Insurance company sues Tesla for AP-induced Model X crash

[bro1999]

Insurance Company Sues Tesla Over Model X Crash

"The insurance company says that despite its suggestive name and marketing campaign, "Tesla produced a semi-autonomous vehicle that misleadingly appeared to be fully autonomous."

This has been a common criticism of AP since the Josh Brown crash: the misleading name. If AP was instead called "Co-pilot Assist" or "Ludicrously awesome cruise control" or some other term that didn't already exist that most people would associate with a plane flying by itself, this lawsuit would have never happened.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Ah, I figured I wouldn't recognize the company name.

 

[bro1999]

This crash would have surely been covered on here. Said it happened Sep 2016. Did Tesla ever release a statement about whether AP was active at the time of the crash?

 

[Az_Rael]

This crash would have surely been covered on here. Said it happened Sep 2016. Did Tesla ever release a statement about whether AP was active at the time of the crash?

I don’t recall seeing this one. Looks like it happened in Wisconsin. For us to have seen it here, there would have had to been a news report.

I kept an eye on salvage auction listings for a couple of weeks while I was watching for my totaled car to get listed. I was amazed at the number of Teslas I was seeing in terrible wrecks, including several which had fire damage (one that was unrecognizable - just ashes and burned metal). The narrative on here is Teslas don’t catch fire, but I am guessing they do at a similar rate to gas cars when involved in crashes. (These were not cars from the CA fire areas - they had crash damage too)

In a similar vein, I would guess more people crash using AP than we hear about.

 

[drift]

I read these things and just shake my head. I guess Tesla needs to require all people buying Tesla's to sign a disclaimer that they have read and fully understand the applicable sections of the owners manual, and that they fully understand that the car is not FSD. You can tell those who talk about Tesla AP and aircraft AP are not pilots or they would know that aircraft AP is not autonomous and that when in use there must be a pilot in the seat monitoring the AP and ready to take over in the event of a malfuntion. Sound familiar? I guess we will always have drivers who do not understand the limitations of the systems installed in their vehicles.

 

[schonelucht]

Am I right that this case is about Autopilot 7? May be wise for Tesla to just settle and not let this get any air. It's moot anyway since 7.0 is old news.

 

[BrokerDon]

According to A.M. Best the insurance company is AAA a.k.a. the "Auto Club"

MemberSelect Insurance Company
A.M. Best #: 002140 NAIC #: 21229 FEIN #: 386092971
Domiciliary Address
1 Auto Club Drive
Dearborn, MI 48126
www.autoclubgroup.com​

Time to consider dropping our AAA membership to rebuke yet another "lack of personal responsibility" lawsuit.

 

[Matias]

You can tell those who talk about Tesla AP and aircraft AP are not pilots or they would know that aircraft AP is not autonomous and that when in use there must be a pilot in the seat monitoring the AP and ready to take over in the event of a malfuntion. Sound familiar? I guess we will always have drivers who do not understand the limitations of the systems installed in their vehicles.

You’re absolutely right. Most Tesla owners are not pilots. What’s the point? If you’re saying, only pilots can understand Tesla’s AP, it sounds like there’s something wrong with the design...

 

[drift]

You’re absolutely right. Most Tesla owners are not pilots. What’s the point? If you’re saying, only pilots can understand Tesla’s AP, it sounds like there’s something wrong with the design...

The point is Tesla drivers appear to not understand either Tesla AP or Aircraft AP and think that they do more than they do. This results in Tesla drivers treating their vehicles as if they are FSD when they are not and having crashes such as this one which was completely avoidable had the driver been being a driver and not a passenger.

 

[Az_Rael]

The point is Tesla drivers appear to not understand either Tesla AP or Aircraft AP and think that they do more than they do. This results in Tesla drivers treating their vehicles as if they are FSD when they are not and having crashes such as this one which was completely avoidable had the driver been being a driver and not a passenger.

Well, we don’t really know the details of the crash so it is hard to say what happened. Granted, since we are talking about AP 7 here, I would guess his hands weren’t on the wheel, and it appears he had AP engaged in a construction zone.

I will say that at least with AP2, I worry a bit that the system might do something crazy before I have time to react even with my hands firmly on the wheel. It can and does make sudden movements and the force to overcome the autosteer is higher than AP1 causing me to have had several scary jerky recoveries out of AP at freeway speeds. All on a perfectly straight highway. If it decides to abort a lane change midway thru, it also jerks you back into your lane very quickly and if you had an aggressive driver behind who wasn’t expecting that and had already moved into the space, you might hit that person before you had time to react (hopefully the ultrasonics would see the other car, but who wants to trust that?). Because of this, I tend to not engage autosteer unless traffic is very light and I am feeling sporty.

So, I think even though we always blame the driver and currently the driver is ultimately responsible, I do wonder if there is a line where Tesla might be held accountable for the way the system behaves/misbehaves if it were to do something legitimately crazy even if the driver had their hands on the wheel and was fully attentive.