We should have known — the automaker lied

The automaker lied

Early in August (2025), we put together a post that was essentially about who is liable if a self-driving car is involved in an accident. At the core of the piece was a very expensive settlement against Tesla. Now it turns out that the automaker lied about not having data from the incident.

See this from Autoweek.

We hadn’t considered this in our piece — a piece that concluded with the notion that if the car has control of the driving, the manufacturer has taken responsibility for the results.

We made the unfortunate assumption that data would be readily available after a crash. After all, a vehicle cannot drive itself without using a great deal of technology.

But the automaker, specifically Tesla in this case, lied about having data. The data, including video, was recovered rather handily by a hacker. Tesla then said it had had the data right along.

As far as we are concerned, this simply bolsters the case for assigning liability to the manufacturer first! What incentive is there to lie and hide evidence if they are the first responsible?

Should the driver be attentive? Yes. Should he or she share some responsibility? Again, yes. But any driver behind the wheel of a vehicle being controlled by software must be given a good deal of leeway.

So, again, if the car has control of the driving, the manufacturer has taken responsibility for the results. Period.

And now we can add that this should be codified to remove the incentive to lie. Missing data, legitimately or not? Double the award.

If a manufacturer, any manufacturer, is unwilling to be responsible, it should get out of the self driving game.

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