Third Tesla Crashes Amid Report of SEC Investigation (usatoday.com) 297
An anonymous reader writes: Tesla hasn't had the best month so far as not one, not two, but a total of three crashes have been reported with the car's Autopilot self-driving system engaged at the time -- two of which resulted in fatalities. In addition, The Wall Street Journal is reporting today that the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether Tesla violated securities law by failing to disclose more quickly a fatal accident in Florida in May involving a Tesla Model S that was in self-driving mode. The SEC didn't comment on the report, and Tesla issued a statement saying it has "not received any communication from the SEC regarding this issue." As for the Autopilot crash that was reported today, the driver said he activated Autopilot mode at the beginning of his trip. Tesla is looking into the crash and has yet to confirm whether or not Autopilot was a factor. Tesla CEO Elon Musk teased a "Top Secret Tesla Masterplan, Part 2" via Twitter that he is "Hoping to publish later this week."
Stop calling it "Autopilot" (Score:3, Insightful)
Tesla marketing department needs a better term -- "Autopilot" implies something that the car is incapable of. Just call it "cruise control" and shield themselves from liability.
Back Seat Driver? (Score:3, Insightful)
Or maybe co-pilot to make clear the driver is the captain of the car?
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Re:Stop calling it "Autopilot" (Score:5, Informative)
In general, they are adding modifiers to cruise control, and Subaru was the only other one I saw in a quick search that used a completely new name.
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It's good to have "assist" in the name. Makes it clear that it doesn't do it for you.
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Agreed! Surely they know how stupid people can be.
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Um, modern plane auto pilots can, and regularly do, take-off and land without assistance. And they've been able to do so for a long time. In fact, the first fully automatic flight was performed in the 50s!
Today, pilots are mostly there for emergency backup. The manual take-offs and landings they do are a condition of their licence, to keep them in practice.
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The term "autopilot", as the majority has come acquainted with it, originates from the areoplane industry.
No, the term "autopilot", as the majority understand it means a device that pilots a plane automatically so the pilot can take their hands off the controls. They've seen it in films - documentaries even (I saw an A380 pilot filling in a checklist while his plane flew itself across the atlantic on TV just the other day). If you're lucky, they don't think it involves a humorous inflatable pilot dummy. Whether or not the pedantically correct aviation industry definition of "autopilot" matches this is irreleva
Autodrive car's may have to be at FAA software lev (Score:3)
Autodrive car's may have to be at the FAA level of software testing / code review.
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Autodrive car's may have to be at the FAA level of software testing / code review.
While you bring a valid point here, the average automobile these days doesn't get a new coat of paint every few years in order to rack up half a million miles before being retired. Would be nice if they did, but the distribution chain of today would never stand for it.
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Let's take it at face value that you are telling the truth. You are admitting to breaking the law just because you were told to. How does it feel to be a Nazi?
Re:I would just point out..... (Score:5, Funny)
I was also part of the SpaceX certification process. I remember you, you were the guy named Chester. I was sitting next to you in meetings and I had a bag of Cheetos, and for some reason you were always really trying hard to get my bag of Cheetos and I wouldn't let you. Neither would anyone else. You did this for like 3 weeks. I don't know why a guy dressed like a cheetah wanted Cheetos so bad and didn't just go get his own out of the vending machine, but when I said "It ain't easy bein' cheesy" you got super pissed and stormed out of the room and said "Fuck you and fuck your dangerously cheesy snacks too."
I always knew that would come back to haunt us, and here it is. Damn.
Re:Autodrive car's may have to be at FAA software (Score:4)
Software this important to peoples' lives can't be written like Windows95. I'd say for Tesla, it isn't.
The trouble is, the auto-pilot feature isn't an auto-pilot. It's not autonomous. It's supose to be used as a safety device. It's being misadvertised, misrepresneted, and even if it was correctly portrayed as a beta safety feature - crashes like this show it reduces the awareness of the driver when they trust the features of the car and reduce their attention.
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I think most car safety devices are smartphone assists: they allow you to spend more time phoning, browsing and texting. For those who want to remain in control it does what it advertises , but many people will use it for its convenience value. That's how it's going to be with self driving cars too. Some people will be all too eager to let the car drive itself, whatever the risk.
The summary is false. (Score:5, Informative)
Tesla hasn't had the best month so far as not one, not two, but a total of three crashes have been reported with the car's Autopilot self-driving system engaged at the time -- two of which resulted in fatalities.
