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.
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?
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.
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)