Isn't Fraud Already Illegal?

The California legislature has sent a bill to the governor placing heavy restrictions on the claims that automakers could make for their driver assist technology.  It does not explicitly mention Tesla, but given that Tesla is the only car manufacturer to be so aggressive in their overselling of their capabilities, it is clear that that is who is targeted.

This is a good thing.  Since the days that their driver assist technology was called, "Autopilot," Elon Musk and his Evil Minions™ have been flat out lying, and flat out killing, to their customers:

Since 2016, Tesla has been marketing an expensive option called Full Self-Driving. A reasonable person might infer from the name that the software package enables a car to drive itself, fully.

It does not. No car available for consumers to buy is capable of full self-driving. The California Department of Motor Vehicles has rules on its books that ban the advertisement of cars as “self-driving” when they are not. But it has never enforced those rules.

So, impatient with the DMV, the state Legislature is stepping in, going over the DMV’s head and making its false advertising regulation a state law.

The bill, sponsored by Senate Transportation Committee Chair Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach), was passed by the Senate on Tuesday night and now heads to Gov. Gavin Newsom for his signature. Newsom’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Regulators are beginning to apply more pressure. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is conducting several investigations into the company’s safety record, including a string of Tesla cars plowing into emergency vehicles parked at the side of the road.

Recently, NHTSA ordered Tesla to provide it with detailed data on crashes that might involve its automated driving systems.

It’s unclear how effective the new legislation will be. The responsibility for enforcing the law will remain with the DMV.

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In fact, as it became clear that the Gonzalez bill would pass, the DMV on July 22 filed an administrative action against Tesla on the false advertising issue. The DMV had been conducting what it called a “review” of the false advertising issue since May 2021.

I'm not sure why there has been such intense inaction by the DMV to enforce a very basic principle, that advertising cannot be a flat out lie, and it's good that the legislation lit a fire under them, but this needs to become law, and soon, in any case.

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The new bill doesn’t address the safety of the technology itself, limiting its scope to the way it’s advertised. In small print on its website and in instruction manuals, Tesla states that a human driver must pay full attention, whether using Tesla’s Autopilot with adaptive cruise control and automatic lane changing, or Full Self-Driving “beta,” which is designed to obey traffic signals while navigating a programmed route. YouTube is populated with videos that demonstrate the work-in-progress nature of Full Self-Driving with dangerous maneuvers and violations of traffic laws.

Other carmakers sell similar technology but don’t imply a car can drive itself, Gonzalez said. “No one else is doing this, just Tesla,” she said. “GM, Ford, BMW, Mercedes, they’re all doing the right thing” by making clear the limits of automated technology.

Beyond the ban on false advertising, the bill also sets new requirements for automakers to clearly explain the capabilities and limits of partial-automation technology when a new car is delivered and when software is updated.

This bill is quite literally the least the legislature can do to protect its citizens from predators like Musk.