Tesla must pay portion of $329M damages after fatal Autopilot crash, jury says

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/01/tesla-must-pay-329-million-in-damages-in-fatal-autopilot-case.html

by koolba • 12 months ago

215 276 12 months ago

cnbc.com

bookmtn• 12 months ago

If Tesla is partially responsible for this fatal accident, who or what else was ruled as contributing to the crash?

wedn3sday2• 12 months ago

Well, I dont think anyone else contributed a system called "autopilot."

bdcravens• 12 months ago

And yet Tesla was only found 33% accountable, so the presence of "autopilot" was only 1/3 of the cause.

Hamuko3• 12 months ago

I'd guess the driver since he was using his phone, then dropped it and was scrambling to pick it up when the accident happened.

MBCook12• 12 months ago

The article is clear. The driver bore the rest of the responsibility.

guywithahat2• 12 months ago

The company must pay $329 million in damages to victims and survivor, including compensatory and punitive damages.
A Tesla owner named George McGee was driving his Model S electric sedan while using the company’s Enhanced Autopilot, a partially automated driving system.
While driving, McGee dropped his mobile phone that he was using and scrambled to pick it up. He said during the trial that he believed Enhanced Autopilot would brake if an obstacle was in the way. His Model S accelerated through an intersection at just over 60 miles per hour, hitting a nearby empty parked car and its owners, who were standing on the other side of their vehicle.

On one hand I don't think you can apply a price to a human life, but on the other 329 million feels too high, especially since Tesla is only partially to blame, it wasn't FSD, and the driver wasn't using the system correctly. Had the system been being used correctly and Tesla was assigned more of the blame, would this be a 1 billion dollar case? This doesn't hold up logically unless I'm missing something, certainly the victim wouldn't be getting fined 329 million if it was decided to be his fault for not looking at the road

IdSayThatllDoIt• 12 months ago

I imagine the jury heard "autopilot" and then assigned blame to the company that called it that.

"[Plaintiffs] claimed Tesla’s Autopilot technology was flawed and deceptively marketed."

ajross5• 12 months ago

As gets pointed out ad nauseum, the very first "cruise control" product in cars was in fact called "Auto-Pilot". Also real "autopilot" systems in aircraft (where the term of art comes from!) aren't remotely supervision-free.

This is a fake argument (post hoc rationalization): It invents a meaning to a phrase that seems reasonable but that has never been rigorously applied ever, and demands that one speaker, and only that one speaker, adhere to the ad hoc standard.

Hamuko3• 12 months ago

"Autopilot" isn't even the most egregious Tesla marketing term since that honour goes to "Full Self-Driving", which according to the fine text "[does] not make the vehicle autonomous".

Tesla's self-driving advertising is all fucking garbage and then some George McGee browses Facebook while believing that his car is driving itself.

close04• 12 months ago

I imagine the jury heard "autopilot" and then assigned blame to the company that called it that.

It's only fair. If the name was fine when it was attracting the buyers who were mislead about the real capabilities, it must be fine when it causing the same to jurors.

There's another similar argument to be made about the massive amount awarded as damages, which maybe will be lowered on appeal. If people (Tesla included) can make the argument that when a car learns something or gets an "IQ" improvement they all do, then it stands to reason that when one car is dangerous they all are (or were, even for a time). There are millions of Teslas on the road today so proportionally it's a low amount per unsafe car.

ratelimitsteve4• 12 months ago

do you think they heard "autopilot" or "full self driving"?

bko3• 12 months ago

On one hand I don't think you can apply a price to a human life

Yes, although courts do this all the time. Even if you believe this as solely manufacturer error, there are precedents. Consider General Motors ignition switch recalls. This affected 800k vehicles and resulted in 124 deaths.

As part of the Deferred Prosecution Agreement, GM agreed to forfeit $900 million to the United States.[4][51] GM gave $600 million in compensation to surviving victims of accidents caused by faulty ignition switches

So about $5m per death, and 300m to the government. This seems excessive for one death, even if you believe Tesla was completely at fault. And the fact that this is the only such case (?) since 2019, seems like the fault isn't really on the manufacturer side.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_ignition_switch...

panarky2• 12 months ago

If you you make a manufacturing error without intentionally deceiving your customers through deceptive naming of features, you have to pay millions per death.

If you intentionally give the feature a deceptive name like "autopilot", and then customers rely on that deceptive name to take their eyes off the road, then you have to pay hundreds of millions per death.

Makes sense to me.

pengaru• 12 months ago

If anyone's confused about what to expect of autopilot and/or FSD, it's Tesla's doing and they should be getting fined into oblivion for the confusion and risks they're creating.

marcosdumay• 12 months ago

The US justice system uses punitive damages very heavily. And Tesla should absolutely get some punishment here.

On most other places you'd see it paying hundreds of millions in fines and a few millions in damages.

thorum• 12 months ago

The product simply should not be called Autopilot. Anyone with any common sense could predict that many people will (quite reasonably) assume that a feature called Autopilot functions as a true autopilot, and that misunderstanding will lead to fatalities.

bangaladore3• 12 months ago

feature called Autopilot functions as a true autopilot

What's a "true autopilot"? In airplanes, autopilot systems traditionally keep heading, altitude, and speed, but pilots are still required to monitor and take over when necessary. It's not hands-off or fully autonomous.

I would argue you are creating a definition of "autopilot" that most people do not agree with.

realusername• 12 months ago

There's two conflicting goals here, Tesla's marketing department would really like to make you think the car is fully autonomous for financial reasons (hence autopilot and full self driving) and then there's Tesla's legal department which would prefer to blame somebody else for their poor software.

nullc2• 12 months ago

A true autopilot is a system on a boat or aircraft that keeps it on a set heading. ISTM in this case that's what the autopilot did.

dzhiurgis8• 12 months ago

Anyone who used it knows its limitations. IDK maybe in 2019 it was different tho, now it's full of warnings that make it barely useable when distracted. Ironically you are better off disabling it and staring into your phone, which seems what regulators actually want.

