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Tesla has to pay historic $243M judgement over Autopilot crash, judge says
- jqpabc123 8mo agoTesla Apologists: The judge/jury agreed that Tesla was "Full Self Driving" all the way to the scene of the crash.
- dekhn 8mo agoIf I read the article it says autopilot, not FSD.
- palmotea 8mo ago> If I read the article it says autopilot, not FSD. What's the difference? And does it matter? Both are misleadingly named, per the OP: > In December 2025, a California judge ruled that Tesla’s use of “Autopilot” in its marketing was misleading and violated state law, calling “Full Self-Driving” a name that is “actually, unambiguously false.” > Just this week, Tesla avoided a 30-day California sales suspension only by agreeing to drop the “Autopilot” branding entirely. Tesla has since discontinued Autopilot as a standalone product in the U.S. and Canada. > This lands weight to one of the main arguments used in lawsuits since the landmark case: Tesla has been misleading customers into thinking that its driver assist features (Autopilot and FSD) are more capable than they are – leading drivers to pay less attention.
- atonse 8mo agoI remember having this argument with a friend. My argument was that the idea that the name Autopilot is misleading comes not from Tesla naming it wrong, it comes from what most people think "Autopilots" on an aircraft do. (And that is probably good enough to argue in court, that it doesn't matter what's factually correct, it matters what people understand based on their knowledge) Autopilot on a Tesla historically did two things - traffic aware cruise control (keeps a gap from the car in front of you) and stays in its lane. If you tell it to, it can suggest and change lanes. In some cases, it'll also take an exit ramp. (which was called Navigate on Autopilot) Autopilots on planes roughly also do the same. They keep speed and heading, and will also change heading to follow a GPS flight plan. Pilots still take off and land the plane. (Like Tesla drivers still get you on the highway and off). Full Self Driving (to which they've now added the word "Supervised" probably from court cases but it always was quite obvious that it was supervised, you had to keep shaking the steering wheel to prove you were alert, same as with Autopilot btw), is a different AI model that even stops at traffic lights, navigates parking lots, everything. That's the true "summon my car from LA to NY" dream at least. So to answer your question, "What's the difference" – it's huge. And I think they've covered that in earlier court cases. But one could argue that maybe they should've restricted it to only highways maybe? (fewer traffic lights, no intersections), but I don't know the details of each recent crash.
- roywiggins 8mo agoAirplane "autoland" goes back a ways: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoland
- Retric 8mo agoAutopilots do a lot more than that because flying an aircraft safely is a lot more complicated than turning a steering wheel left and right and accelerating or breaking. Tesla’s Autopilot being unable to swap from one road to another makes is way less capable than a decades old civilian autopilots which will get you to any arbitrary location as long as you have fuel. Calling the current FSD Autopilot would be overstating its capabilities, but reasonably fitting.
- beering 8mo agoDoesn’t basic airplane autopilot just maintain flight level, speed, and heading? What are some other things it can do?
- Retric 8mo agoRecover from upsets is the big thing. Maintaining flight level, speed, and heading while upside down isn’t acceptable. Levels of safety are another consideration, car autopilot’s don’t use multiple levels of redundancy on everything because they can stop without falling out of the sky.
- ErroneousBosh 8mo agoThat's still massively simpler than making a self-driving car. It's trivially easy to fly a plane in straight level flight, to the extent that you don't actually need any automation at all to do it. You simply trim the aircraft to fly in the attitude you want and over a reasonable timescale it will do just that.
- Retric 8mo ago
- dekhn 8mo agoAutopilot is similar to cruise control that is aware of other cars, and lane keeping. I would fully expect the sort of accident that happened to happen (drop phone, stop controlling vehicle, it continues through an intersection). FSD has much more sophisticated features, explicitly handling traffic stops and lights. I would not expect the sort of accident to happen with FSD. The fact that Tesla misleads consumers is a different issue from Autopilot and FSD being different.
- jqpabc123 8mo agoAutopilot is similar to cruise control that is aware of other cars, and lane keeping. Thanks for explaining why labeling it "Autopilot" is misleading and deceptive.
- omnimus 8mo agoThis is not even funny anymore. You reap what you sow.
- walletdrainer 8mo agoIs anyone actually being deceived? When you’re buying a Tesla, they definitely carefully explain these options to you.
