Comment by kjksf

Comment by kjksf 2 days ago

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Because that's the law of the land currently.

The product you buy is called "FSD Supervised". It clearly states you're liable and must supervise the system.

I don't think there's law that would allow Tesla (or anyone else) to sell a passenger car with unsupervised system.

If you take Waymo or Tesla Robotaxi in Austin, you are not liable for accidents, Google or Tesla is.

That's because they operate on limited state laws that allow them to provide such service but the law doesn't allow selling such cars to people.

That's changing. Quite likely this year we will have federal law that will allow selling cars with fully unsupervised self-driving, in which case the insurance/liability will obviously land on the maker of the system, not person present in the car.

throwaway2037 a day ago

    > Quite likely this year we will have federal law that will allow selling cars with fully unsupervised self-driving, in which case the insurance/liability will obviously land on the maker of the system, not person present in the car.
You raise an important point here. Is it economically feasible for system makers to bear the responsibility of self-driving car accidents? It seems impossible, unless the cars are much more expensive to cover the potential future costs. I'm very curious how Waymo insures their cars today. I assume they have a bespoke insurance contract negotiated with a major insurer. Also, do we know the initial cost of each Waymo car (to say nothing of ongoing costs from compute/mapping/etc.)? It must be very high (2x?) given all of the special navigation equipment that is added to each car.
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arijun 2 days ago

I imagine insurance would be split in two in that case. Carmakers would not want to be liable for e.g. someone striking you in a hit-and-run.

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  • smallnix 2 days ago

    If the car that did a hit-and-run was operated autonomously the insurance of the maker of that car should pay. Otherwise it's a human and the situation falls into the bucket of what we already have today.

    So yes, carmakers would pay in a hit-and-run.

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    • JumpCrisscross 2 days ago

      > If the car that did a hit-and-run was operated autonomously the insurance of the maker of that car should pay

      Why? That's not their fault. If a car hits and runs my uninsured bicycle, the manufacturer isn't liable. (My personal umbrella or other insurance, on the other hand, may cover it.)

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      • graeme a day ago

        They're describing a situation of liability, not mere damage. If yor bicycle is hit you didn't do anything wrong.

        If you run into someone on your bike and are at fault then you generally would be liable.

        They're talking about the hypothetical where you're on your bike, which was sold as an autobomous bike and the bike manufacturer's software fully drives the bike, and it runs into someone and is at fault.

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paulryanrogers a day ago

Tacking "Supervised" on the end of "Full Self Driving" is just contradictory. Perhaps if it was "Partial Self Driving" then it wouldn't be so confusing.

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  • pests a day ago

    Its only to differentiate it from their "Unsupervised FSD" which is what they call it now.

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    • paulryanrogers a day ago

      That is redundant and doesn't make the other any less contradictory

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      • pests 11 hours ago

        I agree but I think context is important here. It was called FSD, but they got into trouble, now its "Supervised" so people know its not, well, unsupervised FSD. Yes, I know it doesn't make sense.

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AlotOfReading 2 days ago

You can sell autonomous vehicles to consumers all day long. There's no US federal law prohibiting that, as long as they're compliant with FMVSS as all consumer vehicles are required to be.

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rubyfan 2 days ago

Waymo is also a livery service which you normally aren’t liable for as a passenger of taxi or limousine unless you have deep pockets. /IANAL

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kolbe 2 days ago

> Quite likely this year we will have federal law that will allow selling cars with fully unsupervised self-driving, in which case the insurance/liability will obviously land on the maker of the system, not person present in the car.

This is news to me. This context seems important to understanding Tesla's decision to stop selling FSD. If they're on the hook for insurance, then they will need to dynamically adjust what they charge to reflect insurance costs.

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jasoncartwright 2 days ago

I see. So not Tesla's product they are using to sell insurance around isn't "Full Self-Driving" or "Autonomous" like the page says.

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  • FeloniousHam 2 days ago

    My current FSD usage is 90% over ~2000 miles (since v14.x). Besides driving everywhere, everyday with FSD, I have driven 4 hours garage to hotel valet without intervention. It is absolutely "Full Self-Driving" and "Autonomous".

