This is an interesting one. The jury actually only faulted Tesla for 33% of the total blame, but since the driver wasn’t a defendant in the suit, he doesn’t have to pay the remaining 2/3rds. I really struggled with this one because to me it felt like Tesla was being attacked, but looking at it in the full light of day it ended up being pretty fair. The driver completely ignored the road while looking for their cellphone which had dropped to the floor, and then blamed the Tesla for not alerting him of the intersection. That leans pretty hard on the driver being irresponsible to me, and the jury felt the same way, which is why they said that Tesla was only 33% to blame. So, Tesla trying to overturn this verdict is them trying to absolve themselves of all fault, which I don’t agree with, and I think the judge did the right thing. Tesla advertised a feature of a car that failed to work in the way it was described. Should the driver have been more present? Yep. Should Tesla still be partially responsible for the fault in their machinery? Yep, again.

The dude had his foot on the accelerator overriding autopilot.

If his foot hadn’t been on the accelerator the saftey features may have actually worked.

When your foot is on the accelerator, it tells you it will not brake.

The jury found that the marketing from Tesla didn’t line up with the actual abilities. Musk is on record saying that Autopilot drives better than a human. They also stated that it should only be used on highways and access roads, but even with their GPS always active, the car doesn’t differentiate between road types, and so will let you use it anywhere you like.

On top of that, Tesla triggered the car to wipe the crash data from the local copy 3 minutes after the accident so that the only copy of the crash data that remained was stored on their servers and could be tampered with.

All of that led the jury to giving 33% fault to Tesla, which, again, I think is fair.

Tesla advertised a feature of a car that failed to work in the way it was described.

So first off, this was mainly what I was replying about and I should have probably quoted it. The car 100% worked exactly as described. Any claims about how good AP may be, go 100% out the window the moment your foot is on the accelerator and it tells you the car will not brake.

Also I don’t think he’s ever said AP drives safer than a human, it’s humans using autopilot are safer than driving without it. It’s always because you are supervising it that it’s safer than without. It can’t even change lanes or stop for traffic lights, how on earth could that be safer than a human unless it’s with human supervision?

Tesla wiping/causing problems getting the data should probably be it’s own case and doesn’t really have to do with the actual merits of this specific case IMO and whether or not they were responsible.

The working outside of highways is really the only valid thing.