- FireBeyond 8mo ago> FSD has much more sophisticated features, explicitly handling traffic stops and lights. I would not expect the sort of accident to happen with FSD. FSD at one point had settings for whether it could roll through stop signs, or how much it could exceed the speed limit by. I've watched it interpret a railroad crossing as a weirdly malfunctioning red light with a convoy of intermittent trucks rolling by. It took the clearly delineated lanes of a roundabout as mere suggestions and has tried to barrel through them in a straight line. I'd love to know where your confidence stems from.
- dekhn 8mo agoMy confidence comes only from what I hear people doing with the system. I have zero experience with it and consider most of the PR from Tesla to be junk. "would not expect" is the way a cautious person demonstrates a lack of confidence.
- keeganpoppen 8mo agowell the other person in the comments said the guy literally held his accelerator to the floor the entire time. is that actually a reasonable standard, or are you preemptively out for blood because you would never let reality get in the way of a good agenda? ironic, given that you go out of your way to accuse others of this. methinks you doth protest too much?
- selridge 8mo agoHope he sees this, bro
- keernan 8mo agoThe article says 'he dropped his phone and bent down to retrieve it'
- keeganpoppen 8mo agoand that’s somehow okay while you’re driving? i didn’t realize there was a “uhh but if you drop your phone it’s okay to cause a crash” clause in the statutes.
- keernan 8mo agoOf course not. I was simply reacting to the comments that he kept his accelerator on the gas pedal meaning he intended to beat/run the light. Reaching down to grab your phone is stupid and clearly negligent but quite different than making the decision to intentionally run a light.
- tim333 8mo ago"Full Self Driving" hadn't even been released at the time of the crash.
- DoesntMatter22 8mo agoThis will continually be appealed until it’s reduced.
- LeoPanthera 8mo agoThis was the appeal.
- DannyBee 8mo agoNo it wasn't, it was a motion to set aside the verdict, made before the trial judge. The appeal will go to the 11th circuit.
- tiahura 8mo agoNo it wasn't. This was the trial judge deciding to not reduce it. $43 million in compensatory damages is unusually high for a wrongful death.
- jeffbee 8mo ago$43 millon does not seem spectacularly high compensation for killing someone at the age of 22.
- dekhn 8mo agoWhen my spouse worked in the area of determining "the value of an individual" (economically, not morally), it was computed as present value lifetime earnings: the cumulative income of the individual, converted back to its current value (using some sort of inflation model). IIRC, the PVLE averaged out to about $1-10M.
- nradov 8mo agoYou shouldn't be down voted. Regardless of the moral or technical issues involved, there are established formulas used to calculate damages in wrongful death civil suits. Your range is generally correct although certain factors can push it higher. (Punitive damages are a separate issue.)
- josefritzishere 8mo agoTesla would benefit from the board replacing the CEO. It's increasingly clear that there is a problem and it's not talent, it's decision-making.
- dolphinscorpion 8mo agoTheir stock would crash to $10 without the hype machine
- breakyerself 8mo agoIt will be zero if they keep doing the same shit
- maxdo 8mo agothis is literally one of 1-3 companies who have a decent strategy in the age of AI. the rest is pretending changes will not affect them. even this judgement: the guy decided to pick the phone while driving car not capable of red light detection. It could be any other car with similar auto steer capabilities. Right now same car with OTA updates would keep him alive. Sure, they are doing something wrong.
- breakyerself 8mo agoDid mecha-Hitler tell you that?
- pm90 8mo agoUltimately, I believe there will need to be something catastrophic to oust musk/change leadership. And by that point, its questionable if anything worthwhile will be left to salvage. My current bet is that optimus will fail spectacularly and Tesla gets left far behind as Rivian's R2 replaces it. One thing I will note: I know folks that work at TSLA. Musk is more of a distraction. If he goes and if competent leadership is brought in, there's still enough people and momentum to make something happen...
- 8mo ago
- xiphias2 8mo agoThis case will make settlement amounts higher, which is the main thing car companies care about when making decisions about driving features/marketing. With Robotaxi it will get even higher as it will be clear 100% the company's fault.
- 1970-01-01 8mo agoFight Club 2.0: You pay to retrain it only if the AI will kill more people than our settlement fund can pay out.
- coredog64 8mo agoYou're already downvoted, but this quote from Fight Club always annoyed me as it misunderstands how recalls work. 1. Insurance companies price in the risk, and insurance pricing absolutely influences manufacturers (see the absolute crap that the Big 3 sold in the 70s) 2. The government can force a recall based on a flaw whether or not the manufacturer agrees
- 1970-01-01 8mo agov2.0- Tesla drivers insure with Tesla and the recalls are all OTA software fixes.
