INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Autopilot and don't understand that the Autopilot has disengaged," she told the court.Cummings also referred to the deposition of Tesla
autopilot firmware engineer Ajshay Phatak
Phatak's deposition told the court that the company did not keep good track of Autopilot crashes prior to 2018, and Cummings pointed out
that "it was clear they knew that they had a big problem with people ignoring the warnings
Ignoring the hands-on requests
And...as you know, prior to this accident
It was known to Tesla that they were having problems with people ignoring their warnings."Tesla's abuse of statistics to make misleading
claims about safety is nothing new: In 2017, Ars found out that Tesla's claim about Autopilot reducing crashes was not at all backed by
data, which, in fact, showed the driver assist increased crash rates.Mendel Singer, a statistician at Case Western University School of
Medicine, was very unimpressed with Tesla's approach to crash data statistics in his testimony
Singer noted that he was "not aware of any published study, any reports that are done independently..
where [Tesla] actually had raw data and could validate it to see does it tend to make sense" and that the car company was not comparing like
with like."Non-Teslas crashes are counted based on police reports, regardless of safety system deployment," Singer said
Further, Tesla kept misleading claims about safety on its website for years, Singer pointed out
When asked whether he would have accepted a paper for peer review from Tesla regarding its reports, "that would have been a really quick and
easy rejection," he said.While it's possible that Tesla will still settle this case, we may also see the trial carried out to its
conclusion."The plaintiffs in this instance have already received compensation from the driver of the Tesla in question, apparently in a
My understanding is that this makes them much less likely to take the kinds of offers Tesla has been making for settlements, and this is
more about the justice," said Edward Niedermeyer, author and long-time Tesla-watcher."That said, the judge in the case has made some
frustrating rulings around confidentiality on key issues, so it's possible that may be in Tesla's favor
They could also just up their settlement offer enough to be impossible to refuse," Niedermeyer said.
