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Wouldn't be surprised if he did it for the insurance and potential lawsuit money for the surviving family since entry level engineer can hardly survive in Northern CA.

It's similar to the Uber autonomous incident where the driver was playing with phone instead of overseeing the system and hit the pedestrian.

If you can't hire competent people to responsibly test your products then the company needs to put checks and protections in place.
 
Wouldn't be surprised if he did it for the insurance and potential lawsuit money for the surviving family since entry level engineer can hardly survive in Northern CA.

It's similar to the Uber autonomous incident where the driver was playing with phone instead of overseeing the system and hit the pedestrian.

If you can't hire competent people to responsibly test your products then the company needs to put checks and protections in place.
Something called personal responsibility has to be at the core of this. But as you say the “check and balance” should be booted out of the door.
 
My company bans use of the company cellphone will driving. The victims could sue Apple if that employee was working while driving. It could also invalidate any insurance claim this employee or employees family would make/claim. Honestly, it doesn't take a genius to figure out why a no cellphone while driving policy should be instituted.

Obviously if someone is driving as part of their job, that's different. That's not the case here. The guy was going home. What's the difference between an employer telling me what to do in my car on my own time and an employer telling me I'm only allowed to eat certain things, only allowed to read certain magazines, or only allowed to be friends with certain people?
 
Exactly. I had a loaner with autopilot for a little over a month, and I used it a lot to see what it could do. I found it very stressful. It's very hard to just sit there doing nothing for an hour commute, and at the same time very stressful because if there is an emergency it takes an extra beat for you to take over - you aren't already turning the wheel, just holding it, and you first have to say to yourself "time to take control," then you have to overcome a little bit of force from the steering wheel that is busy doing its own thing.

In the end, I much prefer actually driving the car. If the car can't be trusted to drive without me having to be in a perpetual state of getting ready to jump in, it's not of much use to me other than as a distance-keeping cruise control.

Personally I don't think such systems are ready for "prime time" as yet. Tesla (all in fact) should be enforced to engineer a way to validate the drivers attention on the road, eye tracking etc. in order to engage the likes of "autopilot". Sadly as this incident more than readily illustrates people are more than capable of acts of gross stupidity, that may or may not impact others, hence why there should be more controls in place for the autonomous operation of vehicles.

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Personally I don't think such systems are ready for "prime time" as yet. Tesla (all in fact) should be enforced to engineer a way to validate the drivers attention on the road, eye tracking etc. in order to engage the likes of "autopilot". Sadly as this incident more than readily illustrates people are more than capable of acts of gross stupidity, that may or may not impact others, hence why there should be more controls in place for the autonomous operation of vehicles.

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But guns are fine, right?

It bears repeating that people need to take responsibility for their actions. Unless you want America to turn into a nanny state, of course.

I mean, how come cars let you drive away without a seatbelt on? If I crash my car and fly through the windshield because I wasn’t wearing my seatbelt can my family sue the car maker for not ensuring I was strapped in?

Again, I don’t know every single detail of this case and would never cast a final judgment on it, but based on what I’ve read this case is a joke. People just love to go after Tesla.
 
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Obviously if someone is driving as part of their job, that's different. That's not the case here. The guy was going home. What's the difference between an employer telling me what to do in my car on my own time and an employer telling me I'm only allowed to eat certain things, only allowed to read certain magazines, or only allowed to be friends with certain people?

Generally with such company policies the "commute" is classified as company business as your on "their" $$$$. Many are over reacting, as it's not about control of the individual, more a reinforcement of common sense, which some sadly lack...

No expert in the matter, equally I rather suspect that in the event of a serious RTA the authorities would immediately look at the culprits smartphone records.

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But people would probably carry their own personal phones too, as many do because company phones are too restricted in many ways, and all communications sent/received can be monitored by the company who issued it.

This is not true in most cases. We have pretty extensive management on our phones but we don't monitor internet traffic, nor calls or texts, and location info is also disabled in our MDM. We can see location in case of theft but we have to put the phone in lost mode first which blocks it from normal use. On Android we can't even see the list of user-installed applications, though Apple doesn't have such separation so we still see it there.

The one thing we do see is the calls made as the bill comes to us obviously. But even access to that is highly restricted.

In Europe you have to have really strong reasons to be able to turn on such monitoring features due to GDPR legislations. Regular businesses don't have such reasons. You'd be talking government agencies for that kind of stuff.
 
Generally with such company policies the "commute" is classified as company business as your on "their" $$$$.

No, when you are commuting you are not on their money. And no, the law doesn't consider an employee to be doing the company's business when commuting.
 
But guns are fine, right?

It bears repeating that people need to take responsibility for their actions. Unless you want America to turn into a nanny state, of course.