- netsharc 8mo ago> this quote from Fight Club always annoyed me as it misunderstands how recalls work. How excusable is it that maybe it's the narrator misunderstanding it, or making stuff up while talking to the lady?
- standardUser 8mo agoI'm not clear on what Tesla is doing these days. They've been left in the dust on autonomous driving, they've failed to update their successful car models, and their only new model was a spectacular failure.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- mey 8mo agoAsk the CEO? Based on recent incentives and acquisitions, are they planning to remain a car company?
- palmotea 8mo ago>> I'm not clear on what Tesla is doing these days. > Ask the CEO? Based on recent incentives and acquisitions, are they planning to remain a car company? I believe Musk wants to hype humanoid robots, because he can't get away with irrationally hyping electric cars or self-driving technology like you used to. Tesla was never a car company, their real product is sci-fi dreams.
- blackjack_ 8mo agoAgreed, and he’s already behind in humanoid robots, so the hype there won’t last long. The problem is that China is obliterating him at every turn because they actually build things that work instead of just hyping things and saying fake numbers of how much money it could be if every human on the planet bought 20.
- m463 8mo agoMy question too. though they did update the model y (looks like a duck), they just cancelled the model S and X
- mr_00ff00 8mo agoYet Tesla is trading near its all time high.
- blinding-streak 8mo agoUnsafe at any speed.
- 1970-01-01 8mo agoToo true. Just a few days ago it was determined it was unsafe at 0 speed. I'm not joking: https://electrek.co/2026/02/17/tesla-robotaxi-adds-5-more-crashes-austin-month-4x-worse-than-humans/#:~:text=Jul%202025-,0%20mph,-SUV https://electrek.co/2026/02/17/tesla-robotaxi-adds-5-more-cr...
- blinding-streak 8mo agoThat's incredible!
- WalterBright 8mo ago[flagged]
- palmotea 8mo ago> It's an absurd judgement. > Consider also how many lives have been saved by the autopilot. > Be careful what you wish for. How many? Tell me.
- breakyerself 8mo agoIt saved my life. I was standing on the Golden gate bridge looking over the edge. A Tesla model 3 pulled over and started playing baby I need your lovin at full volume. I cried and climbed into the car and it turned on the seat heater.
- zadikian 8mo agoSo the opposite of that Herbie scene https://youtu.be/QpgrKDBHlgo?si=hA8iDnIZSVvvs_d2&t=77 https://youtu.be/QpgrKDBHlgo?si=hA8iDnIZSVvvs_d2&t=77
- WalterBright 8mo agoStatistics aren't collected on that. But I've read anecdotes where individuals recounted the autopilot saving them from a severe accident. You can also google "how many lives has tesla autopilot saved?" and the results suggest that the autopilot is safer than human pilots.
- triceratops 8mo agoThat doesn't make any sense. If I, a human, hit the brakes in time and avoid an accident today, then hit someone tomorrow, should I not be held responsible for the second incident?
- WalterBright 8mo ago
- wget02 8mo ago[flagged]
- palmotea 8mo ago> Tesla also claimed that references to CEO Elon Musk’s statements about Autopilot during the trial misled the jury.... > The company essentially argued that references to Elon Musk’s own public claims about Autopilot, claims that Tesla actively used to sell the feature for years, were somehow unfair to present to a jury. Judge Bloom was right to reject that argument. Of course, since Elon Musk has lied and over-promised a lot about Tesla's self-driving technology. It's an interesting defense to admit your CEO is a lair and can't be trusted.
- FireBeyond 8mo agoYeah, when the SEC pushed on the same issue, the company's response was to add fine print that Elon's statements "may be aspirational" and "may not reflect engineering realities".
- tehjoker 8mo agoIt's crazy that they weren't reeled in by a regulator and it had to make it all the way through the court system. People are dead. A court judgement can't change that. Preemptive action would have.
- tass 8mo agoI’m not usually an apologist, and I’d agree with this judgement if the car was left to its own devices, but the driver of the car held his foot on the accelerator which is why it blew through those stop signs and lights. In regards to the autopilot branding, would a reasonable person expect a plane on autopilot to fly safely if the pilot suddenly took over and pointed it at the ground?
- jrjeksjd8d 8mo agoThe average person does not know how to fly a plane or what a plane autopilot does. It's a ridiculous superficial comparison. Planes have professional pilots who understand the capabilities and limits of aviation autopilot technology. Tesla has had it both ways for ages - their stock price was based on "self-driving cars" and their liability was based on "asterisk asterisk the car cannot drive itself".
