The fairy tale of the self-driving car
Tesla in court for the first time over deaths involving Autopilot
September 10, 2023, 2:50 p.m
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The number of deaths and serious injuries related to Tesla Autopilot is increasing. The electric car pioneer will soon have to answer in court for two fatal accidents. Essentially, it will primarily be about the term “Full Self-Driving”.
From mid-September, the US electric car manufacturer Tesla will have to answer in court for the first time because of fatal accidents involving its vehicles when the autopilot was switched on. In two different proceedings it will be clarified whether a failure of the autopilot was the cause of the accidents and who is liable for it. Tesla denies liability and blames drivers. The autopilot is safe when it is monitored by people. For the electric car manufacturer, a lot depends on the processes that will soon begin and others will follow. Only if buyers trust the system are they willing to spend up to $15,000 per vehicle on the software.
The first case, which will be heard in federal court in California on September 15, involves a Tesla Model 3. The car left the road at over 100 kilometers per hour on a highway east of Los Angeles in 2019 and hit a palm tree and burst into flames. The driver was killed and the two passengers, including an eight-year-old boy, were seriously injured. The passengers and the executor of the killed driver filed a lawsuit. It alleges that Tesla knew when selling the car that the autopilot and other safety systems were not working properly.
A second lawsuit coming to federal court in Florida on October 6 involves an accident in which a 2019 Tesla Model 3 came under the trailer of an 18-wheeler that was driving onto the road north of Miami. The roof of the car was shaved off and the driver was killed. The widow accuses Tesla that the autopilot neither initiated braking nor intervened in the steering to prevent the accident.
Software advertised as “Full Self-Driving”.
In court documents, the carmaker led by Elon Musk emphasizes that drivers must keep their eyes on the road and keep their hands on the wheel. “There are no self-driving cars on the roads today,” the company said. The civil lawsuits are intended to provide new evidence of what Musk and other Tesla executives knew about the actual capabilities of Autopilot, whose software was repeatedly advertised as “full self-driving.” Musk himself has praised the autopilot several times in short messages on Twitter, now renamed X.
For Musk, the procedures are a test of the credibility of his technological promises and thus of Tesla’s future viability. Investors are betting that the electric car specialist will be able to earn money on a large scale from self-driving fleets in the future, for example for taxis or driving services.
So far, the proceedings against Tesla have involved cases in which people were harmed, not deaths. In April, Tesla won a lawsuit in Los Angeles arguing that the technology, despite being called “autopilot” and “full self-driving,” had to be monitored by the driver. The case involved an accident involving a Model S vehicle that struck a curb, injuring the driver. Jurors believed the company said drivers would be warned about the system and would bear responsibility for inattention.