[HomeGear]

Here’s an important part:

>Riad had initially set his car’s speed to 77 mph; he then set it to 78 mph, and then finally changed the speed to 75 mph. At the time of the crash, the car was going approximately 74 mph.

For me, I’d convict. This isn’t a case of ‘autopilot’ as much as it’s a case where a person purposely (with intent) set his speed above legal limits and did not maintain the attention while doing so.. causing the death of two individuals on their first date.

Tragic.

[danso]

> ...and did not maintain the attention while doing so

IANAL, but exceeding the speed limit wouldn't be enough for a prosecutor to want to prove felony vehicular manslaughter. Even when DUI is involved, juries can still decide that the driver tragically f-cked up, e.g. underestimated how drunk they were, but not in a "grossly negligent" way. Even though virtually everyone knows that drunk driving is illegal.

But how many potential jury members know or believe that violating the fine print of using Autopilot is illegal or wrong? Or that a Tesla owner should be convicted of a felony because they "obviously" should have known better? I'd assume far fewer in a jury pool have strong knowledge and opinions on Autopilot versus drinking-while-driving.

[phkahler]

Just replace the term "autopilot" with "cruise control" because that's all it really is with a bit of lane keeping added. Now does it seem reasonable for someone to set that to 75mph in a 45mph zone? was it 45 or less?

[ghaff]

Of course, there's at least some question of what gets presented to a jury. The defense will presumably try to make this at least in part a question of "confusion" about the car's capabilities. However, I'd expect the prosecution to make a case for that all being irrelevant just as it would be for regular cruise control.

[sandworm101]

Exactly. Most of the legal issues here were actually hashed out decades ago as courts addressed cruise control. Yes, the machine was running the throttle for you, but you are still responsible for instructions given to the machine. You are responsible for speeding and you are responsible if that speeding leads to accidents even though your foot was not actually on the accelerator.

[mleo]

He was on a freeway when it was set, but still above since the speed is 65. The freeway transitions into a surface street and this seemingly occurred at the first light after the transition.

[shadowgovt]

Exactly. And from a systems standpoint, if we're blaming the autopilot we should also consider how much blame should be allocated to the traffic engineer that clubbed a 65MPH California freeway directly into a 45MPH local business street with no traffic-calming measures or other mechanism to signal to a sleepy human brain that the rules of the road had changed besides a lone speed limit sign and a "Good luck sport!" attitude. It'd be interesting to pull history on that first stoplight and see how many accidents have occurred there in the past five years.

(It turns out that's possible. California provides a GIS data digest of fatal accidents maintained by UC Berkeley. Data collection ends at 2021, but the 2016-2021 data set shows 22 crashes coming up on that intersection. https://tims.berkeley.edu/tools/gismap/).

Or we could limit the assignation of blame to the individual who is solely responsible for controlling his multi-ton high-speed vehicle at all times when operating in public thoroughfares.

[MBCook]

I wondered why he was going so fast on a surface street. That makes more sense. Thanks for the context.

[banannaise]

Speed limits in the United States are generally set such that, unless there is heavy traffic, nearly everyone is speeding. Using that as a pretext for charges is generally questionable.

(He was going 75 on a freeway; the freeway suddenly became a surface street, which is bad design, regardless of whether he should have been paying more attention.)

[pmoriarty]

"Speed limits in the United States are generally set such that, unless there is heavy traffic, nearly everyone is speeding"

Not only that, but you can get a ticket for going too slow.

You also usually get tailgated if you're not driving over the speed limit -- just like everybody else.

[sva_]

Isn't 74 a pretty normal speed to drive on a highway? (Only drove there once)

It sounds to me like he was coming off the highway and didn't notice that he was leaving into an intersection with a red traffic light, where the accident occured. Not that I'm saying it is okay for him to not have noticed it.

> Riad was driving on the 91 freeway, heading west into Gardena. The freeway empties out into Artesia Boulevard at Vermont, but Riad, seemingly unaware of that transition, did not appear to react — and neither did his Tesla.

[judge2020]

> He argued that Riad’s actions — driving 74 mph on a surface street — did not rise to “gross negligence” and should not be considered a felony.

Surface street apparently. Maybe a 45/50/55mph zone.

[judge2020]

To add, this must _just_ be adaptive cruise and not autosteer since autosteer (referred to as 'autopilot') explicitly won't drive more than 5 mph over the limit except on highways.

[_ea1k]

Its hard to say for sure. Some non-highways somehow get classified as highways and don't get restricted.