This is a product liability issue. AP didn't work as designed and it failed to adhere to it's limited warnings on operation. The wheel torque sensor is defective for it's purpose. It's clearly badly engineered with regard to driver monitoring. Tesla is going to lose and should. They profit from a poorly designed product and need to do better. The innocent pedestrian is being called sue happy by sociopaths that blame a dead person's family for trying to get justice. Sick. Tesla should be held to account for it's failures as should the driver. Both are at fault.
Tesla is far from the first company that combined lane-steering with adaptive cruise control, and then used a steering wheel torque sensor to make sure the driver was paying attention.
All these systems have serious limitations when it comes to detecting stopped cars or pedestrians. They all go to great lengths telling the user what all the limitations are.
All these systems are designed as driver assist systems where ALL the responsibility is on the driver.
When we get behind the wheel of a Tesla we assume 100% responsibility for an accident unless some defect in the car caused the accident. We assume 100% responsibility whether we're driving manually, in TACC or AP mode.
A defect in the car wasn't what caused this accident. What caused this accident was the driver falling asleep just like the driver falling asleep is the cause of so many fatality accidents.
Having limitations in the technology to detect a pedestrian isn't a defect.
Having limitations on the ability to monitor the driver is not a defect.
I completely agree that the steering wheel torque sensor is a horrible way of monitoring the driver, but that doesn't put liability for this accident on Tesla.
The driver is not just fully responsible for this accident, but they are also guilty of a crime. They were arrested after the accident happened.
Now keep in mind I'm not opposed to the idea of making L2 vehicles partially responsible for an accident. I think we're allowing companies to put too much responsibility on the driver while taking away the driving tasks. Especially if we consider things like Smart Summon where one can't possibly see everything from vantage point 100ft away from the vehicle or with NoA with auto-lane changes. Where the car will consistently pass on the left, but then once in a blue moon will decide to pass on the right. A person monitoring it isn't going to realize it goofed until it starts the lane change.
But, that isn't how L2 vehicles are sold. Instead the regulators have some control over what they can do. Like AP can do a lot more in the US than Europe. The regulators also control what kind of driver monitoring system they have to have. I believe in Europe they are going to start to require driver monitoring, and it can't be done with a silly torque sensor.
