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Comment by sxates | Hacker News Reader

This only seems to happen for accidents that turn into national news, speculating that Tesla was at fault (or with drivers actively accusing them of fault). Their response is (understandably I think) to defend themselves when they can show they weren't at fault. I'd assume that if you have an accident and don't make it a media story, they don't publish your driving errors.

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So something that is entirely outside of your control may determine if Tesla shames you in front of millions of people and violates your privacy? That's the defense you're arguing?

Plus Tesla never releases the crash data, they release select snippets that make them look good. For example, the famous "six seconds" claim in the barrier incident but absolutely zero data on their automatic emergency braking's actions, what autopilot was doing, what sensors detected, or any of their other systems.

Worth noting that one of the issues is Tesla's data, such as sensing hand placement, might inherently be problematic. As r/teslamotors users pointed out in the wake of Tesla's response to the Utah crash, AutoPilot apparently has false negative problems: failing to detect when hands on the wheels:

https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/8jz5tl/tesla_r...

> Ok so here's what bugs the shit out of me: The overwhelming majority of the time that my car nags me to put my hand on the wheel, my hand's already on the wheel, I'm just not applying enough torque for the car to "see" that because my left elbow is resting on the window sill and my hand is resting on the 9oclock position. So I give it a quick wiggle and then we're friends again. This means the car logged a "no hands" event.

In the case of the fire truck, the driver pretty much admitted to fault. But what about the California man (i.e. the "six seconds" incident) who died by running into a median? We don't know for sure if his hands were on or off, or when, or if the car properly detected it. Tesla was kicked off the NTSB investigation for releasing data. Tesla's argument was that it had the right to make a defense, but I think it's reasonable to argue that NTSB's rule is to prevent such selective release and framing of data:

https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NR20180412.as...

The fact remains that they're 'completely dedicated' to your privacy including from yourself up until putting that data out benefits the company. So they have access to that data only in ways that benefit and exculpate the company while you as the driver and source of that data cannot use the data about yourself to defend yourself without going through the courts!

So I personally understand that _Tesla wants this_. I just don't agree that Tesla should be allowed to do this. It will be interesting to see what happens when the next European accident happens now that GDPR is in place, since I am pretty sure that they do not have _explicit_ consent for this. _I_ have _definitely_ not given explicit consent for this, and even if it is written into the contract in a vague way, that will not be good enough to stop a GDPR infraction.

And that is something that I support the GDPR for.

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