this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2025
979 points (98.7% liked)

Technology

73701 readers
4186 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws
L4s@hackingne.ws
979
Tesla withheld data, lied, and misdirected police and plaintiffs to avoid blame in Autopilot crash (electrek.co)
submitted 2 days ago by DrunkEngineer@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
72 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] lividweasel@lemmy.world 67 points 2 days ago (3 children)

That jumped out at me too. Giving the benefit of the doubt, it could be that this “snapshot” includes a very large amount of data that could be problematic if stored locally for longer. In reality, they probably do it this way for exactly this type of situation, so they can retain full control of the potentially-damning data.

[–] Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com 26 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Bullshit. It was saved locally. It can stay saved locally but be marked for deletion if storage gets tight. This is a solved computer science problem.

There is zero reason to delete it immediate except to cover their asses.

If I was on the jury I'd be pushing for maximum monetary penalty.

[–] Eheran@lemmy.world 61 points 2 days ago (1 children)

If they can transmit it, it is not a lot. It is that simple.

[–] halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Nearly all of the vehicles have 4G/5G connectivity via AT&T. This isn't a dial up connection. They can transmit whatever the fuck they want.

[–] amorpheus@lemmy.world 22 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Still, if it's small enough to transmit via any wireless connection they can easily keep the local copy.

[–] Eheran@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago

Mate, a 1 TB micro SD costs less than 100 $. How much does a high bandwidth high/no data limit 5G connection cost and how long would that need to actually transmit that much?

What sensor data is there even supposed to be? Even at 1 millisecond resolution we are talking about megabytes.

[–] A_norny_mousse@feddit.org 24 points 2 days ago

That's not "benefit of the doubt", that's "playing devil's advocate". They probably used something like this.