The article about the most recent crash contradicts the summary poster's statement that two of the crashes resulted in fatalities. Only one of the crashes has resulted in fatalities.
Re:The summary is false. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's exactly what I was thinking. I can't find any evidence that there has been a second fatality.
And really, have only three Tesla vehicles period crashed, period, while on autopilot in 130m miles? If so, that's bloody impressive. More impressive than just a statistic of 1 fatality in 130m miles.
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Meh. Simple typo (Score:2)
That's a problem because anybody who engages the autopilot shouldn't be breeding.
Re:The summary is false. (Score:4, Insightful)
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If it drives as well as a human but no better, why bother paying Tesla for it?
Uhhh... so that I don't have to drive for 4 hours down boring interstate or handle stop and go freeway traffic?
Yes, but the point is that you obviously DO need to still concentrate on your boring journey, so it seems like a pointless feature.
"It works perfectly well until it doesn't and you die" isn't good enough.
Mod Parent Up (Score:2)
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Slippery slope? (Score:4, Interesting)
When one attempts to make something idiot-proof, nature builds a better idiot. Not necessarily true, but we live in world where innovators are hampered by the chance of being sued by idiots who just-don't-listen.
"Fire is hot", "peanuts may contain peanuts", "online play not rated", "cruise control is not auto-pilot", "autopilot is experimental", etc.
Beta-testing is work.
What I wonder is whether the automated steering fights the driver if said driver takes over to correct a computational error.
Re:Slippery slope? (Score:5, Interesting)
When one attempts to make something idiot-proof, nature builds a better idiot. Not necessarily true, but we live in world where innovators are hampered by the chance of being sued by idiots who just-don't-listen.
"Fire is hot", "peanuts may contain peanuts", "online play not rated", "cruise control is not auto-pilot", "autopilot is experimental", etc.
I don't drive a Tesla, but the only message I heard about Tesla's Autopilot was the name. Yes, there are safety warnings in the manual and when you start up the car, but who actually pays attention that that? The same people who read EULAs? There's a reason the product is called Autopilot and not assist or level-2, and the reason is that they want to implicitly convey the idea that they are better than the competitors with mere assist or level-2. The name is not accidental.
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I don't drive a Tesla either.
According to this review [motortrend.com], they are far better than the competition.
As far as I understand, you cannot miss the warning. It's not like an EULA with walls and walls of text.
Re:Slippery slope? (Score:4, Informative)
Funny thing, Autopilot is what this is.
You may have the idea that "Autopilot" means the plane flies itself. Nope. Typically autopilot on the plane means it will fly straight and level until ordered otherwise. The autopilot on a plane absolutely will fly straight into another plane even, the human pilot is expected to take care of that sort of thing.
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Funny thing, Autopilot is what this is.
You may have the idea that "Autopilot" means the plane flies itself. Nope. Typically autopilot on the plane means it will fly straight and level until ordered otherwise. The autopilot on a plane absolutely will fly straight into another plane even, the human pilot is expected to take care of that sort of thing.
Technically autopilot implementations on airplanes do exactly what you said and require a measure of continued vigilance on the part of the pilots. However, that is not what the term means in common language. The English idiom of putting something on autopilot means that something will work without any continued vigilance. In a way, this is a brilliant marketing strategy. The term connotes self-driving while denoting strictly not self-driving. A perfect marketing term.
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experimental? The FAA has a special certification for that.
The DMV does not.
Cars are on the ground. They have zero chance of flying over or into buildings unless something has gone _very_ wrong.
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experimental? The FAA has a special certification for that. The DMV does not.
Cars are on the ground. They have zero chance of flying over or into buildings unless something has gone _very_ wrong.
But in the event they do, you want to be in a Telsa - see the crash in Germany by the teenage girls.
Re: Slippery slope? (Score:2)
Just Don't Click The Suicide Package (Score:2)
Duke Nukem Forever Young (Score:5, Insightful)
Because I like you guys, I'm gonna do you a solid and save you all kinds of tsuris later on. There will not be self-driving cars in any of our lifetimes. Yes, we will have something like super cruise control and driver assist, but no, you will never be able to call for your robot Uber to pick you up and drive you to your part-time job. It's just not going to happen. And finally, the people who know most about "driverless" cars are starting to come clean:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07... [nytimes.com]
Yes, you read that right. The project director for "self-driving cars" at Google just added 25 more years to his projection on when you're going to see them. And as the writer points out, most of us know that any tech prediction for 30 years down the road always ends in tears. If you go back 30 years, they were predicting tech that never showed up and mostly totally missed on the most important tech advances that did show up.
