Because there are companies like Tesla that keep putting up cars with inadequate technology (cameras instead of LIDAR/radar) or testing on the road and people die as a result of this penny pinching, but no one at Tesla got punished in any way or form for this decision.
On top of that we got the way over the top marketing claims, which routinely leads to one scenario: Tesla drivers engaging the autopilot and playing games on their phones, followed by the autopilot either unable to detect a dangerous situation or disengage once the crash becomes inevitable so it doesn't get counted as an Autopilot incident [1].
At this point, it is willful negligence but we don't have a way to hold Tesla accountable. That is why I want to see high-ranking executives, up to and including its CEO, be held on trial for manslaughter at least.
And hell even here in Europe, Tesla's garbage on wheels causes issues. Both in Germany [2] and Sweden [3] we have had drivers fall asleep for minutes while Autopilot was engaged. This kind of crap was promised to not happen, but apparently someone at Tesla fucked that up. I'm amazed that Autopilot has held up and prevented either driver from actually crashing into something, but the failure of engaging safety mode and come to a safe stop if the driver becomes inattentive for whatever reason is inacceptable, period.
And it's not just Tesla that fails to deal with the damages their shit technology causes. Remember Waymo's honking incidents that went on for weeks [4]? At a minimum, this shit should have led to a) immediate cessation of operation, b) damages being paid to the neighbors who got hit by this noise and c) to a fully transparent audit which uncovers why that happened and what steps were made to prevent a reoccurence.
I'm sick and tired of multi-billion dollar megacorporations using the general populace as a free testbed for their crap instead of doing the proper thing that everyone else does - test on closed-off roads and dedicated test tracks.
My point is, no matter if it is effective or not, I don't want multi-billion dollar companies to use society as a free-to-kill testing ground for their garbage on wheels.
As said: when a human kills or maims someone with a car, that human gets consequences to feel. When a corporation does the same, they have to pay pittances and that's it. This cannot stand any longer.
Are you accusing those companies of practicing free-to-kill when the numbers, based on everything we have on the table, say the opposite, i.e. the technologies are saving lives?
Would you simultaneously prefer being able to accuse someone who is involved in a car fatality of being a murderer for being basically stupid and careless (like almost everyone is once in a while) and unlucky at the same time, when different technology (autonomous driving) likely would have prevented the accident in the first place?
That's about the kind of claim you would expect from someone openly claiming connections with Antifa.
Intentions (especially those projected by some onto others) don't matter much -- it's the result, the numbers (here, fatalities) that make all the difference.
> Are you accusing those companies of practicing free-to-kill when the numbers, based on everything we have on the table, say the opposite, i.e. the technologies are saving lives?
You did notice that I singled out Tesla and Waymo here, correct? BMW for example does stuff the right way - they opened a dedicated test track in 2023 [1] instead of developing on the open road, Volkswagen does their testing with a human safety driver behind the wheel [2], and Mercedes had their Level 3 system actually certified and audited, a worldwide first by the way [3].
I don't have anything against autonomous vehicles, in fact I believe they are a vital solution to providing individual mobility in rural areas that can't ever be economically served by public transport.
All I want is that companies don't outsource costs to society at large. Mercedes, BMW and Volkswagen do this, Waymo and Tesla don't. They just do whatever they want, zero considerations and zero effort, while our industry does things by the book and has more expenses as a result.
> That's about the kind of claim you would expect from someone openly claiming connections with Antifa.
That's a low blow, you know it, and you also know it's against HN rules.
> You did notice that I singled out Tesla and Waymo here, correct?
Yes I did notice, and do the numbers and results that we are talking about not apply to them? Do you have more ammunition to continue to use the term free-to-kill, or want to consider if the use of the term may be a bit ideology laden?
> Yes I did notice, and do the numbers and results that we are talking about not apply to them?
They do but still I'm not willing to give these two multi-billion dollar megacorps a hall pass for penny pinching with deadly results when our car industry shows that better ways of doing things exist.
Not everything needs to be done by the typical Silicon Valley strategy of "move fast, break things" - especially not when the things being broken are literal human lives.