- nickff 8mo agoIf the average person does not know what an autopilot does, why would they expect Tesla's 'autopilot' to take such good care of them? I am reminded of a case many years ago when a man turned on the cruise control in his RV and went to the back to make himself lunch, after which the RV went off some sort of hill or cliff. Rudimentary 'autopilots' on aircraft have existed for about a century now, and the earlier versions (before transistorization) only controlled heading and attitude (if conditions and other settings allowed it), with little indication of failure.
- bsimpson 8mo agoGood It seems clear that "autopilot" was a boisterous overclaim of its capabilities that led to people dying. It may be minorly absurd to win founder-IPO-level wealth in a lawsuit, but it's also clear that smaller numbers don't act as an effective deterrent to people like Elon Musk.
- eYrKEC2 8mo agoRight! We demand engineering perfection! No autopilot until we guarantee it will NEVER kill a soul. Don't worry that human drivers kill humans all the time. The rubric is not better than a human driver, it is an Angelic Driver. Perfection is what we demand.
- bsimpson 8mo agoWaymo drives better than most people. Tesla Autopilot seems to mostly drive hubris. The fine print says you're still supposed to maintain control. They don't have as sophisticated sensors as competitors because Elon decreed "humans don't have LiDAR, so we don't need to pay for it." Nobody is saying it has to be perfect, but Tesla hasn't demonstrated that it's even trying.
- zadikian 8mo agoI can see where they're coming from with the video-only concept, but even they admit it's not self-driving yet, so just don't call it self-driving (or "FSD**" or "autopilot") until it is.
- ramses0 8mo agoI've always thought of it more as "Co-Pilot", but formally: "Autopilot" might truly be the better definition (lane-keeping, distance-keeping), whereas a "Co-Pilot" (in aviation) implies more active control, ie: pulling you up from a nose dive. So... informally, "Tesla Co-Pilot" => "You're still the pilot but you have a helper", vs "Tesla Autopilot" => "Whelp, guess I can wash my hands and walk away b/c it's AuToMaTiC!" ...it's tough messaging for sure, especially putting these powertools into peoples hands with no formal training required. Woulda-coulda-shoulda, similar to the 737MAX crashes, should "pilots" of Teslas required training in the safety and navigation systems before they were "licensed" to use them?
- maxdo 8mo agoI'm so lost. The guy decided to pick up the phone from the floor while driving the car at high speed. 1. It could be ANY car with similar at that time auto steer capabilities. 2. Why the hate , because of some false promise ? Because as of today same car would save the guy in exact same situation, because FSD now handles red lights perfectly. Far better and safer vs ANY other tech included in the avg car price of same segment ( $40-50k).
- madsmith 8mo agoNot sure if it’s using the same FSD decision matrix but my model S chimed at me to drive into the intersection while sitting at a red light Last night with absolutely zero possibility it saw a green light anywhere in the intersection. Perfectly isn’t a descriptor I would use. But this is just anecdotal.
- BugsJustFindMe 8mo ago> Why the hate , because of some false promise ? Another name for "false promise" when made for capital gain is "fraud". And when the fraud is in the context of vehicular autonomy, it becomes "fraud with reckless endangerment". And when it leads to someone's death, that makes it "proximate cause to manslaughter".
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- SpicyLemonZest 8mo agoAs the source article says, the jury did agree that the driver was mostly liable. They found Tesla partially liable because they felt that Tesla's false promise led to the driver picking up his phone. If they'd been more honest about the limitations of their Autopilot system, as other companies are about their assisted driving functionalities, the driver might have realized that he needed to stop the car before picking up his phone.
- robotnikman 8mo agoWill this have any effect on other companies developing self driving tech? It sets a very high precedent for fines, and may discourage companies from further working on such tech.
- mmooss 8mo agoThat's an old argument by corporations against liability. Should they not be fully liable? It should discourage them from making unsafe products. If it's not economical for them to make safe products, it's good that they go bankrupt and the economic resources - talent, money - go to someone else. Bankruptcy and business failure are just as fundamental to capitalism as profit.
- nickff 8mo agoThese product-liability lawsuits are out of control; perhaps this judgement is directionally correct, but the punitive damages seem insane. This reminds me of the lawsuits which drove Instant Pot bankrupt, where the users were clearly doing very stupid things, and suffered injuries because they were able to physically overpower the safety mechanisms on their pressure-cookers.
