna make a difference in other drivers deciding to be better, whereas other automakers will notice a huge fine.

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ratelimitsteve 1y ago
>I hope we haven't internalized the idea that corporations should be treated the same as people. Only when it comes to rights. When it comes to responsibilities the corporations stop being people and go back to being amorphous, abstract things that are impossible to punish.
- dontlaugh 1y ago
  Would be nice to see executions of corporations as punishment.
  - tialaramex 1y ago
    Perhaps better to achieve symmetry by ceasing to execute humans. You're never going to make executing the wrong corporation as thoroughly wicked as the numerous occasions on which we've executed the wrong human, so you can't make the scores even but you can stop putting more on the total for human misery. Historically it was impractical to permanently warehouse large number of humans, death was more practical = but the US has been doing it for all sorts of crap for decades so that's not a problem here. The US would still have much harsher punishments than Western Europe even without the death penalty, because it routinely uses life-means-life sentences where no matter what you're never seeing the outside again.

colingauvin 1y ago

Tesla was found partially liable for this crash. The reason they were liable was they sold something claiming (practically speaking) that it could do something. The customer believed that claim. It failed to do that thing and killed people. So the question then is - how much did Tesla benefit from claiming they could do this thing? That seems like a reasonable starting point for damages.

onlyrealcuzzo 1y ago
And the fine needs to be high enough to prevent them from just saying - oh, well, we can make money if we keep doing it. If you could only fine a person for committing murder, you wouldn't fine a billionaire $5m, and then hope he wouldn't go on killing everyone he thinks he'd rather have dead than $5m.

blargey 1y ago

The fault with an individual can be reasonably constrained to the one prosecuted death they caused. The fault with "autopilot by Tesla", a system that was marketed and deployed at scale, cannot. And if you want to draw parallels with individuals, an individual driver's license would be automatically suspended and revoked when found at fault for manslaughter. Would you propose a minimum 1~3 year ban on autopilot-by-Tesla within the US, instead?

beambot 1y ago

On the flip side: Penalties should be scaled relative to one's means so that the wealthy (whether people or corporations) actually feel the pain & learn from their mistakes. Otherwise penalties for the wealthy are like a cup of coffee for the average Joe -- just a "cost of business." I'm also a big proponent of exponential backoff for repeat offenders.

abeppu 1y ago

I think the conceptually messed up part is, when such an award includes separate components for compensatory damages and punitive damages, the plaintiff receives the punitive damages even if they're part of a much broader class that was impacted by the conduct in question. E.g. how many people's choice to purchase a Tesla was influenced by the deceptive marketing? How many other people had accidents or some damages? I think there ought to be a mechanism where the punitive portion rolls into the beginning of a fund for a whole class, and could be used to defray some costs of bringing a larger class action, or dispersed directly to other parties.

MBCook 1y ago
So if I make a lawsuit and prove there is a small possibility my toaster can cause my arm to be cut off, because that’s what it did to me, and win $400,000,000 I should only get $400 if it turns out they sold 1 million units? It’s not a class action lawsuit. If they want their cash they should sue too. That’s how our system works.
- Dylan16807 1y ago
  No, you misread that pretty significantly. They're only talking about splitting up the punitive damages. Using the tesla numbers you'd get somewhere between 43 and 129 million dollars personally, plus a share of the 200 million. And your share of the 200 million would probably be a lot higher than someone merely defrauded. And the 200 million would probably get a lot bigger in a proper class action. If you want numbers for your theoretical you'll have to specify how much was compensatory and how much was punitive.

somerandomqaguy 1y ago

I just did some googling around: > The case also included startling charges by lawyers for the family of the deceased, 22-year-old, Naibel Benavides Leon, and for her injured boyfriend, Dillon Angulo. They claimed Tesla either hid or lost key evidence, including data and video recorded seconds before the accident. > Tesla has previously faced criticism that it is slow to cough up crucial data by relatives of other victims in Tesla crashes, accusations that the car company has denied. In this case, the plaintiffs showed Tesla had the evidence all along, despite its repeated denials, by hiring a forensic data expert who dug it up. Tesla said it made a mistake after being shown the evidence and honestly hadn’t thought it was there. -https://lasvegassun.com/news/2025/aug/01/jury-orders-tesla-to-pay-more-than-200-million-in/ https://lasvegassun.com/news/2025/aug/01/jury-orders-tesla-t... Nothing enrages a judge faster then an attempt to conceal evidence that a court has ordered be turned over during discovery. If this is then I suspect the punitive damages have to do as much about disregard to the legal process as it is the case itself.