And by the way what is true autopilot? Is the average joe a 787 pilot who's also autopilot master?

Funny that pretty much every car ships with autosteer now. Ones I've used didn't seem to have much warnings, explanations, disclaimers or agreements that pundits here assume it should.

furyofantares• 12 months ago

This doesn't hold up logically unless I'm missing something, certainly the victim wouldn't be getting fined 329 million if it was decided to be his fault for not looking at the road

I hope we haven't internalized the idea that corporations should be treated the same as people.

There's essentially no difference $3M and $300M fine against most individuals, but $3M means very little to Tesla. If you want Tesla's behavior to change - and other automakers take notice and not repeat the behavior - then the fine must be meaningful to them.

That's another difference - fining an indivisible is not going to change risks much, the individual's behavior changing is not that meaningful compared to Tesla's behavior changing. And it's not like a huge fine is gonna make a difference in other drivers deciding to be better, whereas other automakers will notice a huge fine.

ratelimitsteve4• 12 months ago

I hope we haven't internalized the idea that corporations should be treated the same as people.

Only when it comes to rights. When it comes to responsibilities the corporations stop being people and go back to being amorphous, abstract things that are impossible to punish.

bko3• 12 months ago

If you want Tesla's behavior to change - and other automakers take notice and not repeat the behavior - then the fine must be meaningful to them.

What behavior do you want them to change? Remove FSD from their cars? It's been nearly 10 years since released and over 3bn miles driven. There's one case where someone died while fetching his cell phone. You would think if it was really dangerous, people would be dying in scores.

This is obviously targeted and the court system should not be playing favorites or going after political opponents

stouset2• 12 months ago

I agree that Tesla should receive punitive damages. And the size of the punitive damages must be enough to discourage bad behavior.

I'm not necessarily sure the victim(s) should get all of the punitive damages. $329 million is a gargantuan sum of money; it "feels" wrong to give a corporation-sized punishment to a small group of individuals. I could certainly see some proportion going toward funding regulatory agencies, but I fear the government getting the bulk of punitive damages would set up some perverse incentives.

I think in the absence of another alternative, giving it to the victim(s) is probably the best option. But is there an even better possible place to disburse the funds from these types of fines?

thelastgallon• 12 months ago

$300M means very little to Tesla. The stock didn't even drop a bit (other than the usual market fluctuations today). Perhaps $4.20B or $6.90B would've been meaningful. Elon notices these numbers.

ornornor• 12 months ago

To add, this is also punitive for endangering countless other road users that aren’t suing in this particular instance.

colingauvin• 12 months ago

Tesla was found partially liable for this crash. The reason they were liable was they sold something claiming (practically speaking) that it could do something. The customer believed that claim. It failed to do that thing and killed people.

So the question then is - how much did Tesla benefit from claiming they could do this thing? That seems like a reasonable starting point for damages.

onlyrealcuzzo• 12 months ago

And the fine needs to be high enough to prevent them from just saying - oh, well, we can make money if we keep doing it.

If you could only fine a person for committing murder, you wouldn't fine a billionaire $5m, and then hope he wouldn't go on killing everyone he thinks he'd rather have dead than $5m.

blargey• 12 months ago

The fault with an individual can be reasonably constrained to the one prosecuted death they caused. The fault with "autopilot by Tesla", a system that was marketed and deployed at scale, cannot.

And if you want to draw parallels with individuals, an individual driver's license would be automatically suspended and revoked when found at fault for manslaughter. Would you propose a minimum 1~3 year ban on autopilot-by-Tesla within the US, instead?

beambot• 12 months ago

On the flip side: Penalties should be scaled relative to one's means so that the wealthy (whether people or corporations) actually feel the pain & learn from their mistakes. Otherwise penalties for the wealthy are like a cup of coffee for the average Joe -- just a "cost of business."

I'm also a big proponent of exponential backoff for repeat offenders.

abeppu• 12 months ago

I think the conceptually messed up part is, when such an award includes separate components for compensatory damages and punitive damages, the plaintiff receives the punitive damages even if they're part of a much broader class that was impacted by the conduct in question. E.g. how many people's choice to purchase a Tesla was influenced by the deceptive marketing? How many other people had accidents or some damages? I think there ought to be a mechanism where the punitive portion rolls into the beginning of a fund for a whole class, and could be used to defray some costs of bringing a larger class action, or dispersed directly to other parties.

MBCook12• 12 months ago

So if I make a lawsuit and prove there is a small possibility my toaster can cause my arm to be cut off, because that’s what it did to me, and win $400,000,000 I should only get $400 if it turns out they sold 1 million units?

It’s not a class action lawsuit. If they want their cash they should sue too. That’s how our system works.

somerandomqaguy• 12 months ago

I just did some googling around:

The case also included startling charges by lawyers for the family of the deceased, 22-year-old, Naibel Benavides Leon, and for her injured boyfriend, Dillon Angulo. They claimed Tesla either hid or lost key evidence, including data and video recorded seconds before the accident.
Tesla has previously faced criticism that it is slow to cough up crucial data by relatives of other victims in Tesla crashes, accusations that the car company has denied. In this case, the plaintiffs showed Tesla had the evidence all along, despite its repeated denials, by hiring a forensic data expert who dug it up. Tesla said it made a mistake after being shown the evidence and honestly hadn’t thought it was there.

-https://lasvegassun.com/news/2025/aug/01/jury-orders-tesla-t...

