The federal court in Miami, USA, found Tesla partially responsible for a fatal accident that occurred in 2019, and ordered Elon Musk’s company to pay $243 million (€209 million) to the family of the victim and an injured survivor.
The case involved an accident that took place in April 2019 in Key Largo, Florida. A Tesla Model S sped through an intersection and struck a couple who were parked next to their Chevrolet Tahoe. Naibel Benavides Leon, 22 years old, died in the accident, and her boyfriend, Dillion Angulo, was seriously injured.
Now, the jury of the Miami court found Tesla partially responsible for the fatality since the autopilot technology failed. The court’s verdict may now set a precedent for other lawsuits related to Tesla’s Autopilot. Currently, there are about a dozen cases in court alleging that the Autopilot or Tesla’s fully autonomous driving system contributed to fatal or injury-causing accidents.
The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has also requested a state court to suspend Tesla’s sales license for 30 days and impose fines due to the alleged misleading promotion of its driver assistance technology.
The DMV is concerned not only with names like Autopilot and Full Self-Driving but also with statements from Tesla that suggest capabilities that these systems do not possess, such as the claim that they are “designed to perform short and long-distance trips without any action required from the driver”.