- mmooss 8mo ago> These product-liability lawsuits are out of control Businesses also claim that, all the time. We need some evidence. I remember doctors claiming that malpractice lawsuits were out of control; research I read said that it wasn't an economic issue for doctors and that malpractice was out of control.
- nickff 8mo agoI invite you to read both the claims and the judgements related to the Instant Pot lawsuits yourself; they're all quite clear, and you can come to your own decision about how reasonable they are. My read is that people overpowered the safety interlock, after which the lid (predictably) flew off, and they were injured (mostly by the hot steam and bits of food). I think it's ridiculous for people to expect safety mechanisms to be impossible to bypass, but maybe you disagree!
- motbus3 8mo agoThis is 0.005 of what musk allegedly have ? He might be sad
- hnburnsy 8mo agoWe are all paying these large verdicts through higher product costs, lower salaries, lower stock market returns, and higher insurance rates.
- alamortsubite 8mo ago100% correct. Also, with 40,000 deaths due to car crashes each year in the U.S. (and 2 million+ severe injuries not resulting in death), I'd consider it drop in the bucket.
- lern_too_spel 8mo agoAnd safer streets. You forgot safer streets.
- joshfraser 8mo ago[flagged]
- bathtub365 8mo agoCompanies that roll it out responsibly aren’t having issues. Tesla deserves these judgments and should not be allowed to roll this software out in the irresponsible way they have been.
- sonofhans 8mo ago> self driving software is already ~10x safer than a human. This is, technically speaking, pure bullshit. You have no proof because none exists.
- joshfraser 8mo agoSorry, 8x not 10x https://driveteslacanada.ca/news/tesla-releases-new-fsd-safety-stats-after-crossing-8-2-billion-miles-driven/ https://driveteslacanada.ca/news/tesla-releases-new-fsd-safe...
- sonofhans 8mo agoYou … can’t be serious, can you? Do you really think these statistics — even taken at face value — mean that self-driving software is “better than humans”? This article is comparing miles with FSD engaged vs miles driven by humans. You do realize that those are driven under different conditions, yes? That FSD is engaged only for the easy stuff?
- sonofhans 8mo agoAlso, you say “self driving software” but you’re linking to a Tesla press release. Do you think Tesla currently has the best self driving software? It seems to me that Waymo and Mercedes are way ahead, both of them putting their money where their mouth is insurance-wise, and using better tech. Yet neither Waymo nor Mercedes would claim their tech is anywhere near as good as a human.
- randyrand 8mo agoJeeze, save some for the rest of us!
- diasf 8mo agoThe comments on this post are very misinformed. The car did not issue a "Take over immediately" alert despite having the capability or claiming to do so[1]. Hence the partial blame. The punitive damages are justified since, Tesla during the whole process has been found to repeatedly lie about the existence of the server logs. @greentheonly on X, found that the server logs was indeed uploaded to their servers[2] and after this they had to hand over the logs. The logs were crucial in determining that Autopilot/Autosteer was on and that no warnings were issued. Tesla knew that they had the server logs all along. For a corporation to engage in this behavior is almost criminal. [1] https://electrek.co/2025/08/04/tesla-withheld-data-lied-misdirected-police-plaintiffs-avoid-blame-autopilot-crash/ https://electrek.co/2025/08/04/tesla-withheld-data-lied-misd... [2] https://www.pcmag.com/articles/hacker-who-helped-score-243-million-verdict-against-tesla https://www.pcmag.com/articles/hacker-who-helped-score-243-m...
- bsder 8mo ago> Tesla knew that they had the server logs all along. For a corporation to engage in this behavior is almost criminal. Not almost. It IS criminal. And if plebeians like us did that, the judge would toss us in jail without blinking.
- keernan 8mo agoTesla has been taking the legal position in these lawsuits that Tesla vehicles are not intended to be operated without an attentive driver with their hands on the steering wheel at all times. I suspect it is technologically feasible to design a Tesla to detect: (i) someone is sitting in the driver's seat (seatbelt systems detect that for years); (ii) hands are on the steering wheel; (iii) the driver is attentive (not asleep and is actively monitoring the road). Are Tesla vehicles designed to blare a loud annoying sound for as long as the system fails to detect an attentive driver?
- IAmBroom 8mo agoMy Kia Soul detects i & ii (because of its soft lane-following tech). iii doesn't seem too hard for camera tech: the eyes must be facing forward and visible in a narrow FOV (basically the seat width).