Nothing enrages a judge faster then an attempt to conceal evidence that a court has ordered be turned over during discovery. If this is then I suspect the punitive damages have to do as much about disregard to the legal process as it is the case itself.

polotics• 12 months ago

329 million too high? if you had the money and handing it over would save your life, would you rather keep the money as a corpse?

thfuran5• 12 months ago

So wrongful death liability should be infinite, or maybe just equal to the money supply (pick one, I guess)?

dzhiurgis8• 12 months ago

Let's fine Apple too, since they allow smartphones to be using while driving.

fuoqi• 12 months ago

I don't think you can apply a price to a human life

Not only we can, but it also done routinely. For example, see this Practical Engineering video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQbaVdge7kU

HWR_143• 12 months ago

329 million is not just compensatory damages (the value of the human life) but also punitive damages. That number floats up to whatever it takes to disincentivize Tesla in the future.

Simulacra• 12 months ago

It's sort of like with the Prius acceleration debacle we had, people always want to blame the car and not their own actions.

scoofy• 12 months ago

It's the sum of damages and punitive damages.

recursivecaveat• 12 months ago

*Punitive damages*. From another article: "They claimed Tesla either hid or lost key evidence, including data and video recorded seconds before the accident." If Tesla is destroying evidence then yeah they ought to feel the pain, and those personally responsible should be charged as well. If you make it cheaper to evade the law than comply, what good is the court at all?

motorest• 12 months ago

On one hand I don't think you can apply a price to a human life, but on the other 329 million feels too high, (...)

Let me stop you right there. That's not how damages work.

Damages have two goals: compensate victims, and dissuade offenders from repeating the same mistakes. The latter involves punishments that discourage repeat offenses.

That's where these high values come from. They are intended to force the likes of Tesla to not ignore the lives they are ending due to their failures.

If damages were low, the likes of Tesla would do absolutely nothing and absorb them as operational expenses, and continue to cause deaths claiming they are unavoidable.

Once the likes of Tesla are forced to pay significant volumes of cash in damages, they suddenly find motives to take their design problems seriously.

lblume4• 12 months ago

I tend to agree, however the government is not an unincentivized incentivizer. By being able to impose such fines, the government is potentially itself incentivized to not prevent these accidents for they potentially cause this kind of revenue.

There are ways to mitigate this, such as forcing the government to use these revenues in a way that is relevant to the issue at hand, i.e. creating safety jobs, strengthening control authorities, or something else.

You could also say that the amount is insignificant, but that could of course change with every lawsuit, and it of course accumulates. Or one could speculate that the interests are not really monetarily aligned at all (e.g. prisons), or that the judicial system is independent enough to stop propagation of these incentives. I think it is still needed to consider and try to controlledly align these motives between the relevant actors.

Dylan168077• 12 months ago

Damages have two goals: compensate victims, and dissuade offenders

Let me stop you right there. Just the compensatory damages were 129 million. And most of that was charged to the driver, no corporate boost there.

bryant3• 12 months ago

If there's an argument to be made that the damages are too high (I'm not making this argument, to be clear), it might be with the compensatory damages prescribed by the jury at $129 million, but then that begs the question of what the cost of a human life is. Money won't bring someone back, but if you're in a courtroom and forced to calculate this figure, it's better to just overestimate IMO.

But the punitive damages at $200 million are appropriate — it's what the jury thought would be appropriate to discourage Tesla's behaviors.

1vuio0pswjnm73• 12 months ago

"This doesn't hold up logically unless I'm missing something, certainly the victim wouldn't be getting fined 329 millioon if it was decided to be his fault for not loooking at the road"

There was no "329 million fine"

There was a (a) 59 million compensatory damages award to the representative of the estate of the deceased and (b) 70 million compensatory damages award to her boyfriend who survived

The punitive damages were likley the result of Tesla's misconduct in deliberately concealing evidence, not its percentage of fault in causing the accident

HN front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44787780

Why would Tesla conceal evidence. That question is left as one for the reader

Indeed, the HN commenter missed several things

bsimpson• 12 months ago

Wellbeing doesn't have a price tag. There's no amount of money someone could pay you to make up for your daughter dying early or your son becoming disabled.

However, $329M sounds like an imaginary amount of money in a liability claim. If this guy crashed into a parked car without Tesla being involved, the family would be unfathomably lucky to even get 1% of that amount.

wedn3sday2• 12 months ago

Perhaps the driver would have acted differently if Tesla hadnt sold him a product called "autopilot."

cosmicgadget4• 12 months ago

But if it was called 'lane assist' or 'adaptive cruise' he might not have bought the car in the first place.

terminalshort2• 12 months ago

Typically you need better evidence than "perhaps" to walk out of court with millions.

Hamuko3• 12 months ago

Most of that $329 million is punitive, not compensatory.

narrator• 12 months ago

The supreme court has ruled on punitive damage awards going back to the 1990s and limited the excesses. You can't for example get $4 million in punitive damages on $4000 in actual damages. The general rule from the looks of the article is 5x actual damages.

https://corporate.findlaw.com/litigation-disputes/punitive-d...

SilverElfin2• 12 months ago

While driving, McGee dropped his mobile phone that he was using and scrambled to pick it up. He said during the trial that he believed Enhanced Autopilot would brake if an obstacle was in the way. His Model S accelerated through an intersection at just over 60 miles per hour, hitting a nearby empty parked car and its owners, who were standing on the other side of their vehicle.

Hard for me to see this as anything but the driver’s fault. If you drop your phone, pull over and pick it up or just leave it on the floor. Everyone knows, and the car tells you, to pay attention and remain ready to take over.

m4632• 12 months ago

The model s has terrible phone docks. Don't get me started on cupholders, I'll bet people have drink mishaps all the time that affect driving.

I'm actually kind of serious about this - keeping people's stuff secure and organized is important in a moving car.

I'm surprised the touchscreen controls and retiring of stalks aren't coming under more safetly scrutiny.

