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"The male driver died in a May 7 crash in Williston, Fla., when a big rig m ade a left turn in front of his Tesla."
Almost always, the driver making the left turn is at fault. The truck drive r may or may not have gotten a ticket but in Ohio the give the driver who t urns left and gets hit a ticket for ACD, which stands for "Assured Clear Di stance". It could be found that the Tesla is not at fault.
That was my first ticket BTW. I had a 1970 Toronado that was pretty damn fa st and made a left turn really fast in front of traffic. But there was a la wyer on a motorcycle passing a car that was stopping for the light which wa s changing and he ran into the side of may car. I got the ticket, though th e cop says it is customary to give at least one of the drivers a ticket, th at is not prejudging the case. That's why you don't plead guilty if you don 't want to fight it, you plead nolo contenre. Pleading guilty in traffic co urt can be used against you in a civil lawsuit.
He sued me for $353,000, but took an out of court settlement of $2,000. He was a patent attorney actually, but had a lawyer, and that lawyer apparentl y looked at the facts and told him to take the settlement because of contri butory negligence.
This could consist of many things, passing on the right, too close to an in tersection, or speed. I seriously doubt a self driving car would break the speed limit.
People do drive FAST in Florida, at least they did when I was down there. S eems they don't want to bother enforcing the speed limits. Georgia used to be like that, I was speeding my ass off and a trooper passed me by. Me thin kst they want people do drive through there for the gasoline taxes.
But actually two accidents in 130 million miles is pretty good. Do humans e ven do that well ? I wonder if there are figures on that. Automated cars ar e not likely to speed or change lanes fifty times a mile to get ahead. Nor are they likely to wait until they're fifty feet from their exit and have t o get over five lanes to get off the highway.
I wonder about the drunk driving laws now. If you get drunk do you have to have someone else tell your car where to go ? Those laws are ridiculous. Th ey need a way to tell if you are really impaired because of two reasons. On e is that some people can drink a fifth and not be all that drunk, others h ave two beers and they can't even walk. The other is driver proficiency, so me can just barely do it and smash cars totally sober because they do not k now what they're doing while others can drive perfectly under ALOT of influ ence.
Anyway, we got a situation where a car could not "see" a white truck agains t the backdrop of a bright sky. I thought normal collision avoidance system s used a form of RADAR or SONAR. Teslas are not cheap and maybe they should have included such a system.
And I wonder, if indeed Tesla is adjudged at fault, who gets the ticket ? W hat's more, I am pretty sure self driving cars do not get driver's licenses so there is nothing to suspend even. And negligent vehicular homicide can get you a lifetime suspension in many places.
Be interesting if everyone does not forget about this and we see what happe ns later.