[ExI] Tesla autopilot

Dan TheBookMan danust2012 at gmail.com
Thu Jan 20 07:07:34 UTC 2022


On Jan 19, 2022, at 2:03 PM, spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat
> ...
>> _______________________________________________
>> 
>>> ... Dan as I understand it, if a car has standard controls, it doesn't matter if it is capable of self-driving, the person behind the wheel is responsible for what the car does.  If it doesn't have a steering wheel, the occupants are the equivalent of passengers.  Any company selling something they claim is mechanically competent to take on the responsibility of moving people is taking the legal liability associated with that awesome responsibility.
> 
>> ...Where are you getting this from? Are there laws or legal precedents with ‘self-driving’ vehicles that makes these distinctions?... Dan    
> 
> Universal truth: lawyers will sue toward the money.  The more money you have, the more likely you will be sued.  No mystery there.  When I got my PE license, a lot of the training was toward all the new legal liability I was holding if I design anything under that stamp.  They emphasized to make sure I was paid for the cost of the liability required to cover it.

How I’m interpreting this: You’re just saying stuff you believe is the case but isn’t actually backed up by anything like looking at the cases or looking at the laws or even the history of law. It’s like people who believe finders-keepers is a rock solid rule and decide to keep whatever they find, including pets.

Anyhow, my belief here is this isn’t settled law yet, especially not in the US. Sure, anyone can make predictions, but falling back on ‘lawyers will sue toward the money’ don’t tell us much. (Why? How the money flows will depend on court decisions, legislation, regulations, how riled up the public gets, and how the industry reacts — and all this interacting together. It’ll likely play out differently in different areas and might not be settled for some time.) 

Regards,

Dan


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