A court has handed Tesla another victory after siding with the automaker and rejecting allegations that its Autopilot advanced driver assistance system led to a death.
The case, heard in the Superior Court of California, was started by two survivors of a 2019 accident who claimed Tesla knew that his product was defective. The two survivors sought $400 million in damages for the loss of the driver, physical injuries and emotional distress.
Tesla argued that the accident that killed driver Micah Lee was due to human error – the same position the company has taken in other Autopilot lawsuits.
Tesla has won other lawsuits before, with a jury in California also finding earlier this year that the company’s Autopilot system was not responsible for a 2019 accident. No damages were awarded in the case against plaintiff Justine Hsu of Los Angeles, who sued Tesla in 2020 alleging negligence, fraud and breach of contract. The Molander v. Tesla case, which concluded Tuesday, was the first jury trial involving a death.
Tesla sees itself in California continues to face a number of other lawsuits, including a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the family of Walter Huang was filed, an Apple engineer who crashed his Tesla Model X with Autopilot activated into a central guardrail. The California Department of Transportation is also named in the lawsuit. That lawsuit alleges that errors in Tesla’s Autopilot driver assistance system caused the accident that killed Huang on March 23, 2018. Huang, who was 38, died when his 2017 Tesla Model X crashed into a guardrail on the 101 Freeway in Mountain View. A jury trial is expected in this case next year.
Tesla is also under scrutiny from federal and state regulators, all related to the Autopilot system and its upgraded version called Full Self-Driving.
Tesla vehicles come standard with a driver assistance system called Autopilot. For a fee of $6,000, owners can purchase an Enhanced Autopilot upgrade that includes several more features, including an active navigation system that guides a vehicle from on-ramp to off-ramp on the highway, including lane changes.
For an additional $12,000, owners can Full Self Driving (FSD) acquire – a feature that CEO Elon Musk has promised for years to deliver fully autonomous driving capabilities.
However, Tesla vehicles are not self-driving. FSD is Level 2 and instead includes a range of automated driving functions where the driver must be ready to take control at all times. It includes everything that Enhanced Autopilot offers and is designed to handle steering on urban streets as well as detect and respond to traffic lights and stop signs.