In the first process in the USA against the car manufacturer Tesla The plaintiffs have made serious accusations against the company because of a fatal accident with the autopilot switched on. “An automaker should never sell experimental vehicles to its customers,” attorney Jonathan Michaels said in his opening statement at the trial in Riverside, California.
The trial, which could be groundbreaking for similar cases across the United States, involves an accident involving a Tesla Model 3. The car left the road on a highway in 2019 at 105 kilometers per hour, struck a palm tree and was burst into flames. The driver, Micah Lee, was killed and two passengers were seriously injured. The lawsuit accuses Tesla of knowing when it sold the vehicle that the Autopilot and other safety systems were defective. Research by manager magazine recently showed that Elon Musk ignored warnings from his team about the dangers of autopilot.
Attorney Michaels said that when Lee purchased the Tesla package with full self-driving capabilities for his Model 3 in 2019 for $6,000, the system was still in beta and therefore not ready for general use.
Tesla has denied liability and said Lee drank alcohol before getting behind the wheel. It is also unclear whether the autopilot was switched on at the time of the accident. But the plaintiffs could argue that Lee’s blood alcohol content was below the legal limit, court documents show. The process is expected to take a few weeks.
There have been similar proceedings against Tesla in the past. But this is the first involving a death.
There will be another trial in federal court in Florida starting in October. It’s about an accident in which a Tesla Model 3 came under the trailer of a truck that drove onto the road in 2019. The roof of the car was severed and the driver died. The widow accuses Tesla that the autopilot neither initiated braking nor intervened in the steering to prevent the accident.
The proceedings should also clarify what Tesla founder Elon Musk (52) and other Tesla managers knew about the actual capabilities of the autopilot. The software was advertised as “Full Self-Driving” and Musk praised the autopilot several times. However, according to the court documents, the company emphasized that drivers must keep their eyes on the road and keep their hands on the wheel.