With the new cars without a PRND stalk, how can you quickly reverse the car if you nose out too far and someone is coming from the side? will the car reverse or go forward into danger?

dzhiurgis8• 12 months ago

What Tesla touchscreen controls are crucial for driving? FWIW climate is quick little swipe, arguably easier than turning dial.

tr81• 12 months ago

Why would you pull over when you paid top dollars for Autopilot?

izacus• 12 months ago

The driver at that time was Tesla Autopilot. So yeah, drivers fault as the jury said.

tantalor2• 12 months ago

1/3 Tesla's fault, 2/3 the operator's

SilverElfin2• 12 months ago

That sounds indistinguishable from “The driver at the time was the motor”

ineedasername• 12 months ago

Maybe he would have pulled over if the car’s capabilities hadn’t been oversold. Two entities did stupid things: 1) The person by not waiting to pull over because Elon Musk’s false claims, and 2) Tesla via Elon Musk making those false claims.

It passes a classic “but for…” test in causality.

SoftTalker3• 12 months ago

And why was his mobile phone in his hand to drop, if he was driving? Most states have laws against mobile device usage while driving, and it was never a responsible thing to do even before the laws were enacted.

nielsbot• 12 months ago

Sure--dangerous and wrong. Despite that, Autopilot was driving at the time.

MBCook12• 12 months ago

Perhaps he thought it was safe. After all, he had autopilot.

naet• 12 months ago

The argument is that if the driver was in a different vehicle he would have done just that, pulled over and picked it up, but because he believed the Tesla was capable of driving safely on it's own he didn't do so.

Normally I turn the steering wheel when I want to turn my car. If you sold me a car and told me it had technology to make turns automatically without my input then I might let go of the wheel instead of turning it, something I would never have done otherwise. If I then don't turn and slam straight into a wall, am I at fault for trusting what I was sold to be true?

If the driver has heard that their Tesla is capable of autonomous driving, and therefore trusts it to drive itself, there may be a fair argument that Tesla shares in that blame. If it's a completely unreasonable belief (like me believing my 1998 Toyota is capable of self driving) then that argument falls apart. But if Tesla has promoted their self driving feature as being fully functional, used confusing descriptions like "Full Self-Driving", etc, it might become a pretty reasonable argument.

dzhiurgis8• 12 months ago

Except driver already accepted liability.

Also this doesn't stand water today as all new cars have some basic autosteer.

ninalanyon3• 12 months ago

Every time I engage Autopilot in my Model S it admonishes me with a notice in the instrument cluster that I am to keep my hands on the wheel. If I don't make it clear the car that I am there and holding on by applying a little rotational force to the wheel at least every fifteen seconds the car will remind me.

So how does one conclude the that the car is capable of driving itself? Or is the version of Autopilot in the car in question different in this respect?

Autopilot is not autonomous driving and isn't marketed as such; Full Self Driving (FSD) is an extra cost option.

ghusto2• 12 months ago

They also said that by putting his foot down on the accelerator, he overrode the feature. He might say he didn't know that's how it worked, but then there's even more fault for performing such a dangerous action not knowing how the thing you think will save you is supposed to be operated.

mcrk• 12 months ago

I bet most of the prosecution time was spent "explaining" the meaning of autopilot to the jury. Easy money.

dmix2• 12 months ago

Airplanes have autopilots too but pilots are still sitting there on the controls and have to be paying attention. A brand or technical name doesn't remove responsibility.

mort963• 12 months ago

This wasn't a plane though, and the driver wasn't a pilot

AngryData• 12 months ago

An airplane using autopilot isn't seconds away from suddenly crashing.

Ekaros2• 12 months ago

Only 0.03% of market cap... Seems pretty cheap actually.

jayess3• 12 months ago

Good lord, $129 million in compensatory damages is absurd.

One thing you notice when visiting Florida is that every other billboard says "In a wreck? Get a check! Call Lawyer Ambulance Chaser Jones!!"

metabagel12• 12 months ago

How much is your life worth?

SoftTalker3• 12 months ago

What is a reasonable forecast of your personal balance sheet at the time of your natural death?

Of course human life itself doesn't have a dollar value, but that also means that money cannot replace a lost life.

knodi1232• 12 months ago

to me? an infinite amount! So trying to measure it in dollar terms is already a pointless exercise.

If you want to see the hole in this argument, try looking at it from the other side- How can you arrive at the conclusion that a life is worth only $329M? Why so low? Why not a billion, or a trillion?

If you have to come up with an objective and dispassionate standard, then I doubt you'd find one where the number it generates is $329 million.

jayess3• 12 months ago

Probably a few million, tops.

devwastaken• 12 months ago

Corps operate in jurisdictions where this is limited to hundreds of thousands regardless of what the jury says. tesla will never pay this.

TheAlchemist2• 12 months ago

Whatever one believes about the state of the FSD / Autopilot today (it still doesn't work well enough to be safe and probably won't for the next 5 years), I just don't see how one can argue that almost 10 years ago, when this thing would go into a fatal accident every 10 miles while Tesla was arguing it's safer than a human and will go from LA to NY autonomously within the year, was not a total bullshit a deceptive marketing.

"The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons" - that was 2016... Funnily enough, in 2025 they are rolling exactly the same idea, as a Robotaxi, in California. Amazing.

comte7092• 12 months ago

A lot of discussion in this thread about the technical meaning of “autopilot” and its capabilities vs FSD.

This is really missing the point. Tesla could have called it “unicorn mode” and the result would still be the same.

The true issue at hand is that Elon Musk has been banding about telling people that their cars are going to drive themselves completely for over a decade now and overstating teslas capabilities in this area. Based on the sum totality of the messaging, many lay consumers believe teslas have been able to safely drive themselves unsupervised for a long time.

From a culpability standpoint, you can’t put all this hype out and then claim it doesn’t matter because technically the fine print says otherwise.

andsoitis• 12 months ago

it doesn’t matter because technically the fine print says otherwise.

