Comment by gizmo686 2 days ago
Generally speaking, liability for a thing falls on the owner/operator. That person can sue the manufacturer to recover the damages if they want. At some point, I expect it to become somewhat routine for insurures to pay out, then sue the manufacturer to recover.
It already doesn't make sense to own a car for me. It's cheaper to just call an Uber.
Yes, a city viewport. I usually just walk, but when I don't I most often take the subway, not even Uber. Though I feel like in Toronto the subway or some part thereof is closed or under maintenance or whatever way too often. It's not very reliable.
Depends how often.
Multiple Ubers per day are expensive. ($55 x 365 = $20,000)
All in, a budget car costs less than half of that per year.
But if you replace some of that with public transportation, or a car is otherwise impractical, the math changes.
If you take off the conspiracy hat, you will see that there are many advantages to not owning a product. Such as that the vendor's incentives are better aligned with yours. For example, if the thing breaks, it is in __their__ best interest to fix it (or to not let it break in the first place). This also has positive implications for sustainability.
All Tesla vehicles require the person behind the steering wheel to supervise the operations of the vehicle and avoid accidents at all times.
Also, even if a system is fully automated, that doesn’t necessarily legally isolate the person who owns it or set it into motion from liability. Vehicle law would generally need to be updated to change this.
But that might be considered a legal trick. Suppose that, when you pay for a taxi, the standard conditions of carriage would make it your responsibility to supervise the vehicle operation and alert the driver so as to avoid accidents. Would the taxi driver and taxi company be able to eschew liability through that formalism? Probably not. The fact that Tesla makes you sign something does not automatically make the signed document valid and enforceable.
It may be that it is; but then, if you are required to be watchful at all time, and be able to take over from the autonomous vehicle at all times, then - the autonomy doesn't really help you all that much, does it?
No, Tesla doesn’t assign you liability by making you sign something. The law makes the driver of a vehicle liable for the operation, as it always has.
My first sentence was to say that even if the law treats autonomous vehicles differently, Tesla doesn’t sell one.
> The law makes the driver of a vehicle liable for the operation, as it always has.
So, either those Tesla's don't really self-drive (which may be the case, I don't know, but then the whole discussion is moot), or they do, in which case, the human wasn't the one driving and may thus avoid liability.
Then of course there is the possibility that the court might be convinced the car was being drive collaboratively by the human and the car/the computer, in which case Tesla and the human might share the liability. IANA(US)L though.
They say they will, but until relevant laws are updated, this is mostly contractual and not a change to legal liability. It is similar to how an insurance company takes responsibility for the way you operate your car.
If your local legal system does not absolve you from liability when operating an autonomous vehicle, you can still be sued, and Mercedes has no say in this… even though they could reimburse you.
No. They don’t. It was vaporware made to fool people including you. You could never actually order it and it’s canceled now in favor of an L2 system.
Or at some point subscribing to a service may be easier than owning the damn thing.