normally a person would go to jail. But corporations just pay a fine. I think we really need to come up with punishments that are actual deterrents. Like any time a corporation ends up killing someone from negligence there needs to be an action that is equivalent and scaled appropriately.
Send the corporation to jail. That means it cannot conduct business for the same amount of time that we would put a person in jail.
As long as there is no criminal liability for people doing this, nothing will change. This is pocket change for a company, rounding error, as Tesla's valuation has gone significantly since this happened in 2019, six years ago.
The question is not how much does this cost vs the value of the company; it's how much does this cost vs the cost to just do things the right way. $329 Million is orders of magnitude more than it would cost to implement the additional warnings and geofencing. It's hard to imagine any possible corner that could be cut that would save enough money to justify that sort of risk.
Further, it's one fee for a single accident. Since then there have been 756 more Tesla Autopilot crashes. If each of those got a similar payout, that would be 80% of Tesla's current market cap. Obviously they won't all payout that much, but if on average an autopilot crash cost Tesla $56 Million to handle (settlement + legal expenses + lost sales), that would wipe out the company's profit entirely. There's no possible justification for leaving such a massive liability in place.
I get this may be off topic, but does anyone think these cheesy, bad AI-generated headline images help the article's point of view, or heck even make it more engaging?
It just looks stupid to me in a way that makes me more likely to discount your post.
This seems pretty dumb of Tesla, as I find it rather moot to the conclusion of fault in the accident. The obstruction of justice is damning.
Autopilot is cruise control. When you understand this, claiming that Tesla is partially at fault here does not match the existing expectations of other driver assistance tech. Just because Tesla has the capability of disabling it doesn't mean they have to.
This all comes down to an interpretation of marketing speak. If you believe "autopilot" is misleading you'd agree with the jury here, if you don't you wouldn't. I'm no lawyer, and don't know the full scope of requirements for autopilot like features, but it seems that Tesla is subject to unfair treatment here given the amount of warnings you have to completely ignore and take no responsibility for. I've never seen such clear warnings on any other car with similar capabilities. I can't help but think there's maybe some politically driven bias here and I say that as a liberal.
Happy to be convinced otherwise. I do drive a Tesla, so there's that.
It's difficult for me to tell in the article because how much the terms are used interchangeably, but it was it FSD or autosteer that was driving the car when it crashed?
My autosteer will gladly drive through red lights, stop signs, etc.
And the fact that we have telemetry at all is pretty amazing. Most car crashes there's zero telemetry. Tesla is the exception, even though they did the wrong thing here.
The longer the farce goes on, the more I think the laggers in the self driving car industry are more trying to wait out regulators than actually get good enough.
That is - gamble GOP alignment leading to to regulatory capture such that the bar is lowered enough that they can declare the cars safe.
The fact that Tesla doesn't have a process for making crash data available to investigators is pretty indefensible IMO, given they're retaining that data for their own analysis. Would be one thing if they didn't save the data for privacy reasons, but if they have it, and there's a valid subpoena, they obviously need to hand it over.
For context though, note that this crash occurred because the driver was speeding, using 2019 autopilot (not FSD) on a city street (where it wasn't designed to be used), bending down to pick up a phone he dropped on the floor, and had his foot on the gas overriding the automatic braking: https://electrek.co/2025/08/01/tesla-tsla-is-found-liable-in... The crash itself was certainly not Tesla's fault, so I'm not sure why they were stonewalling. I think there's a good chance this was just plain old incompetence, not malice.
That’s not the point. The point is if Teslas marketing led the driver to over estimate the car’s capabilities leading to him engaging in reckless behavior. He admitted on the stand that he was acting careless, that autonomous mode required supervision; however, he also admitted that he thought that the car would drive better than a human and intervene when required _based_ on Tesla’s marketing. When you look at Musk’s tweets and the Paint it Black video the jury agreed that it was not an unreasonable belief that was factually _not_ true and found Tesla 33% guilty of the accident.
The fact that Tesla purposely mislead the investigators and hid evidence was why the jury awarded such a large sum.