Every time you engage the system it tells you to pay attention. It also has sensors to detect when you don’t and forces you. If you have more than N violations in a trip, the system is unavailable for the remainder of your trip.

I don’t know how much clearer it could be.

I would argue that the system is actually so good (but imperfect) that people overestimate how good it is, and let their guard down.

If a system were more error prone, people would not trust it so much.

danny_codes• 12 months ago

Which is kind of the entire problem. It’s Tesla bringing this grey-zone product to market that the Jury/Judge found to be problematic (and thus ruled against Tesla).

Tesla has always been blasé about safety.

TheAlchemist2• 12 months ago

Look at what Elon and even Tesla official account are publishing daily on Twitter. The tweet suggestions like your car can drive you even when you have a health emergency and need to drive to ER or that you can make an espresso while your car is driving itself.

Can you point to any other automaker that even come close to this level of false advertising ?

Zanfa• 12 months ago

I don’t know how much clearer it could be.

Maybe not give it a misleading name that implies full self-driving capabilities. Also not have the CEO publicly make grandiose claims of the performance over 8 years.

If a system were more error prone, people would not trust it so much.

Unfortunately not. Youtube is full of videos of FSD trying to crash into oncoming traffic, parked cars etc, but then at the end of the video the driver goes “well that was pretty impressive” and just ignores all the suicide attempts.

wagwang• 12 months ago

I dont understand this at all. Mercedes recently announced that theyd be liable for accidentals caused by their level 4 system meaning that by default, all other self driving features are driver liable?

dmix2• 12 months ago

I haven't looked at it but that may be regulatory or insurance liability vs civil suits which in America like to invent fantastical numbers.

metabagel12• 12 months ago

Mercedes Benz system in California and Nevada is level 3 autonomous.

https://www.kbb.com/car-advice/level-3-autonomy-what-car-buy...

https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/features/mercedes-level-...

Mercedes Chief Technology Officer Markus Schäfer recently told Automotive News that Level 4 autonomy is "doable" by 2030.

MBCook12• 12 months ago

Level 3 and level 2 are VERY different.

That’s apples and oranges. And Mercedes saying something certainly doesn’t change the law.

Mercedes built a sophisticated system designed to be able to handle what it might run into within the very limited domain it was designed for. Then they got it certified and approved by the government. Among other things, it only works at low speed. Not 60 MPH. And I think only on highways, not where there are intersections.

Tesla‘s system is not child’s play, sure. But they unleashed it everywhere. Without any certification. And relatively few limits, which I think they later had to tighten.

Mercedes was minimizing risk. Tesla was not.

al_borland• 12 months ago

If I were running a car company, I may decide to stop development on assistive features and remove any that exist from future models. The way people are using them, and the courts are punishing the companies for adding these safety features, is it worth it to them? Not having them would also bring down the base price on vehicles, which seems to be the primary complaint from people right now.

BonoboIO3• 12 months ago

Tesla hid evidence and was probably punished by the jury and I hardly feel sorry for Tesla. Maybe next time they will not do that, but I doubt it. Transparency was never a thing baked into the Tesla Musk DNA.

https://lasvegassun.com/news/2025/aug/01/jury-orders-tesla-t...

LorenPechtel2• 12 months ago

It's not assistive features in general that are the problem. It's that level 3 self-drive (which is what Tesla purports to have) should not be permitted to exist.

Things which simply help the driver, fine. Lane assist, adaptive cruise control and other such things that remove some of the workload but still leave the driver with the full responsibility of control. That's level 2.

Level 3 can generally run the car but is not capable of dealing with everything it might encounter. That's where you get danger--this guy thought he could pick up his dropped phone, his car didn't even manage to stay in it's lane. And the jury quite correctly said that's totally unacceptable.

The next step above level 2 should be skipping to level 4--a car that is capable of making a safe choice in all circumstances. That's Waymo, not Tesla. A Waymo will refuse to leave the area with the sufficiently detailed mapping it needs. A Waymo might encounter something on the road that it can't figure out--if that happens it will stop and wait for human help. Waymos can ask their control center for guidance (the remote operators do not actually drive, they tell the car what to do about what it doesn't understand) and can turn control over to a local first responder.

terminalshort2• 12 months ago

You probably should have read the article because this lawsuit is specifically about the product that you just said is "fine."

metabagel12• 12 months ago

Tesla is level 2 autonomous.

https://www.kbb.com/car-advice/level-3-autonomy-what-car-buy...

The only level 3 autonomous vehicles available for purchase in the U.S. are certain Mercedes-Benz models, and it only works on select roads in California and Nevada.

Mercedes-Benz Drive Pilot: California and Nevada are currently the only states with roads approved for the Mercedes-Benz Drive Pilot. For 2025, only the EQS and S-Class offer Level 3 and then it’s by subscription.

fvgvkujdfbllo• 12 months ago

Or just not do false advertising.

BonoboIO3• 12 months ago

Tesla tried to hide evidence … the jury probably did not like to be lied to by Tesla.

F** around and find out

The case also included startling charges by lawyers for the family of the deceased, 22-year-old, Naibel Benavides Leon, and for her injured boyfriend, Dillon Angulo. They claimed Tesla either hid or lost key evidence, including data and video recorded seconds before the accident.
Tesla has previously faced criticism that it is slow to cough up crucial data by relatives of other victims in Tesla crashes, accusations that the car company has denied. In this case, the plaintiffs showed Tesla had the evidence all along, despite its repeated denials, by hiring a forensic data expert who dug it up. Tesla said it made a mistake after being shown the evidence and honestly hadn’t thought it was there.

https://lasvegassun.com/news/2025/aug/01/jury-orders-tesla-t...

jayess3• 12 months ago

"Schreiber acknowledged that the driver, George McGee, was negligent when he blew through flashing lights, a stop sign and a T-intersection at 62 miles an hour before slamming into a Chevrolet Tahoe that the couple had parked to get a look at the stars."

