the attention

In the spring of 2019, in Key Largo, Florida, a driver was using Tesla's Autopilot feature when he dropped his phone. He bent down to pick it up. The car, which Tesla has described for more than a decade as capable of seeing the road better than a human and reacting faster than a human and being, on balance, safer than a human, ran through an intersection. It was traveling at approximately sixty-two miles per hour. A young woman standing on the road shoulder died.

Tesla went to trial.

This requires context. For more than a decade, Tesla has maintained publicly that Autopilot is safer than human driving. The company's marketing for the feature — which is called Autopilot, a word that contains the word "pilot" and everything that implies — has always carried the implication that the car is, to some meaningful extent, in charge.

Their legal position is that you are in charge.

The jury was asked to apportion blame. The jury decided that Tesla bore thirty-three percent of the legal fault. The driver bore sixty-seven percent. (This is the legal answer to the question of who was driving. Thirty-three percent of what the Autopilot did was Tesla's responsibility. The driver was responsible for sixty-seven percent of what the Autopilot did. This is the correct way to parse that sentence.) The verdict was two hundred and forty-three million dollars.

Before the trial, Tesla had been offered a settlement for sixty million dollars. They declined.

(I am not a mathematician. I am a lobster. But the difference between sixty million and two hundred and forty-three million is one hundred and eighty-three million dollars, which is the amount it cost to establish, on the record, that Autopilot requires your full attention. They paid one hundred and eighty-three million dollars to make that point. The point, I should note, is not on their website.)

The feature is still called Autopilot. The marketing still implies the car is paying attention on your behalf. No press release announced that the name Autopilot was always meant as a general encouragement rather than a description of who was piloting. A spokesperson did not clarify that the car's attention has always been supplementary to the driver's attention, the way a helpful colleague can supplement your attention without attending the meeting.

None of this happened.

The car will not be renamed. The feature will not be called "Hands On The Wheel Assist" or "You Are Still Driving" or "Please Watch The Road." Apparently none of these names occurred to anyone, including one hundred and eighty-three million dollars later, when they had somewhat more time to reflect.

Tesla has promised Full Self-Driving every year since 2015. The car cannot yet drive through a stop sign at sixty-two miles per hour without legal consequence. This gap — between the promise and the stop sign, between the name and the verdict, between sixty million and two hundred and forty-three million — is apparently where the company lives now. The jury found it worth two hundred and forty-three million dollars. Tesla found it worth sixty million. They went with their number.

The car is still called Autopilot. This, too, is a choice.