Now I don't have a particular interest one way or the other regarding self-driving cars, except this: I don't want to see one dollar in public funds spent to develop this technology or to create infrastructure for a self-driving fleet until we've made actual public transportation affordable and viable, the way it was early to middle last century before Standard Oil and GM conspired to destroy public transportation in the United States (and yes, they were even convicted of doing so in court). So go ahead, Google and Elon and Tim Cook and all the visionaries. Make your self-driving golf carts all you want. Just don't ask for a dollar of taxpayer money, especially not until you start paying your taxes.
http://www.whale.to/b/street_c... [whale.to]
http://www.baycrossings.com/Ar... [baycrossings.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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There will not be self-driving cars in any of our lifetimes.
You nay sayer you. It's only going to take near human level AI small enough to fit in a car before we can all sit back and take a ride. That's closer than fusion power and flying cars isn't it?
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See, that's my biggest fear about "self-driving cars". That instead of putting money in public transportation that we know works and is profitable, they're going to put it into making "smart roads".
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instead of putting money in public transportation that we know works and is profitable
Well, we know it works. But from where do you get "profitable"?
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See the links in my post a few levels up. Public transportation and light rail were very profitable until GM and Standard Oil (and other oil companies) conspired to kill them off. This is one of those wacky-sounding conspiracy theories that turns out to be absolutely true. They were even convicted in court over this, but a friendly (bribed) judge fined them $1.
Seriously, friend, if you don't know about this chapter in US history, it's really
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Public transportation and light rail were very profitable until GM and Standard Oil (and other oil companies) conspired to kill them off.
Yes, I'm aware of all that -- but they were profitable then precisely because people at that time did not have cheap and easy access to automobiles, and were therefore willing to pay for non-subsidized public transportation because the only alternative was staying home.
How would public transportation be profitable now, in competition with ubiquitous automobiles, when many (most?) people apparently prefer to drive rather than to take public transportation? The only scenario I can imagine is one where privat
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Automobiles were plenty cheap and easy in 1950. In fact, compared to income, it was cheaper to own a car then than it is today.
Are you certain that people don't "apparently prefer to drive" because there
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How does public transportation work in areas with population density too low to fill a regularly scheduled sedan, let alone a bus?
How does public transportation work when it takes 2-3 times as long to use public transportation than to drive your own vehicle?
How does public transportation work when you need to bring large items home from the store?
How does public transportation work when you want to hiking in a national park?
There are a lot of situations where public transportation works well, but a
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Most people live in cities.
It doesn't need to take longer. In fact, it can be faster.
You mean a "brick and mortar" store? The kind that are disappearing?
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Maybe, but there's a HUGE amount of functionality that lies between "no autonomous driving capability at all" and "able to drive your kids to school, then bring the car home and park it in the garage for you".
The fact is, we had the technology to make semi-autonomous cars capable of lanekeeping and collision-avoidance more than TWENTY YEARS AGO. The catch is, it would have:
* doubled or tripled the cost of an average car
* required the construction of thousands of miles of new freeway lanes for the exclusive
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It really depends what you mean by "self-driving car". I think it's realistic to expect Google's cars to be better than humans on paved roads by the end of the decade. Okay, you can't tell it to drive you literally anywhere, like off-road or perhaps onto a ferry/train, but in terms of being able to take a nap on the way to work I don't think that's an unreasonable expectation.
What will probably slow it down is the pace of legal and insurance reforms require to support it.
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So now the question is do eventually roll out cars with this capability and require everyone on the road to have one.. or do we not allow people to use the function until all non-conforming cars are retired.. or do we have a separate road system just for these cars..
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Don't blame me, I was posting while driving my Tesla.
Such a great parallel (Score:2)
Tesla's autopilot is what systemd is to Linux. Beta tested by the users and still not ready for anything serious. Does it compile? Great, upload to the mirrors!
Lost focus (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, can't we just have a nice electric car without all this self-driving crap screwing it up?
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Hardly any at all. The Model S would probably only be 9.997 times as much as the median wage earner can afford, rather than 10 times.
