Look, there is no way corporations would lie for their own interest. Especially when they spent tens of billions to develop something.
It's not like they sold us leaded gasoline or "healthy tobacco" for decades.
Look, there is no way corporations would lie for their own interest. Especially when they spent tens of billions to develop something.
It's not like they sold us leaded gasoline or "healthy tobacco" for decades.
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That’s certainly the myth musk and his compatriots repeat whenever they’re slightly inconvenienced by consideration for the broader public, yes.
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Usually when people provide examples, they're intended to serve as a representative sample of a larger trend, and not an exhaustive list. Hope that helps.
Their point still stands.
Not all companies do illegal things.
IMO it’s also a distraction to blame it on “capitalism” or some “larger trend” rather than just pointing directly at the company and people responsible.
“The system is broken” line hasn’t worked for years now. Maybe if we stop blaming the system and start blaming the people?
>Not all companies do illegal things.
The Koch brothers stopped breaking the law because it was too expensive. Instead they started lobbying to get the laws changed. This is where the idea that the system is rotten comes from.
No one claimed all companies do illegal things.
All of this is a crazy overgeneralisation of the hundreds of millions of companies in the world:
> Look, there is no way corporations would lie for their own interest. Especially when they spent tens of billions to develop something.
> It's not like they sold us leaded gasoline or "healthy tobacco" for decades.
If I say "Ted is the Unibomber" do you think I'm saying everyone named Ted is the Unibomber? This is basic reading comprehension stuff
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Saying "corporations have lied in the past for their own self interest" and then pointing to two very well known examples does not imply or over generalize that all corporations do that.
The point isn't to demonize all corporations, it's to say specifically that a pathology of some megacorporations is broadscale lying to the public about the safety of their products for personal gain.
You would be surprised how passionately people defend Tesla on HN sometimes, especially when safety records come up.
Otherwise number go down
Liability insurance pricing tells the whole story, without clickbait articles or emotion.
If there was a significant problem, my liability only insurance premiums would be higher for the Tesla compared to a non Tesla. But they are not.
> my liability only insurance premiums would be higher for the Tesla compared to a non Tesla. But they are not
You’re correct inasmuch as we have no evidence there is “a significant problem.” But if Tesla is hiding evidence, as this article suggests, that might just be because lawsuits are still gaining steam.
Liability insurance premiums would reflect higher risk of Tesla vehicles causing collisions, regardless if Tesla is at fault or if the driver is at fault. The insurance company still has to pay, which means the Tesla owners have to pay.
> Liability insurance premiums would reflect higher risk of Tesla vehicles causing collisions, regardless if Tesla is at fault or if the driver is at fault
Why? They only pay out if you’re at fault. And if there aren’t final judgements in a deep pipeline of cases, premiums wouldn’t have a reason to adjust yet.
I am assuming Tesla has been around long enough and driven enough miles to have a sufficiently representative data set for insurance companies to know. I cannot imagine the pipeline of cases to be so deep as people are waiting on payments from collisions from years ago.
I am also assuming that a collision involving a Tesla has at fault determinations that are more accurate than other brands, given the 6 or 7 cameras that are recording and should make determining fault easier.
Basically, if the Tesla was more dangerous to drive than a Toyota, because it was a Tesla, then insurance companies would be paying out more for insuring Teslas, and hence insurance companies would be charging higher liability only insurance premiums.
edit to respond to Forgeties79:
> The issue is they are potentially lying. It’s why we are even having this discussion. The numbers could be fraudulent
When your vehicle gets into a collision, no one contacts the auto manufacturer about who was at fault. Suppose two cars collide. The police write a report, collect evidence, maybe the drivers submit their video recordings to the insurer.
But no one is calling Tesla and asking them to determine who was at fault. And if they did, Tesla would say we never agreed to be liable, and the driver should have been paying attention. There is no way to escape that if it was costing insurers more to insure liability for a Tesla, they would be asking for higher premiums.
Whether or not Tesla is lying to the government or whoever is irrelevant for the goal of determining if Teslas cause more damage than other vehicle brands.
The entire point of these articles about mounting lawsuits is those assumptions may be wrong. The liabilities involved are higher. And given Tesla is potentially mucking with the data, the exculpatory value of having all those cameras is diminished.
> if the Tesla was more dangerous to drive than a Toyota, because it was a Tesla, then insurance companies would be paying out more for insuring Teslas
You may be over indexing how much work liability insurers do. I have an umbrella policy. It absolutely doesn’t take into account the fact that I ski and fly a plane, for example. At the end of the day, their liability is capped and it’s usually easier to weed out by claims history than running models on small premiums.
> The entire point of these articles about mounting lawsuits is those assumptions may be wrong.
And my entire point is I trust the incentives of the insurer to accurately price risk and determine at fault more than a publication that needs clicks.
> And given Tesla is potentially mucking with the data, the exculpatory value of having all those cameras is diminished.
Does the data from Tesla even come into play for an insurer? They need to pay the damaged parties regardless of whether or not Tesla and its software are at fault. For premium pricing purposes, what Tesla does is irrelevant until after Tesla is found liable.
In the meantime, a collision with a Tesla is the same as any other auto brand’s. I don’t think Ford/Toyota/anyone else’s software comes into play. No auto brand picks up the liability for the driver (except Mercedes in some circumstances, I think), so no automaker is in the picture for payment in the event of an individual collision.
> my entire point is I trust the incentives of the insurer to accurately price risk and determine at fault more than a publication that needs clicks
Fair enough. I agree with you in the long run. I just don't think we've seen the litigation that will define liability play out yet.
> Does the data from Tesla even come into play for an insurer?
Directly? No. At least, not unless AI actuaries make the work worth the while.
For juries calculating damages? Plaintiffs weighing whether to bring a case? Sure. That, in turn, plays into liability. And that is something insurers care about.
> In the meantime, a collision with a Tesla is the same as any other auto brand’s
In the meantime, yes. If collisions with Teslas predictably result in larger damages than with other brands, you'd expect to see more litigation when a Tesla is involved/suspected at fault, and with that, higher costs.
> No auto brand picks up the liability for the driver
Tesla has been assigned liability already [1].
[1] https://law.marquette.edu/facultyblog/2025/08/jury-awards-24...
The issue is they are potentially lying. It’s why we are even having this discussion. The numbers could be fraudulent.
And unfortunately, musk has earned people’s default skeptical stance towards him.
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Or pushed beef that destroys the environment and gives people GI cancers while claiming the opposite.