Elon Musk: A Man For All Seasons, Providing That The Season Is Located Somewhere In Hell

The New York Times Magazine has a long piece on the development of Tesla's "full self driving" software. It is pretty interesting, but one thing stood out to me. Musk said straight up that he is deliberately using his customers as test subjects in the development process.

It stood out because as far as I can see, it is blatantly illegal.

Because of the Nuremberg trials, the Tuskegee experiments, and quite a few other events where dangerous experiments were performed on people against their will or even without their knowledge, human subjects research is strictly regulated by the Department of Health and Human Services under the Common Rule. The rule is a little vague about how you insure the rules are being obeyed, it simply mandates that you will.

Most universities and research labs comply using something called an Institutional Review Board. All research proposals must be submitted to the IRB and it will conduct oversight throughout the project. An IRB can force significant changes in research to comply with the law, can reject doing it at all, and can approve it and then bring it to a stop if the IRB conditions are not complied with or the law is broken.

I know this because I spent many years on IRBs myself, and know the rules pretty well.

One non-negotiable requirement of human subjects research is informed consent. You may not conduct such research unless all of the participants have been informed of what the research goals are, what will happen to them during the project, what the possible risks and benefits are, written at an 8th grade level and signed by the participant. The participants must be able to say no without any penalty and can consent and then withdraw that consent at any time without having to explain or be subjected to any attempts to change their minds.

I'm pretty sure no one signs a consent document when they purchase a Tesla. I know for a fact that all the random pedestrians, EMTs and people changing a flat that have been mowed down by "Full self driving" have not done so. That means "full self driving" is in violation of HHS regulations and should be shut down.

I wonder if this point is going to come up in any of the lawsuits?

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