"This Will Open the Floodgates": Tesla In Trouble as Jury Orders It to Pay $329 Million After Autopilot Death
On Friday, a Miami jury ruled that the Elon Musk-owned automaker's Autopilot driver assistance software was partially at fault for a horrendous collision that killed a 22-year-old woman in 2019 and severely injured her boyfriend.
In total, the jury ordered Tesla to pay $329 million to the surviving family of the victims, Naibel Benavides and Dillon Angulo.
The ruling could drastically impact Tesla's autonomous vehicle efforts — which it's been increasingly leaning into as its sales falter — and perhaps reshape the self-driving landscape at large. These are enormous damages, and the prospect of being on the hook anytime the experimental software kills or injures a bystander could dampen investor enthusiasm for the tech.
It also comes at a critical moment for Tesla, which launched a limited robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, in June, and expanded its driverless fleet this week to San Francisco. Musk is hoping that a pivot to robotaxis could rake in the company trillions of dollars. Prior to the launch, he estimated that Tesla could have a million robotaxis on American roads by the end of 2026. In light of the ruling, that's a lot expensive legal liabilities waiting to happen.
"This will open the floodgates," Miguel Custodio, a car crash lawyer not involved in the lawsuit, told the Associated Press after the ruling. "It will embolden a lot of people to come to court."
This may have been a long time coming for Tesla. Its self-driving software — which are actually driver assistance features, regardless of their overconfident brand names — have been involved in multiple deadly crashes. The automaker has frequently been criticized for exaggerating how autonomously its cars can operate and has been repeatedly investigated by federal regulators and sued by state authorities.
https://futurism.com/jury-tesla-autopilot-death
On Friday, a Miami jury ruled that the Elon Musk-owned automaker's Autopilot driver assistance software was partially at fault for a horrendous collision that killed a 22-year-old woman in 2019 and severely injured her boyfriend.
In total, the jury ordered Tesla to pay $329 million to the surviving family of the victims, Naibel Benavides and Dillon Angulo.
The ruling could drastically impact Tesla's autonomous vehicle efforts — which it's been increasingly leaning into as its sales falter — and perhaps reshape the self-driving landscape at large. These are enormous damages, and the prospect of being on the hook anytime the experimental software kills or injures a bystander could dampen investor enthusiasm for the tech.
It also comes at a critical moment for Tesla, which launched a limited robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, in June, and expanded its driverless fleet this week to San Francisco. Musk is hoping that a pivot to robotaxis could rake in the company trillions of dollars. Prior to the launch, he estimated that Tesla could have a million robotaxis on American roads by the end of 2026. In light of the ruling, that's a lot expensive legal liabilities waiting to happen.
"This will open the floodgates," Miguel Custodio, a car crash lawyer not involved in the lawsuit, told the Associated Press after the ruling. "It will embolden a lot of people to come to court."
This may have been a long time coming for Tesla. Its self-driving software — which are actually driver assistance features, regardless of their overconfident brand names — have been involved in multiple deadly crashes. The automaker has frequently been criticized for exaggerating how autonomously its cars can operate and has been repeatedly investigated by federal regulators and sued by state authorities.
https://futurism.com/jury-tesla-autopilot-death
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