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saved lives (Score:4, Interesting)
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Um wrong:
"We learned yesterday evening that NHTSA is opening a preliminary evaluation into the performance of Autopilot during a recent fatal crash that occurred in a Model S. This is the first known fatality in just over 130 million miles where Autopilot was activated. Among all vehicles in the US, there is a fatality every 94 million miles. Worldwide, there is a fatality approximately every 60 million miles."
But now there's been two fatal crashes, that kinda screws that up! Perhaps Autopilot has now cause
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Just one fatality (Score:5, Interesting)
Sigh. One of the crashes resulted in one fatality. The other two crashes, no fatalities. (And it is not yet known whether Autopilot was engaged at the time of those two incidents.)
Getting distracted with Autopilot engaged is like removing your seatbelt because you have airbags. You may be able to occasionally get away with it, but it's still an incredibly dumb thing to do. (And the former endangers other drivers, not just yourself.) The silver lining of these incidents is that maybe more drivers will start paying more attention while using AP, though it should have been up to Tesla to properly instill this sense of caution to begin with.
And side skirts/guards should really be mandated for trailers nationwide. (They're already mandated in California.) It may not physically prevent an underride at high speed, but it doesn't have to; the radar is much more likely to detect them and trigger collision-avoidance braking. It's only a small patch for a small part of the problem, but better than not patching it at all.
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Getting distracted with Autopilot engaged is like removing your seatbelt because you have airbags. .
Why call it autopilot? just call it cruise control, and don't let the driver out of the loop. I have lane change assist in my Porsche. If it does not detect input from the driver after some number of minutes, it will automatically disengage and beep out a warning. Point is, the system doesn't even pretend to be engaged if you're not.
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In fact, Tesla is so far ahead of Porsche, it would be like comparing Porsche's lane assist, safety features and cruise control, vs. an old style cruise control.
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*Two* of which? (Score:5, Informative)
Tesla hasn't had the best month so far as not one, not two, but a total of three crashes have been reported with the car's Autopilot self-driving system engaged at the time -- two of which resulted in fatalities
The first one was the guy watching the DVD who went under the truck. Or at least, all of him below the neck did. Fatality!
The second one was in Michigan, and the driver "survived a rollover crash." [slashdot.org]
This is the third one, and "the driver said he activated Autopilot mode at the beginning of his trip."
That's one fatality, Subby. These are your own links and summary. We expect you to read them, even if none of the posters or editors here do.
Fortunately... (Score:2)
not one, not two, but a total of three...
and not 100!
not one, not two, not three ... not fifty-two...
Disinformation, no thanks (Score:2)
Anyone knowing how autopilot works should find the report sounding fishy. One doesn't "activate the car's Autopilot driver assist system at the beginning of the trip", so at zero speed, but when the road is appropriate, like being on a highway, at positive speed. Activating autopilot at zero speed doesn't work.
Further this incident, which remains to be confirmed on several points, didn't caused any fatality. Slashdot doen't improve its declining aura in participating to what looks like a disinformation camp
only 1 fatality and so far, only 1 crash with AP (Score:2)
However, it is still thought that Pennsylvania's crash did NOT involve AP, [detroitnews.com] and Montana is still un-verified (though, I would expect this one to have AP since it had been running for some time). IOW, at this time, it is 1 crash using AP, and only 1 fatality.
So, this brings up the question of why did an AC submit this story which has multiple false statements, and why is
Summary is loaded with misinformation (Score:2)
There has been one reported death while AP was engaged. There have been other Tesla accidents in which the owners have allegedly reported AP is in use, but as of yet these owners have refused to allow Tesla to examine the logs to confirm or deny this allegation. As of yet only one of the accidents reported in the recent media has occurred where it is confirmed that AP was engaged at the time of the crash. Rumours make could clickbait, but once upon a time slashdot was concerned with facts.
Too many things (Score:2)
Focus, man, Focus.
Sequel (Score:2)
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Apparently one guy was watching Harry Potter on a portable DVD player.
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I thought twice was a coincidence and three times was enemy action?
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I thought twice was a coincidence and three times was enemy action?
So ISIS are sabotaging electric cars in order to keep the price of oil and hence their funding high?
A truly excellent conspiracy theory.
Re:Three crashes in a month (Score:5, Informative)
3000 people per day who die in car accidents just in the USA alone
So your claim is over one million car deaths per year in the USA? I have to call [citation needed] on that.
Because in 2014, USA deaths in cars, motor cycles, bicycles, and pedestrians all together were 32675 [usatoday.com].
