Posts Tagged: finds

SpaceX workers face above-average injury rates as Musk prioritizes Mars over safety, report finds

A Reuters investigation into unsafe working conditions at SpaceX has uncovered more than 600 injuries going back to 2014 that have not been publicly reported until now. Current and former employees cited in the report blame CEO Elon Musk’s aggressive deadlines and hatred of bureaucracy, alleging his goal of getting humans to Mars “as fast as possible” has led the company to cut corners and eschew proper protocols.

Injury rates at some SpaceX facilities are much higher than the industry average of .8 injuries or illnesses per 100 workers, Reuters found. At its Brownsville, Texas location, the 2022 injury rate was 4.8 per 100 workers. At the Hawthorne, California manufacturing facility, it was 1.8. In McGregor, Texas, where the company conducts rocket tests, the injury rate was 2.7.

Employees have suffered broken bones, lacerations, crushed fingers, burns, electric shocks and serious head wounds — including one that blinded Brownsville worker Florentino Rios in 2021 and another that left employee Francisco Cabada in a coma since January 2022. At SpaceX’s McGregor site, one worker, Lonnie LeBlanc, was killed in 2014 when wind knocked him off the trailer of an improperly loaded truck. Yet over the years, SpaceX has only paid meager fines as a result of its safety lapses. After LeBlanc’s death, the company settled with OSHA for $ 7,000, according to Reuters.

Reuters spoke to over two dozen current or former employees, as well as others “with knowledge of SpaceX safety practices.” One SpaceX ex-manager told Reuters that “workers take care of their safety themselves,” and others said employees were even told not to wear bright-colored safety gear because Musk does not like it. SpaceX has also repeatedly failed to submit injury data to regulators for much of its history, according to Reuters.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/spacex-workers-face-above-average-injury-rates-as-musk-prioritizes-mars-over-safety-report-finds-224235095.html?src=rss

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Tesla’s Autopilot was not to blame for fatal 2019 Model 3 crash, jury finds

A California jury has found that Tesla was not at fault for a fatal 2019 crash that allegedly involved its Autopilot system, in the first US trial yet for a case claiming its software directly caused a death. The lawsuit alleged Tesla knowingly shipped out cars with a defective Autopilot system, leading to a crash that killed a Model 3 owner and severely injured two passengers, Reuters reports.

Per the lawsuit, 37-year-old Micah Lee was driving his Tesla Model 3 on a highway outside of Los Angeles at 65 miles per hour when it turned sharply off the road and slammed into a palm tree before catching fire. Lee died in the crash. The company was sued for $ 400 million plus punitive damages by Lee’s estate and the two surviving victims, including a boy who was 8 years old at the time and was disemboweled in the accident, according to an earlier report from Reuters.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that Tesla sold Lee defective, “experimental” software when he bought a Model 3 in 2019 that was billed to have full self-driving capability. The FSD system was and still is in beta. In his opening statement, their attorney Jonathan Michaels also said that the “excessive steering command is a known issue at Tesla.”

Tesla’s defense argued that there was no such defect, and that an analysis cited by the plaintiffs’ lawyers identifying a steering issue was actually looking for problems that were theoretically possible. A fix to prevent it from ever happening was engineered as a result of that analysis, according to the company. Tesla blamed human error for the crash, pointing to tests that showed Lee had consumed alcohol before getting in the car, and argued that there’s no certainty Autopilot was in use at the time.

The jury ultimately found there was no defect, and Tesla was cleared on Tuesday. Tesla has faced lawsuits over its Autopilot system in the past, but this is the first involving a fatality. It’s scheduled to go on trial for several others in the coming months, and today's ruling is likely to set the tone for those ahead.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/teslas-autopilot-was-not-to-blame-for-fatal-2019-model-3-crash-jury-finds-210643301.html?src=rss

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Report finds most period tracking apps don’t protect privacy

Mozilla released a report that found most popular period tracking apps don’t protect user privacy, which is a red flag in a post-Roe v. Wade landscape.
Mobile | Digital Trends

Huawei finds its niche with the sporty Watch GT Runner

The Huawei Watch GT Runner has found its niche as a fitness-orientated multi-sport smartwatch, thanks to a better design and lower price than the competition.
Wearables | Digital Trends

[Deal] At $999, Motorola’s Razr folding smartphone finds its niche as a knock-off Galaxy Z Flip

When it comes to folding smartphones of the clamshell variety, you have two choices – Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip that has been warmly received by reviewers, and the Motorola Razr that tried to trade on nostalgia and got it wrong somehow. Anyhow, if the Razr is the foldable phone that revs your motor, you can […]

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Study finds security holes in online voting for New Jersey and West Virginia

States are under pressure to use online voting for the US presidential election when COVID-19 could remain a threat in November, but those platforms might not be as secure as you’d like. MIT and the University of Michigan have published a report deta…
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Report: Samsung Note 7 probe finds batteries caused fires

Samsung has concluded that the Galaxy Note 7's fires and explosions were caused by battery problems, not the phone's hardware or software, Reuters reports. The information comes from "a person familiar with the matter," rather than an official source…
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Tesla ex-partner finds someone else to help with self-driving tech

Now that Tesla has kicked Mobileye's image recognition tech to the curb, what is its former partner going to do? Run into someone else's arms, of course. Mobileye has revealed that it's teaming up with Delphi on a self-driving platform that automaker…
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After LAUSD failure, Apple finds success bringing iPads into the classroom

Apple isn’t letting a few failures in the classroom stop it from trying. The company’s latest efforts to bring the iPad into schools as part of President Obama’s ConnectED initiative actually seems to be working.

The post After LAUSD failure, Apple finds success bringing iPads into the classroom appeared first on Digital Trends.

Mobile–Digital Trends

Tinder users twice as likely to have a sexually transmitted infection, finds new study

A new study has found that Tinder users are twice as likely to have a sexually transmitted infection (STI) as those that don’t use the popular dating app. The research also found that the types of STI Tinder users and non-users have tend to differ.

The post Tinder users twice as likely to have a sexually transmitted infection, finds new study appeared first on Digital Trends.

Mobile–Digital Trends

Juniper Networks finds backdoor code in its firewalls

One of the reasons corporate users and the privacy-minded rely on VPNs is to control access to their networks and (hopefully) not expose secrets over insecure connections. Today Juniper Networks revealed that some of its products may not have been li…
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