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Comment by port22 | Hacker News Reader

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Mercedes will cover accidents where DrivePilot is at fault; your insurance will cover your faults. Would expect DrivePilot equipped vehicles to store insane amounts of telemetry from all their sensors, which will make it far easier for Mercedes to prove that you’re at fault than you to do the opposite.

Why? All the recorded telemetry is going to show up in discovery anyways

Probably 99% of accidents between two parties where insurance has to decide who’s at fault (and therefore who pays) don’t go to court so “show up in discovery” probably doesn’t apply?

Insurance companies typically view litigation as additional cost over and above paying out the policy coverage, and to be avoided whenever possible.

And is the drivers' insurance company just going to accept a "just trust us bro" from Mercedes? Even absent litigation I'd expect voluntary disclosure, otherwise the drivers' insurance companies are going to be on the hook for much more of the payout.

That’s fair and yes I’d expect in the event of a claim, short of litigation, you’re going to see telemetry data shared to support determining who’s at fault. It would be interesting to see how that’s handled in the agreements you have to enter into to activate this system in these vehicles…

But back to the original comment - this won’t be a lottery ticket for anyone because the Mercedes probably has millimeter-accuracy data on proximity of it to other vehicles from LiDAR, its movement, their movement, so outside of ADAS failure (which you’d expect to be rare in these conditions - known highways and under 40mph; why else would Mercedes take on liability?) it really will mostly be “the other party was at fault and must pay”, and repairs on 2024+ Mercedes with all this technology won’t be cheap either.

What do you mean “why”? Storing additional telemetry helps Mercedes to show whether Drive Pilot or the opposing driver is at fault for accidents

The OP said

>which will make it far easier for Mercedes to prove that you’re at fault than you to do the opposite.

which implied the telemetry collected had some sort of asymmetry in the evidence (ie. it helps prove Mercedes was at fault more than it helps prove the other driver was at fault)

Yes, and what I meant is if you drive a clunker into a new Mercedes, you are very much in an asymmetric situation in terms of "What happened?". Your clunker has extraordinarily little, in comparison to the Mercedes, and the sensors it requires to make Level 3 work (and which, presumably, log everything for collision situations and to determine who is at fault).

Or perhaps people will understand that this is a car with an abundance of sensors, and all sorts of data about what it "sees" (including actual camera footage) will be stored and used in this sort of litigation. At which point you're taking on a multi-billion company with a hugely vested interest in winning any legal challenges.

I'd say it's a far more like buying a lottery ticket. Good luck!

In addition to what other people said that obviously it won't work like this I just want to say that purposefully crashing I would guess would be multiple different felonies so social media companies would take it down and only true idiots would be posting about it openly.

Funny, but obviously any accidents caused by the self-driving. In other cases it is covered by regular insurance by the faulting party.

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