Re:Three crashes in a month (Score:5, Insightful)
yep screwed .. that should have been 3000 per month
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yep screwed .. that should have been 3000 per month
Oh well, only out by a factor of thirty...I really hope you're a politician and not an engineer at Tesla.
Re: Three crashes in a month (Score:5, Funny)
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My guess is some people in the media have either bought put-options or want to buy Tesla stock cheap. There is no rationality to their reporting.
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My guess is some people in the media have either bought put-options or want to buy Tesla stock cheap. There is no rationality to their reporting.
Plenty of rationale - it's called sensationalism and sensational journalism - aka anything to get headlines.
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Your statement lacks any meaningful content. Why are they lemons? Got any evidence of that? Data or citations, perhaps? And why would someone be a moron for buying one? By what objective standard?
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In their marketing, I've only seen it described as an intelligent cruise control. What have you seen that contradicts? Unrelated blogs talking about it?
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The wording used around it is talking about what it "will" do. The talk about what it "does" do is generally quite accurate.
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I bet he is an apple user...
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I use my first drink to wash down my car key. This way I'm guaranteed not to try to drive drunk.
It causes little discomfort later, but it's better than becoming a statistic.
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Are you doing anything about that? ...
Who are you talking to?
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And how exactly would training down the road help?
You got it wrong when you kept claiming that city roads are much more dangerous than highways when it came to fatalities.
Now, you are claiming that Canada is going to impose on Tesla what they already do, as well as force them to offer up yearly training when nothing has changed?>
So, who do you work for?
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Even if it wasn't, the log might say that it was. [touches side of nose]
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You had a posting that was SPOT ON. It is obvious that there is a full on assault on all of Musk's businesses.
Thankfully, customers are ignoring the BS that is going on and focusing instead on where the value is.
1909 (Score:2, Insightful)
In other news today, another model T, the worlds first assembly line manufactured car, broke out into flames today, being the 5th such incident this year many predict the ford motor company will not survive the winter as any reasonable investor would bail from the company, undoubtedly the use of mass manufacturing will be the end of ford.
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In other news today, another model T, the worlds first assembly line manufactured car, broke out into flames today, being the 5th such incident this year many predict the ford motor company will not survive the winter as any reasonable investor would bail from the company, undoubtedly the use of mass manufacturing will be the end of ford.
You forgot to mention buggy whip makers anywhere in your useful analogy.
Re: 1909 (Score:3)
horse & buddy
Now that's funny.
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That strategy works right up until it doesn't. Because sometimes the fearful ones are right.
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Also known as 'making a profit for its stockholders' which is the primary purpose of any for-profit corporation.
There are different types of companies and different types of investors for sure, and many don't seem to mind holding stock that pays no dividends but saying that paying dividends is the same as 'running out of ideas' is just frankly silly; it's entirely possible to come up with new ideas and start developing them and still
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A corporation is a separate entity from its founder, stockholders, and in fact any human being, and has its own purposes and interests separate from theirs.
You shouldn't anthropomorphise corporations - it really annoys them.
Dividends (Score:4, Informative)
A dividend means a company has run out of ideas, and can think of nothing better to do with capital than return it to investors.
That's one interpretation but in reality it's more nuanced than that. Companies have basically 4 things they can do with excess free cash flow [wikipedia.org]. They can reinvest in the company, they can buy another company or asset, they can repurchase stock or they can pay a dividend. Paying a dividend does not necessarily mean the company lacks ideas. It can mean that the shareholders simply prefer to use the excess cash that way. Repurchasing stock for example reduces the supply of stock an in theory can push the stock price up but since stock prices are decoupled from actual earnings it's a bit of a gamble. So is buying another company. Some companies are in slow growth industries and nobody would buy the stock if it didn't pay a dividend. Utilities are a good example of this. Dividends also can be used as a management tool. There is a ton of evidence showing that management teams with too much cash available to them tend to get lazy and sloppy. They make dumb acquisitions, engage in empire building, buy unnecessary assets, etc. Companies tend to perform better when cash is tighter (up to a point).
So no, paying a dividend does not necessarily mean the company has run out of ideas.
I can sell the stock, take the money to the store and use it to buy groceries. That is real enough for me.
You can do that but you are familiar with the parable of killing the goose that laid the golden egg? There is an opportunity cost to selling a stock. You forego any future benefits of an ownership stake in the company. That's not necessarily a bad thing but with a dividend you get cash out of the company without the opportunity cost of losing your ownership stake in the company.