The electric car manufacturer Tesla has reached an agreement with the other party in the legal proceedings regarding the accident with fatal consequences in which the Apple engineer Walter Huang was killed – the Tesla Model X he was driving crashed and Huang was killed, while the engineer’s family blamed the Autopilot system for the accident.
The agreement was concluded on the day when the jury had to announce its final verdict in this case. As reported CNBC and The New York Times, Tesla’s lawyers have asked the court that these materials are not public, so the exact amount that will be paid is unknown. It is understandable that the company does not want this figure to be used as a reference point for recovery of damages in other similar legal proceedings.
The family of the deceased blames the accident on the Autopilot system, which did not correctly read the lines that color the driving lane, and also did not brake when the car was moving towards the obstacle. Tesla admitted that the Autopilot system was indeed working at the time of the accident, but their lawyers emphasize that the only way the accident could have happened was if the deceased did not pay attention to what was happening on the road – the weather and visibility were good at the time of the accident.
This accident caused a wide public resonance and the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) became involved in the investigation. It found out that the deceased had previously complained that the car started to go off the road. Also, the car had previously turned towards the barrier, which Huang crashed into with his car on the fateful day. The investigation concluded that the emergency braking system did not operate and the collision warnings did not sound. True, it was concluded that the deceased was playing a game on his smartphone at the time – it is not known whether the phone was in his hands at the time of the accident or was placed somewhere.
In any case, this lawsuit attracted a lot of public and media attention, while once again raising the question of the safety of these driving assistance systems and how correct Tesla is in calling its system Autopilot. We’ve written a lot before that this name gives people false associations about the system’s capabilities, although the manufacturer justifies that people are being warned to pay attention to the road.
2024-04-09 10:00:00
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