autonomous vehicles

19 Jul

Robotaxi Smoke Test Failure Exposes Safety Gap

hightechz.net0 CommentsTech Newsautonomous vehicles, av certification, regulation, robotaxi, safety testing

Robotaxis Weren't Tested for the World We Actually Live In A Zoox robotaxi got confused by smoke. Not by another car, not by a pedestrian darting between parked vehicles, not by any scenario that shows up in a test facility's playbook—but by smoke. Per TechCrunch, the company issued a software recall after its autonomous vehicles failed to respond correctly in heavy smoke conditions. This isn't a minor edge case. It's a signal that the entire robotaxi certification framework is built on test scenarios that don't match reality. Every summer now, millions of Americans breathe air thick with wildfire smoke. Fog…

17 Jul

Tesla Autopilot Data and Liability: A Reckoning Begins

hightechz.net0 CommentsAIautonomous vehicles, black-box data, liability, regulation, tesla

The Autopilot Alibi Is Dying—And Tesla's Data Killed It A Tesla driver crashed, blamed Full Self-Driving, and then the black box told a different story. The NTSB investigation confirmed the driver pressed the accelerator to 100%, demolishing the claim that autonomous features caused the collision. This isn't just a vindication for Elon Musk or a gotcha moment for a careless driver—it's a preview of how autonomous vehicle accountability will actually work once courts, insurers, and regulators demand data transparency. And it exposes a dangerous gap in how we've been handling FSD crashes until now. For years, the script has been…