BonoboIO3• 12 months ago

Does that change the shitty behavior of Tesla?

mort963• 12 months ago

Probably the reason why the driver was assigned 66% of the blame.. Did you have a point?

andrewmcwatters• 12 months ago

Interesting reading https://www.tesladeaths.com/, which is linked in the article at the end.

tantalor2• 12 months ago

Important: headline was just updated,

CORRECTION: Tesla must pay portion of $329 million in damages after fatal Autopilot crash, jury says

This was added,

The jury determined Tesla should be held 33% responsible for the fatal crash. That means the automaker would be responsible for about $42.5 million in compensatory damages.

v5v3• 12 months ago

The articles has been updated (correction) to say Tesla is liable for a portion of the damages. Not all of it.

33% liable

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/01/tesla-must-pay-329-million-i...

hshdhdhj4444• 12 months ago

33% for the compensatory damages and 100% of the punitive damages according to the article. So total of about $242 mm.

ra7• 12 months ago

“Tesla designed Autopilot only for controlled access highways yet deliberately chose not to restrict drivers from using it elsewhere, alongside Elon Musk telling the world Autopilot drove better than humans,” Brett Schreiber, counsel for the plaintiffs, said in an e-mailed statement on Friday.

Tesla had every opportunity to do the safe thing and limit Autopilot to only highways, but they want the hype of a product that "works anywhere" and don't want to be seen as offering a "limited" product like their competitors. Then they are surprised their users misuse it and blame it all on the driver. Tesla wants to have their cake and eat it too.

You know what else prevents misuse? Implementing safeguards for your safety critical product. It took multiple NHTSA probes for Tesla to implement obvious driver monitoring improvements to Autopilot/FSD. There's a reason Tesla is always in hot water: they simply lack the safety culture to do the right thing proactively.

treetalker• 12 months ago

The case number appears to be 1:21-cv-21940-BB (S.D. Fla.).

I practice in that court regularly. Beth Bloom has a reputation as a good trial judge, so I'm somewhat skeptical of Tesla's claims that the trial was rife with errors. That said, both the Southern District and the Eleventh Circuit are known to frequently and readily lop off sizable chunks of punitive damages awards.

The real battle is just beginning: post-trial motions (including for remittitur) will be due in about a month. Then an appeal will likely follow.

debug-desperado• 12 months ago

"Vehicle will not break when accelerator pedal is applied" is displayed on the screen in AutoPilot mode. The system warns you this every time you have foot on the pedal in AutoPilot mode. I wonder if it did that back in 2019 as well or if accidents like this spurred that as a UI change.

Also, how the heck is Mr. McGee supposed to come up with the other 67% of this judgment?

tzs6• 12 months ago

Also, how the heck is Mr. McGee supposed to come up with the other 67% of this judgment?

He probably can't. Assuming the amount stands on appeal, and assuming that he doesn't have an insurance policy with policy limits high enough to cover it, he'll pay as much as he can out of personal assets and probably have his wages garnished.

He might also be able to declare bankruptcy to get out of some or all of it.

An interesting question is what the plaintiffs can do if they just cannot get anywhere near the amount owed from him.

A handful of states have "joint and several liability" for most torts. If this had been in one of those states the way damages work when there are multiple defendants is:

• Each defendant is fully responsible for all damages

• The plaintiff can not collect more than the total damage award

In such a state the plaintiffs could simply ask Tesla for the entire $329 million and Tesla would have to pay. Tesla would then have a claim for $220 million against McGee.

Of course McGee probably can't come up with that, so McGee still ends up in bankruptcy, but instead of plaintiffs being shortchanged by $220 million it would be Tesla getting shortchanged.

The idea behind joint and several liability is that in situations like there where someone has to be screwed it shouldn't be the innocent plaintiff.

Many other states have "modified joint and several liability". In those states rather than each defendant being fully responsible, only defendants whose share of the fault exceeds some threshold (often 50%) are fully responsible.

For example suppose there are three plaintiffs whose fault shares are 60%, 30%, and 10%. In a pure joint and several liability state plaintiff could collect from whichever are most able to come up with the money. If that's the 10% one they could demand 100% from them and leave it to that defendant to try to get reimbursed from the others.

In a modified joint and several liability state with a 50% threshold the most the plaintiff can ask from the 30% and 10% defendants is 30% and 10% respectively. They could ask the 60% defendant for 100% instead. If the 60% defendant is the deep pockets defendant that works out fine for the plaintiff, but if it is the 10% one and the other two are poor then the plaintiff is the one that gets screwed.

Finally there are some states that have gotten rid of joint and several liability, including Florida in 2006. In those states plaintiff can only collect from each defendant bases on their share of fault. Tesla pays their 33%, McGee pays whatever tiny amount he can, and the plaintiff is screwed.

ninalanyon3• 12 months ago

Yes I'm pretty sure that my 2015 Model S has always warned me that the car will not brake if I command it not to with my foot on the accelerator. It certainly did in 2019.

1vuio0pswjnm73• 12 months ago

HN commenter: "On one hand I don't think you can apply a price to a human life, but on the other 329 million feels too high, especially since Tesla is only partially to blame, it wasn't FSD, and the driver wasn't using the system correctly."

What this sentence is describing are compensatory damages, e.g., compensation for loss of life

That number was 129 not 329, and Tesla was only found liable for 33% of it

CNBC: "Tesla's payout is based on $129 million in compensatory damages, and $200 million in punitive damages against the company."

CNBC: "The jury determined Tesla should be held 33% responsible for the fatal crash. That means the automaker would be responsible for about $42.5 million in compensatory damages."