Quite frankly, I'm not an expert in the technologies or what numbers have been published -- but 50 fatalities which was brought up above is nothing compared to the lives saved by a safer technology. It may even be nothing compared to the lives saved by making the cars just a bit cheaper or making them arrive at the market just a bit earlier, or may be nothing compared to the fatalities that happened when people were rushing to the car store, or... you get the point.
Calling Teslas garbage on wheels doesn't help either, when the accident and defect statistics seem to indicate otherwise. Not a Tesla fanboy by the way, but the discussion around Tesla seems to me to be unfair especially in certain circles.
> Calling Teslas garbage on wheels doesn't help either, when the accident and defect statistics seem to indicate otherwise.
Uh, Tesla routinely has people wait for months for spare parts [1]. Bad logistics, okay, excusable for a company just a year or two in business, but Tesla is in for well over a decade now. That's also a contributor in why Tesla vehicles cost significantly more to insure [2], with reports of carriers refusing Tesla vehicles at all cropping up even a year ago [3], and all models being listed as "difficult to insure" in NYC [4]. In Germany, the situation appears to be similar, with serious premiums compared to other cars [5]. And that's all before thinking about the current wave of politically motivated vandalism - say some idiot bashes in a window, good luck getting a replacement in time, not to mention the insurance premium hike that's inevitable after filing a claim.
As for defects, well, the build quality of the Cybertruck is so much a meme at this point that I won't waste time researching on it. Steel sheets literally falling off the vehicle. The bloody thing turning rusty from ordinary rain. No matter what, that's inacceptable.
> Not a Tesla fanboy by the way, but the discussion around Tesla seems to me to be unfair especially in certain circles.
It's not like the criticism isn't well founded in facts. The decision of forgoing LIDAR (by Musk himself, who called LIDAR a "crutch" [6]) has been debated for years, the constant overpromises and underdeliveries led to a multitude of legal issues and SEC trouble, so did the various other issues surrounding lemon laws, general build quality and spare parts availability that I've linked before. And there's a shocking report of someone claiming to be a Tesla IT insider from 2018 that details very shoddy IT practices [7].
And that's before getting to the Cybertruck which is such a dangerous design that it's deemed unsafe to drive on European roads (with the "workarounds" some people found [8] being under serious questioning) or the completely deranged actions of its leader of the last month.
Because there are companies like Tesla that keep putting up cars with inadequate technology (cameras instead of LIDAR/radar) or testing on the road and people die as a result of this penny pinching, but no one at Tesla got punished in any way or form for this decision.
On top of that we got the way over the top marketing claims, which routinely leads to one scenario: Tesla drivers engaging the autopilot and playing games on their phones, followed by the autopilot either unable to detect a dangerous situation or disengage once the crash becomes inevitable so it doesn't get counted as an Autopilot incident [1].
At this point, it is willful negligence but we don't have a way to hold Tesla accountable. That is why I want to see high-ranking executives, up to and including its CEO, be held on trial for manslaughter at least.
And hell even here in Europe, Tesla's garbage on wheels causes issues. Both in Germany [2] and Sweden [3] we have had drivers fall asleep for minutes while Autopilot was engaged. This kind of crap was promised to not happen, but apparently someone at Tesla fucked that up. I'm amazed that Autopilot has held up and prevented either driver from actually crashing into something, but the failure of engaging safety mode and come to a safe stop if the driver becomes inattentive for whatever reason is inacceptable, period.
And it's not just Tesla that fails to deal with the damages their shit technology causes. Remember Waymo's honking incidents that went on for weeks [4]? At a minimum, this shit should have led to a) immediate cessation of operation, b) damages being paid to the neighbors who got hit by this noise and c) to a fully transparent audit which uncovers why that happened and what steps were made to prevent a reoccurence.
I'm sick and tired of multi-billion dollar megacorporations using the general populace as a free testbed for their crap instead of doing the proper thing that everyone else does - test on closed-off roads and dedicated test tracks.
[1] https://electrek.co/2025/03/17/tesla-fans-exposes-shadiness-...
[2] https://news.sky.com/story/police-in-germany-chase-tesla-for...
[3] https://www.carscoops.com/2024/04/sleeping-tesla-driver-crui...
[4] https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/11/24218134/waymo-parking-lo...