    FSD isn't perfect, but it is everyday amazing and useful.

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    • JumpCrisscross 2 days ago

      > My current FSD usage is 90% over ~2000 miles

      I'd guess my Subaru's lane-keeping utilisation is in the same ballpark. (By miles, not minutes. And yes, I'm safer when it and I are watching the road than when I'm watching the road alone.)

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      • olyjohn a day ago

        My favorite feature of Subaru's system is when you change lanes, and it stays locked onto the car in the slower lane and slams on the brakes. People behind you love that.

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    • wat10000 2 days ago

      If it was full self driving, wouldn't your usage be 100%?

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      • pests a day ago

        Sometimes a car is fun to drive.

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      • [removed] 2 days ago
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    • jasoncartwright 2 days ago

      Yet still on relying you to cover it with your insurance. Again, clearly not autonomous.

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      • AlotOfReading 2 days ago

        Liability is a separate matter from autonomy. I assume you'd consider yourself autonomous, yet it's your employer's insurance that will be liable if you have an accident while driving a company vehicle.

        If the company required a representative to sit in the car with you and participate in the driving (e.g. by monitoring and taking over before an accident), then there's a case to be made that you're not fully autonomous.

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        • buran77 2 days ago

          > it's your employer's insurance that will be liable if you have an accident while driving a company vehicle

          I think you're mixing some concepts.

          There's car insurance paid by the owner of the car, for the car. There's workplace accident insurance, paid by the employer for the employee. The liability isn't assigned by default, but by determining who's responsible.

          The driver is always legally responsible for accidents caused by their negligence. If you play with your phone behind the wheel and kill someone, even while working and driving a company car, the company's insurance might pay for the damage but you go to prison. The company will recover the money from you. Their work accident insurance will pay nothing.

          The test you can run in your head: will you get arrested if you fall asleep at the wheel and crash? If yes, then it's not autonomous or self driving. It just has driver assistance. It's not that the car can't drive itself at all, just that it doesn't meet the bar for the entire legal concept of "driver/driving".

          "Almost" self driving is like jumping over a canyon and almost making it to the other side. Good effort, bad outcome.

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      • dzhiurgis 2 days ago

        [flagged]

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        • zen928 2 days ago

          Disagree. I appreciate their viewpoint tethering corporate claims to reality by illustrating Tesla is obfuscating the classification of their machines to be autonomous, when they actually aren't. Their comments in other thread chains proved to be fruitful when lacking agitators looking to dismiss critique by citing website rules, like the post adding additional detail to how Tesla muddles legal claims by cooking up cherry-picked evidence that work against the driver despite being the insurer.

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2III7 2 days ago

Without LIDAR and/or additional sensors, Tesla will never be able to provide "real" FSD, no matter how wonderful their software controlling the car is.

Also, self driving is a feature of a vehicle someone owns, I don't understand how that should exempt anyone from insuring their property.

Waymo and others are providing a taxi service where the driver is not a human. You don't pay insurance when you ride Uber or Bolt or any other regular taxi service.

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  • Marsymars 2 days ago

    > Also, self driving is a feature of a vehicle someone owns, I don't understand how that should exempt anyone from insuring their property.

    Well practically speaking, there’s nothing stopping anyone from voluntarily assuming liability for arbitrary things. If Tesla assumes the liability for my car, then even if I still require my “own” insurance for legal purposes, the marginal cost of covering the remaining risk is going to be close to zero.

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  • arijun 2 days ago

    Never say never—it’s not physically impossible. But yes, as it stands, it seems that Tesla will not be self driving any time soon (if ever).

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    • kjksf 2 days ago

      They literally just (in the last few days) started unsupervised robotaxis in Austin.

      They are as self-driving as a car can be.

      This is different than the one where they had a human supervisor in passenger seat (which they still do elsewhere).

      And different than the one where they didn't have human supervisor but did have a follow car.

      Now they have a few robotaxis that are self driving.

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