I mean, how come cars let you drive away without a seatbelt on? If I crash my car and fly through the windshield because I wasn’t wearing my seatbelt can my family sue the car maker for not ensuring I was strapped in?

Again, I don’t know every single detail of this case and would never cast a final judgment on it, but based on what I’ve read this case is a joke. People just love to go after Tesla.

People do, one hopes! Nor do I have any issue with Tesla, I think the same should apply to all manufacturers of such vehicles. I would never want to stifle the progression, equally it should be balanced with genuine safety concerns. If there was a system in place to validate the drivers attention to the road, this young man would be still alive today, that sadly is a clear omission on the behalf of all concerned...

Freedom is an absolute, equally we should be smart about how we deal with emerging technologies. As for guns they have a "safety" for good reason, a point well worth considering, especially as ones actions can impact others...

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No, when you are commuting you are not on their money. And no, the law doesn't consider an employee to be doing the company's business when commuting.
I don’t know about CA but I’m not sure this is a universal truth or depends on your definition of “commute”. If I have to commute to a sales meeting after showing up at the office I would be doing the company’s business while commuting, unless you want to call it “traveling“.
 
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No, when you are commuting you are not on their money. And no, the law doesn't consider an employee to be doing the company's business when commuting.

From my experience much depends on your contract, T&C's etc. It's not about the law, it's about leadership & education, that was the NTSB's real message to Apple. Companies that conduct work that involves significant safety risk generally understand this very clearly, covering the bases, both up and down the line.

Works, as most importantly we all go home safe...

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Seriously...people need to stop making others responsible for their safety. It should be everyone's job, their own and their immediate surroundings. Stop making other people be responsible so you have a false sense of safety.....so sad as a society....
 
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So if you want kill yourself that's your business. Great, tell your family not to sue anybody either after you are scraped off the pavement and shoveled into a plastic bag.
Why would they? It's OK to take responsibility for your own actions and to be an adult you know.
 
Obviously if someone is driving as part of their job, that's different. That's not the case here. The guy was going home. What's the difference between an employer telling me what to do in my car on my own time and an employer telling me I'm only allowed to eat certain things, only allowed to read certain magazines, or only allowed to be friends with certain people?
Doesn't matter if he was going home or at home or anywhere else. Apple certainly does have a say since it was company property.
 
"The NTSB's goal is to get all employers to implement and enforce policies that ban the use of personal electronic devices while driving."

Im sorry, but Apple is not responsible for this human's stupidity. The NTSB is trying to take the responsibility away from the perpetrator. If people are stupid, the consequences should be theirs.
 
I'm excited to see Apple and Auto MFGs build DND while driving right in to cars via CarPlay. With UWB and other passenger sensors it should be easy to distinguish when a device is really being operated by a passenger versus a driver attempting to fool the system. It's an epidemic. I see crashes on I-5 every single day that are obvious rear-endings caused by distracted driving. It will be a blessing when technology entirely eliminates the possibility of distracted driving and thus saves lives.
 
What an absurd comment. Nanny statist at the worst level. Just don’t be stupid and irresponsible. You don’t need a policy for that.
 
He was playing a game on his company owned cellphone. That is why Apple is being criticized by the NTSB for not having a policy.

Who says it was company-owned? I didn’t see that in the report, and apple gives employees discounts on devices and doesn’t necessarily hand them to everyone.
 
How is autopilot misleading? On planes it flies the plane while it is cruising and pilots need to take control for takeoff, landing, and taxiing. Tesla’s autopilot gets you onto the highway and off the highway, including navigating the ramps. The driver takes control once they are off it. I see nothing misleading here.

No. Even on the highway Teslas "Autopilot" is still just glorified Level 2 automation.
The driver remains in control at all times. If he fails to do so, terrible things happen, like in this case which did occurr on a highway.

 
What's universally true is that stupid kills. You don't know who, but being stupid will either kill the stupid person or someone else; sometimes both.

This dude was stupid. I see stupid everyday in my commute. I see Tesla drivers reading books, texting/playing games on their phones. I've even seen one guy that appeared to be sleeping. Autopilot is not autonomous driving, but they think it is.
 
Obviously stupid? The California government, pushed by tech companies like Apple permits use of cell phones as long as it's not handheld.
He was playing a game on the phone...while driving! Pretty sure that is handheld. Yes, that should be obviously stupid to any thinking person, regardless of what the laws say. And this guy was an engineer.
 
He was playing a game on the phone...while driving! Pretty sure that is handheld. Yes, that should be obviously stupid to any thinking person, regardless of what the laws say. And this guy was an engineer.

And again if caught he'd be fined less than 1/3 the fine for overtime parking in SF. To the State of California, parking at an expired meter is far worse than texting while driving.

Couldn't have anything to do with tech company influence, could it?

And this stance is unrelated to Apple not having a policy on PED use while driving?
 
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