Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Elon Musk works diligently to point out the facet of Elon that these of us in automotive media have recognized for years. The callous mercurial billionaire child-in-a-dad-bod has been recognized to place himself and his firms forward of all else. One revelation from the ebook, posted as an excerpt on Reddit, exposes a gathering the Tesla CEO held through which he proposed utilizing the automobile’s inner monitoring digital camera to report driver conduct behind the wheel within the hopes of disproving crash lawsuits as driver error.

Many automakers, significantly these with superior driver aids (just like these Tesla markets as “Autopilot” and “Full Self Driving”), use in-car cameras to watch driver attentiveness and warn drivers if their eyes wander from the street for too lengthy. Musk, based on Isaacson’s ebook, needed to make use of these clips as proof, initially with out the driving force’s data. “At one assembly, he advised utilizing information collected from the automobile’s cameras – one in every of which is contained in the automobile and centered on the driving force – to show when there was driver error.”

Musk was satisfied that it was the driving force, not his firm’s software program, that was responsible for a lot of the extremely publicized Tesla crashes.

One lady within the assembly raised driver privateness considerations. Legally Tesla couldn’t affiliate any of those in-car movies with a selected car or driver, even when a crash resulted. Isaacson reviews that the “idea of ‘privateness groups’ didn’t heat his coronary heart,” and that Musk stated “I’m the decision-maker at this firm, not the privateness crew. I don’t even know who they’re. They’re so non-public you by no means know who they’re.”

In an try and acquiesce to the authorized calls for, Musk advised a pop-up window when drivers activated the “Full Self Driving beta” driver help system, warning the driving force that Tesla would acquire information within the occasion of a crash. This appeared to go muster, and the girl replied “So long as we’re speaking it to clients, I feel we’re okay with that.” Automobile firms (and different firms for that matter) are free to information mine video along with your consent.

Earlier this 12 months a category motion lawsuit was introduced towards Tesla when in-car digital camera photos had been shared “for the tasteless leisure of Tesla workers.”

For now, I feel I’ll keep on with my previous vehicles that don’t report me in any respect. Not less than till privateness regulation has been up to date to forestall any firm from receiving that in-cabin video with out my specific consent on a per-video foundation. That will be actual good.