this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2025
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Tesla withheld data, lied, and misdirected police and plaintiffs to avoid blame in Autopilot crash (electrek.co)
submitted 5 days ago by DrunkEngineer@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
73 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.

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[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz -5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

Hell, it could be that this is private information about the driver and the car's probably gonna end up in a Copart auction after insurance is done with it, so in a way they're protecting PII.

Before anyone's gonna accuse me of Tesla fanboyism (I do make a lot of devil's advocate style comments), I've driven exactly one Tesla in my life, decided it's a piece of shit with a great powertrain and OK infotainment but absolutely lacking UX for drivers, and a ridiculously plain interior. I will never buy a Tesla unless it's a used Tesla S or X with a newish battery for 10k because at that price it'd just be the cheapest way to get a luxury EV lol

[–] danc4498@lemmy.world 17 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I doubt they’re doing a full OS wipe when an accident occurs. So PII data would still be on there.

[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz -4 points 4 days ago

Just stuff you voluntarily save if the crash data is in RAM only. RAM gets autowiped.

[–] aln@lemmy.world 9 points 4 days ago (1 children)

What PII is there? It's a fucking dash cam video, it's not my blood results from my annual checkup.

[–] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 0 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Full home address via recordings of where you live would be PII, or with the "home address" option set for automations.