Crimin' While Self-Driving: Something I Got Very Right About Tesla
Will there be consequences for Secretary Elaine Chao?
When a friend of mine joined the Trump administration’s Department of Transportation I sent him an email warning that I thought the claims about Tesla’s self-driving cars were going to lead to people getting killed.
He agreed but found internal resistance to doing much of anything about Tesla.
In retrospect it’s easy to see why — Secretary Elaine Chao, with her close ties to China, didn’t want to do anything to harm Tesla. Chao’s Department argued that states shouldn’t regulate self driving cars and now we know that there are a lot of dead people.
Well, it looks like the Biden Administration finally did something about it. Good for them. Here’s the Reuters story: “Exclusive: Tesla faces U.S. criminal probe over self-driving claims”
The U.S. Department of Justice launched the previously undisclosed probe last year following more than a dozen crashes, some of them fatal, involving Tesla’s driver assistance system Autopilot, which was activated during the accidents, the people said.
As early as 2016, Tesla’s marketing materials have touted Autopilot’s capabilities. On a conference call that year, Elon Musk, the Silicon Valley automaker’s chief executive, described it as “probably better” than a human driver.
I argued then that it’s basically impossible to do self-driving correctly. (Too many variables, sir.)
There’s a larger story here about how so many of the tech company claims need to be rigorously evaluated. You’re not tech if you can’t stand up to technical scrutiny.
Repeat after me: Require all tech claims to be tested. Require all tech claims to be tested. Require all tech claims to be tested….