Cruise had to shut down after less than this but, because Elon has political power over regulation now, a Tesla could drive right through a farmers market and they wouldn't have to pause operations even for an afternoon.
This is why Waymo will win. They've focused on transparency and building trust. They understand they are operating in the most physically dangerous space most people ever encounter in their day-to-day lives. That, and their technology actually works.
Tesla is comparatively a bull in a china shop. Raise your hand if you would trust Tesla over Waymo to autonomously drive your young children for 1,000 miles around a busy metro. That's what I thought.
If this 3-year-lie parade is what Tesla Inc does for killing ONE PERSON, imagine the lengths it will go to concealing MASS DEATHS it is in any part responsible.
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[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 44.8 ms ] threadSend the corporation to jail. That means it cannot conduct business for the same amount of time that we would put a person in jail.
Tesla must pay portion of $329M damages after fatal Autopilot crash, jury says
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44760573
Buying SPY, my mistake. Being incentivized to put money in my 401k... That is a bit harder to solve.
Further, it's one fee for a single accident. Since then there have been 756 more Tesla Autopilot crashes. If each of those got a similar payout, that would be 80% of Tesla's current market cap. Obviously they won't all payout that much, but if on average an autopilot crash cost Tesla $56 Million to handle (settlement + legal expenses + lost sales), that would wipe out the company's profit entirely. There's no possible justification for leaving such a massive liability in place.
It just looks stupid to me in a way that makes me more likely to discount your post.
So this is also a failure of the investigator.
Autopilot is cruise control. When you understand this, claiming that Tesla is partially at fault here does not match the existing expectations of other driver assistance tech. Just because Tesla has the capability of disabling it doesn't mean they have to.
This all comes down to an interpretation of marketing speak. If you believe "autopilot" is misleading you'd agree with the jury here, if you don't you wouldn't. I'm no lawyer, and don't know the full scope of requirements for autopilot like features, but it seems that Tesla is subject to unfair treatment here given the amount of warnings you have to completely ignore and take no responsibility for. I've never seen such clear warnings on any other car with similar capabilities. I can't help but think there's maybe some politically driven bias here and I say that as a liberal.
Happy to be convinced otherwise. I do drive a Tesla, so there's that.
My autosteer will gladly drive through red lights, stop signs, etc.
And the fact that we have telemetry at all is pretty amazing. Most car crashes there's zero telemetry. Tesla is the exception, even though they did the wrong thing here.
That is - gamble GOP alignment leading to to regulatory capture such that the bar is lowered enough that they can declare the cars safe.
For context though, note that this crash occurred because the driver was speeding, using 2019 autopilot (not FSD) on a city street (where it wasn't designed to be used), bending down to pick up a phone he dropped on the floor, and had his foot on the gas overriding the automatic braking: https://electrek.co/2025/08/01/tesla-tsla-is-found-liable-in... The crash itself was certainly not Tesla's fault, so I'm not sure why they were stonewalling. I think there's a good chance this was just plain old incompetence, not malice.
Perhaps hiding the data like this _is_ their process.
If you or I did this, do you think a judge would care? No. We would be sitting in jail with a significant fine to boot.
The point is that these businesses consider this a "cost of doing business" until someone is actually put in jail.
The fact that Tesla purposely mislead the investigators and hid evidence was why the jury awarded such a large sum.
Mixing up who is responsible for driving the car is very much Tesla's fault, starting with their dishonest marketing.
Cruise had to shut down after less than this but, because Elon has political power over regulation now, a Tesla could drive right through a farmers market and they wouldn't have to pause operations even for an afternoon.
So the solution to all of this is to lock up more executives who commit fraud or lie to the public.
Recently (after a 10 year battle) two former Volkswagen executives just got prison time for the Dieselgate scandal.
Wish it had come faster, but that's a good start.
https://www.lbc.co.uk/crime/volkswagen-execs-jailed-fraud-de...
Tesla is comparatively a bull in a china shop. Raise your hand if you would trust Tesla over Waymo to autonomously drive your young children for 1,000 miles around a busy metro. That's what I thought.
Tesla deserves regulating.