jackmottatx 1y ago

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polotics 1y ago

329 million too high? if you had the money and handing it over would save your life, would you rather keep the money as a corpse?

thfuran 1y ago
So wrongful death liability should be infinite, or maybe just equal to the money supply (pick one, I guess)?

dzhiurgis 1y ago

Let's fine Apple too, since they allow smartphones to be using while driving.

fuoqi 1y ago

>I don't think you can apply a price to a human life Not only we can, but it also done routinely. For example, see this Practical Engineering video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQbaVdge7kU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQbaVdge7kU

HWR_14 1y ago

329 million is not just compensatory damages (the value of the human life) but also punitive damages. That number floats up to whatever it takes to disincentivize Tesla in the future.

Simulacra 1y ago

It's sort of like with the Prius acceleration debacle we had, people always want to blame the car and not their own actions.

scoofy 1y ago

It's the sum of damages and punitive damages.

recursivecaveat 1y ago

*Punitive damages*. From another article: "They claimed Tesla either hid or lost key evidence, including data and video recorded seconds before the accident." If Tesla is destroying evidence then yeah they ought to feel the pain, and those personally responsible should be charged as well. If you make it cheaper to evade the law than comply, what good is the court at all?

motorest 1y ago

> On one hand I don't think you can apply a price to a human life, but on the other 329 million feels too high, (...) Let me stop you right there. That's not how damages work. Damages have two goals: compensate victims, and dissuade offenders from repeating the same mistakes. The latter involves punishments that discourage repeat offenses. That's where these high values come from. They are intended to force the likes of Tesla to not ignore the lives they are ending due to their failures. If damages were low, the likes of Tesla would do absolutely nothing and absorb them as operational expenses, and continue to cause deaths claiming they are unavoidable. Once the likes of Tesla are forced to pay significant volumes of cash in damages, they suddenly find motives to take their design problems seriously.

lblume 1y ago
I tend to agree, however the government is not an unincentivized incentivizer. By being able to impose such fines, the government is potentially itself incentivized to not prevent these accidents for they potentially cause this kind of revenue. There are ways to mitigate this, such as forcing the government to use these revenues in a way that is relevant to the issue at hand, i.e. creating safety jobs, strengthening control authorities, or something else. You could also say that the amount is insignificant, but that could of course change with every lawsuit, and it of course accumulates. Or one could speculate that the interests are not really monetarily aligned at all (e.g. prisons), or that the judicial system is independent enough to stop propagation of these incentives. I think it is still needed to consider and try to controlledly align these motives between the relevant actors.
- gamblor956 1y ago
  The government does not receive any portion of this damage award. There is no incentive for them here.
Dylan16807 1y ago
> Damages have two goals: compensate victims, and dissuade offenders Let me stop you right there. Just the compensatory damages were 129 million. And most of that was charged to the driver, no corporate boost there.

bryant 1y ago

If there's an argument to be made that the damages are too high (I'm not making this argument, to be clear), it might be with the compensatory damages prescribed by the jury at $129 million, but then that begs the question of what the cost of a human life is. Money won't bring someone back, but if you're in a courtroom and forced to calculate this figure, it's better to just overestimate IMO. But the punitive damages at $200 million are appropriate — it's what the jury thought would be appropriate to discourage Tesla's behaviors.

1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago

"This doesn't hold up logically unless I'm missing something, certainly the victim wouldn't be getting fined 329 millioon if it was decided to be his fault for not loooking at the road" There was no "329 million fine" There was a (a) 59 million compensatory damages award to the representative of the estate of the deceased and (b) 70 million compensatory damages award to her boyfriend who survived The punitive damages were likley the result of Tesla's misconduct in deliberately concealing evidence, not its percentage of fault in causing the accident HN front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44787780 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44787780 Why would Tesla conceal evidence. That question is left as one for the reader Indeed, the HN commenter missed several things