42.5 is not even close to the 329 number that the HN commenter's claims "feels too high"

HN commenter: "This doesn't hold up logically unless I'm missing something, certainly the victim wouldn't be getting fined 329 million if it was decided to be his fault for not looking at the road"

This sentence is describing something more akin to punitive damages, e.g., a fine

That number was 200 not 329

It seems the HN commenter makes no distinction between compensatory and punitive damages

Dylan168077• 12 months ago

1. Why are you "replying" to someone but not using the reply feature?

2. The number that matters here is total compensatory damages, not Tesla's share.

1vuio0pswjnm73• 12 months ago

HN commenter: "On one hand I don't think you can apply a price to a human life, ... "

There was only one fatality

The "price" was $59M not $329M

"433465224","533","2025-08-01","","","2025-08-01.001","PAPERLESS Minute Entry for proceedings held before Judge Beth Bloom: Jury Trial completed on 8/1/2025. Deliberations continue. Jury verdict reached. Jury verdict published and polled. Verdict in favor of Plaintiffs.Total in compensatory damages as to Neima Benavides a Personal Rep. of the Estate of Naibel Benavides Leon: $59,000,000.Total in compensatory damages as to Dillon Angulo: $70,000,000.Total in Punitive Damages as to Neima Benavides and Dillon Angulo: $200,000,000. Total time in court: 5 hour(s) : 30 minutes. Attorney Appearance(s): Adam T. Boumel, Douglas Fredric Eaton, Brett Schreiber, Todd Poses, Thomas P. Branigan, Joel H. Smith, Wendy Frank Lumish, Hilarie Bass, Court Reporter: Yvette Hernandez, 305-523-5698 / Yvette_Hernandez@flsd.uscourts.gov. (ego) (Entered: 08/01/2025)","447817730","PACER Document","","","","533","","","","","","","","","","",""

mike-cardwell• 12 months ago

Tesla Model S in Autopilot mode allegedly came to a T-intersection and, failing to see that the roadway was ending, kept his foot on the accelerator

Autopilot requires you to have your foot on the accelerator? That seems weird to me.

joshuanapoli• 12 months ago

Normally, Autopilot does not require your foot on the accelerator. Pressing the accelerator overrides it to make to car move ahead where the autopilot decided to stop. At the time, autopilot would always stop at an intersection, and the driver was supposed to move ahead when it is clear.

ivape2• 12 months ago

Car travel is such a weird thing. The other day I was walking on the driver side of a wide street where cars were passing me by very fast. Most of us are usually an arms length away from passing cars when we do that, roughly an arms length away from being hit at 20+ mph, yet humans do this careful beam walking without flinching. It’s the American version of Indians riding the roof of a train. If you goto a third world country, they are even more acclimated to insanely dangerous traffic conditions (no traffic laws being followed, cars flying out from every angle). The whole thing is insanity yet everyone is just going along with it.

A life built around car commutes is the outcome of a poorly thought out society. It had such stupid repercussions like racial segregation and the absurdity that everyone gets their own house along with the vertical airspace on top of it (exceedingly selfish). Along with that, it’s dangerous as fuck.

Someone needs to suggest dropping the speed limit across the board in America. Unfortunately the MAGA people will straight boycott roads if we do that (unfortunately?). Most people I talk to in Texas will concede the highways are full of maniacs.

earthnail• 12 months ago

And yet it works surprisingly well.

When I lived in London, people waiting for the tube were leas than an arm’s length away when it rushed in. Blew my mind. Eventually I got used to it and did the same.

lblume4• 12 months ago

The difference is that the tube driver (assuming there even is one) can't just decide to take a slight turn from the planned route, while the car driver really might.

jcurtis• 12 months ago

The tube follows fixed tracks, which is quite different from cars on a road.

mantas6• 12 months ago

Such is life in dense cities where workplaces are concentrated. And pace of life requires humans to take shorter path which is safe enough. At least it’s much safer than in the era of the horses. And sanitary conditions are much better.

lblume4• 12 months ago

Density is fundamentally incompatible with car-friendly cities and a large amount of road. In general, the denser a city becomes, the more people will go by foot, cycle, or use public transport, especially in Europe.

ehnto4• 12 months ago

Interestingly, removing this illusion of a safe "beam" or division is part of safer road design for mixed traffic areas like city streets.

When you remove physical divides between "road" and a "footpath" drivers become more aware that they are dangerous and slow down on their own. Making roads narrower has a similar effect, and removing car parking helps remove that divide and removes the blindspots they create.

There are many roads that should either stop pretending to be safe for pedestrians and turn into highways, or lower the speed limit and redesign the layout to suit the mixed traffic nature of the areas. Doesn't have to be extreme just be honest about the real use of the roads. If it's actually mostly pedestrians, suck it up, make it safe, go drive on the other faster roads.

projektfu• 12 months ago

You can also narrow the space between the curbs in which cars can go and achieve the same effect, while keeping pedestrians grade separated from traffic.

It would go a long way if we could eliminate spaces where a driver can exceed 50 km/hr (31 MPH) while menacing unprotected users of the street.

jwagenet• 12 months ago

Merely dropping speed limits doesn’t work. Speed limits not enforced by road design such as road/lane width (real or by parked cars) or other features (bulb outs, neck downs) are speed suggestions.

octo888• 12 months ago

(tangent)

Train travel is such a weird thing. The service, staff, stock, pricing, timetable etc is set by civil servants and politicians 250 miles away.

The ticketing system is Byzantine and if you make a mistake you get a fine or a criminal record, unless you look like a thug, in which case the staff rarely bother.

Tickets are miraculously priced similar to driving in many instances despite a train looking nothing like a car. In various cases, more expensive than driving

You can be late because a politician 200 miles away annoyed the staff so they decide not to turn up.

It also turns out services on Sunday ran on good will (overtime), so the annoyed staff who get ok pay rises now realised they don't want the overtime so good luck travelling on a Sunday in quite a few areas.

Because of low enforcement of infringements by thugs, they are drawn to the service. You'd think your very high ticket price would include some kind of security? No. Fuck you.

