How Tesla won the lawsuit after a fatal ‘Autopilot’ accident

Tesla has prevailed in a highly publicized lawsuit in the US over the role of its ‘Autopilot’ assistance system in a fatal traffic accident.

The electric car manufacturer led by Elon Musk managed to convince the jury in Riverside, California that ‘Autopilot’ cannot be held responsible for the accident, the financial service Bloomberg reported from court on Tuesday.

The twelve-member jury concluded that the vehicle showed no manufacturing defects. The verdict came on the fourth day of deliberation and the vote was 9 to 3.

What happened?

The Tesla Model 3 of a 37-year-old driver traveling with his fiancée and her son left the road at high speed on a Southern California highway in 2019, struck a tree and caught fire. The driver was killed and his two passengers survived with injuries.

In the lawsuit, survivors accused Tesla of saying that “Autopilot” was responsible for the accident. They also argued that the company knew about the weaknesses in the system and gave owners a false sense of security.

The two surviving passengers, who were seriously injured, according to the Bloomberg report, are seeking $400 million in damages for bodily injury, mental suffering and the driver’s death.

How does Tesla reason?

Tesla pointed out, among other things, that when using the ‘Autopilot’ system, drivers must monitor the traffic situation and be ready to take control at any time. There is also no evidence that the ‘autopilot’ was activated before the accident. Tesla’s lawyer denied that the system could change direction in this way. A person in the vehicle must have activated this.

Tesla vehicles record a variety of data that is often useful in incident investigations. However, this information is sometimes no longer available after accidents such as fires.

Where is the problem?

There are several.

The ‘autopilot’ system is controversial. Although Musk and Tesla emphasize that it makes the vehicles safer, a number of accidents have occurred that have also drawn the attention of US regulators. This includes a series of incidents where Teslas with their warning lights on drove into emergency vehicles parked on the side of the road.

‘Autopilot’ can take over driver assistance functions, such as maintaining distance from the vehicle in front or changing lanes. At the same time, Tesla is currently allowing customers in the US to test an advanced system called ‘Full Self-Driving’ (FSD).

Despite the name, Tesla does not make Tesla an autonomous car, but it is also intended to, for example, stop at traffic lights and stop signs and turn at intersections in the city. The driver remains responsible, not Tesla. Some test users reported some serious errors in the software in road traffic.

It is the second time this year that an American jury has determined that Tesla’s driver assistance system was not responsible for a serious accident, Ars Technica now notes. In that other case, a 2019 Tesla Model S crashed into a lane divider. The driver blamed the system for this. Tesla argued that its “Autopilot” technology was being used on city streets, despite warnings about it in the vehicle’s owner’s manual.

However, the individual cases are so different that no conclusions can be drawn about other cases from the first two processes.

Which businesses are still open?

It should be noted that more lawsuits related to Tesla accidents are expected to be pending next year.

In early 2024, there will be a lawsuit over the fatal accident of an Apple employee whose Tesla Model

This accident occurred at a construction site during the route’s expansion – and one theory was that remnants of road markings could have affected the system. American accident investigators concluded that the driver had relied too much on the system.

An investigation by the American National Transport and Safety Board (NTSB) later showed that the driver was probably distracted by playing on his smartphone at the time of the accident.

Tesla’s driver assistance systems are also the subject of a class action lawsuit alleging that Tesla overstated their capabilities, as well as multiple investigations by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and a Justice Department investigation.

According to media reports, the US Department of Justice and the US Securities and Exchange Commission are also investigating whether Tesla has always provided correct information about the capabilities of the assistance system.

Sources

(dsc/sda/awp/dpa)