Tesla was caught withholding data, lying about it, and misdirecting authorities in the wrongful death case involving Autopilot that it lost this week.
The automaker was undeniably covering up for Autopilot.
Last week, a jury found Tesla partially liable for a wrongful death involving a crash on Autopilot. We now have access to the trial transcripts, which confirm that Tesla was extremely misleading in its attempt to place all the blame on the driver.
The company went as far as to actively withhold critical evidence that explained Autopilot’s performance around the crash. Within about three minutes of the crash, the Model S uploaded a “collision snapshot”—video, CAN‑bus streams, EDR data, etc.—to Tesla’s servers, the “Mothership”, and received an acknowledgement. The vehicle then deleted its local copy, resulting in Tesla being the only entity having access.
What ensued were years of battle to get Tesla to acknowledge that this collision snapshot exists and is relevant to the case.
The police repeatedly attempted to obtain the data from the collision snapshot, but Tesla led the authorities and the plaintiffs on a lengthy journey of deception and misdirection that spanned years.
Folks. Publicly traded companies will ALWAYS compare the expected value of breaking the law with compliance.
Say it costs $100 million to follow the law. Breaking it comes with a $300 million fine, but only a 20% chance of getting caught.
They compare a 100% chance of paying $100 million to a 20% chance of paying $300 million.
Average cost of following the law: $100 million
Average cost of breaking it: $60 million
If we’re gonna do capitalism (which I would rather we not, for the record!), we have to make that expected value calculation break in favor of following regulations. If it is cheaper to break the law than to follow it, you’re not just losing money by complying: you’re giving ground to your competition. Fines need to be massive. Infractions need to get caught and punished. Executives need to be held personally accountable. Corporations need to be dissolved. Fines cannot be just the cost of doing business.
Do people need to (re)watch Fight Club?
It’s been like 25 years.
Did people like… genuienly not know this, forget about it?
The conditioning of people to think it must be monetary fines is strong I guess. Imo it shouldn’t be a fine for intentionally breaking laws, especially when putting lives in danger. It should be jail time for the executives. Make the calculation disappear altogether.
Do a China and just execute them.
Uhh there’s still death penalty in USA. And if corporations are legally people…
If only…
One can dream.
Dissolution of corporations was once the law of the land in uncle Sam’s backyard.
Will happen just not in the way we want it.
A capitalist would say ‘The market will correct this.’
Well the market corrected UHC’s ceo
I’d raise you in that. Companies are people now. If companies break laws, they should be held accountable personally. Even Club Fed would be misery for 14 years on a murder rap.
I’d argue the entire C-suite should be legally responsible for anything the company does.
The CEO in particular IMO, unless it’s financial (CFO) or tech (CTO, CIO).
However, it’s already the CEO’s job to take the heat in public so the board doesn’t have to.
Instead, hold everyone who holds a stake responsible, down to everyone with a 401k with 3 shares in the company for major violations.
See how quickly the shareholders vote to have better transparency.
While an attractive pitch, remember that what’s going to fuck over the working class are the laws intended to attack the assholes at the top. Which group do you think will have the means to defend themselves in court, has the power to make legislative moves, and would benefit from having another tool to fuck their slaves with?
And those are actions are what really needs to be curtailed.
Personally I think all lawyer fees should be paid by an entirely new (corporate) tax unless you are a small business with revenue less than a reasonable amount (absolutely not more than 100000 per employee and probably not even that much)
Class action criminal suits then.
Prosecute everyone who owns even a single share in the company and if the working class guy goes to jail, so does the wealthy guy, no exceptions. But by share of ownership so whoever owns most, gets the most jailtime.
Offshore shareholders can just get all their assets in the country seized.