When the trains break down you are expected to be OK with being trapped on a train for hours with no open windows or working toilets because of some "greater good" and insufficient emergency response

I used to be extremely pro public transport

jb1991• 12 months ago

One of the things that is particularly strange about traveling to the United States is that you pretty much have no choice but to rent a car or at least have access to a car in some way, unless you’re going to be spending all your time in a place like New York City. But in nearly every other major western destination, certainly throughout much of Europe, it’s never even a thought that you would need to rent a car. I know plenty of grown adults here in Europe they don’t even have a drivers license! It really makes life a lot more convenient when the world does not revolve around an automobile.

nabla9• 12 months ago

"Tesla designed Autopilot only for controlled-access highways yet deliberately chose not to restrict drivers from using it elsewhere, alongside Elon Musk telling the world Autopilot drove better than humans" https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c93dqpkwx4xo

This is a clear case of misleading marketing. Spreading deceptive information and then hiding contradictory details in the fine print simply won't fly.

Intent is central to legal interpretation. There's been a clear intent to mislead about Tesla Autopilot's capabilities for years, and it's finally starting to backfire. It doesn't matter if Tesla is, on average, better if individual cases are lost due to constant misleading marketing.

numitus• 12 months ago

AI system manufacturers want to sell their products by advertising their superhuman reliability, but they don't want to take responsibility for any mistakes. I should mention that I don't have any Tesla cars in my environment, but a friend of mine claimed in 2017 that the car was capable of fully autonomous and safe driving without human intervention. It's interesting how advertising can distort the essence of technology in people's eyes.

jjaksic• 12 months ago

My wife and I have 2 teslas, a HW3 and a HW4. Even late last year FSD 12.5 was nowhere near close to being able to drive safely. Any non-straightforward situation (like merging during rush hour) would throw it off, so critical interventions were required at least daily.

Starting with FSD 13 on HW4, which came out last December, it's improved dramatically, and since then in my case it hasn't needed a single critical intervention. I think 12.6 on HW3 is also quite good.

The caveat is that we live in the Bay Area, which has an abundance of Tesla training data. Elsewhere I've heard the experience isn't as good. And of course, even in the Bay Area the reliability needs to get a few orders of magnitude higher to be suitable for fully unsupervised self-driving.

deezmofonutz• 12 months ago

Just another excuse not to pay attention while your EV kills another pedestrian. The only thing worse than Tesla cars is Tesla Drivers. Y’all reap what you sow & I hope you burn.

aziaziazi• 12 months ago

For those not aware of the circonstances (as me), here’s Tesla defence:

this driver was solely at fault because he was speeding, with his foot on the accelerator—which overrode Autopilot—as he rummaged for his dropped phone without his eyes on the road

There’s lots to blame in auto makers « security marketing » and phone addiction but it seems obvious that driving a 1ton+ vehicle while not constantly looking at the road can lead to bad outcomes.

I’m all in for (mass surveillance) onboard eye tracking. Make it optional with 50% bonus on your car insurance and driving state tax. I see many, many drivers every day that are looking at their phone in very inappropriate moments like intersections and line changes.

Lionga• 12 months ago

maybe do not call it Autopilot if it is well not auto piloting dangerous situations?

drewbeck2• 12 months ago

If someone wants the circumstances they should read the article, not Tesla’s press release. Here’s what the jury said:

… while McGee was two-thirds responsible for the crash, Tesla also bore a third of the responsibility for selling a vehicle "with a defect that was a legal cause of damage"

ghusto2• 12 months ago

That doesn't give the circumstances, but the judgement. The original commentor gave the circumstances.

bryant3• 12 months ago

Do cars normally allow people to prevent emergency braking with the throttle depressed? I haven't actually tried this for obvious reasons, but if their defense is that the safety mechanisms were disengaged with the throttle being fully depressed...

(Clarified my comment to "prevent" from "override" since overrides broadly exist - per jeroenhd's comment - but it seems in this case the argument was that the feature never engaged)

jeroenhd• 12 months ago

Many automatic safety features do allow user overrides, either by braking (hard) or by accelerating (fast). You may find that your accelerator pedal is harder to press than normal, or that full throttle doesn't do what it normally does. If a normal car does a Tesla and starts doing an emergency brake in the middle of the freeway for no reason, you want the driver to be able to intervene.

thoroughburro• 12 months ago

Do you usually learn about the circumstances of legal cases by reading the arguments of only one side?

scarab92• 12 months ago

Do you have an actual critique of the argument?

I was grateful for it, and at first glance, assuming Tesla’s argument is true, it’s hard to see how they are even partially responsible.

bryant3• 12 months ago

This is by far the correct outcome. Given how long Tesla has been giving users the impression that the software would be superhuman (since 2013 with "Autopilot", and unrelatedly since 2016 with "full self driving"), they're overdue for the consequences, even if in this case they were only found partially liable.

The driver took the fair share of the blame for actually making the decision, but the driver's defense that a feature called "autopilot" would supposedly intervene is exactly the kind of marketing gimmick that needs to be penalized.

It shouldn't have taken injury and death to get to this point.

charcircuit• 12 months ago

This article is about autopilot which is separate from FSD and is essentially equivalent to cruise control in this context.

pirates• 12 months ago

So why is it called autopilot if it’s just cruise control? And what about “automatic piloting” doesn’t include the part where the thing drives itself?

lupusreal• 12 months ago

I agree with the outcome, both Tesla and the driver share responsibility for this death. I hope the driver's responsibility isn't limited to civil liability; he was using his phone and should be charged with reckless homicide. He should be sent to prison.

daft_pink• 12 months ago

I think the government has to step in and push us to the last steps in self driving vehicles to be honest.

They need to build a workable liability framework structure and mandate road construction to aid self driving vehicles.

Tesla must pay portion of $329M damages after fatal Autopilot crash, jury says

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