Yahoo Autos Family Sues Tesla Claiming Autopilot Defects on 2017 Model X Involved in Fatal Crash
A new lawsuit alleges that, last year, a 2017 Tesla Model X with the Autopilot system engaged steered and accelerated toward a highway barrier without any warnings of the impending collision.
The lawsuit also charges the state of California for allegedly failing to repair the barrier prior to the crash.
Tesla this week introduced new safety features in a software update that includes lane-keeping assist that operates without Autopilot engaged.
The family of a California man is suing Tesla for wrongful death and negligence after he died last year in a high-speed crash while Autopilot was engaged in his Tesla Model X. The suit, filed last week in Santa Clara, claims the Autopilot system was defective and caused the man, an engineer for Apple, to die from his injuries.
While the accident remains under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board and preliminary details of the crash suggest an inattentive driver, this lawsuit has the clearest shot against the state for a deformable highway barrier that the suit says was damaged and unrepaired 11 days earlier. The driver of the 2017 Tesla Model X P100D, Wei Lun "Walter" Huang, crashed head-on into this barrier at 71 mph during the morning of March 23, 2018, on Highway 101 in Mountain View, California. The entire front end of his Model X was sheared to the A-pillars, and the vehicle caught fire. Two other cars were subsequently involved and their occupants sustained minor to no injuries, according to the NTSB. Huang was pulled from the car and pronounced dead hours later.
According to the NTSB, Huang had engaged his car's Autopilot system-specifically, what Tesla calls Autosteer and Traffic Aware Cruise Control-four times during a 32-minute trip, including for one continuous stretch during the last 19 minutes before the crash. Huang was approaching a junction between Highways 101 and 85 and was in the left lane, at which point the lanes split. After the Model X no longer detected the car ahead of it, the Tesla veered left and accelerated back to Huang's set 75-mph speed, now heading straight for the barrier, according to the NTSB preliminary report. According to the car's sensors, Huang was not holding the steering wheel for six seconds prior to impact. The lawsuit claims the Autopilot system should have kept Huang's car in the lane, alerted Huang to the imminent collision, and engaged forward emergency braking. None of that happened, the suit claims. The NTSB investigation is ongoing.
Was Older Autopilot Software to Blame?
Huang's family claims that because later Tesla models introduced improved Autopilot software capable of recognizing highway interchanges and automatically taking exits while under a set navigation route, these subsequent upgrades constitute a known defect within the older Tesla models' Autopilot systems. Since Tesla first rolled out Autopilot in 2015, it has made clear through legal disclaimers and warnings on the dash that the driver must be able to take full control at any time.
Comments by CEO Elon Musk after the first fatal crash in the U.S. using a semi-automated system-the first known Autopilot crash, on May 7, 2016-bolster the argument that Autopilot was imperfect. Musk said in September 2016 that later improvements would have prevented that accident in Florida between a Model S on Autopilot and a tractor-trailer that crossed the car's path. At the time, Musk also said that Autopilot customers would receive a wireless software update within two weeks that would cut certain crashes by more than 50 percent. Musk explicitly mentioned objects of all kinds, which would not exclude the highway barrier that Huang's car hit.
“It does not matter what the object is, it just matters that it is something dense that it should not hit,” he said, “whereas a vision system really needs to know what the thing is. That will be the really dramatic improvement.”
In that 2016 accident in Florida, the NTSB did not fault Autopilot for causing the driver's death. The agency's 2017 report concluded that the truck driver failed to yield and that the driver had overly relied on a limited system.
Last month, Musk declared that the next version of Autopilot will be "fail-safe" and claimed the "probability of this computer failing is substantially lower than someone losing consciousness." Late last week, Tesla introduced another set of driver assists in a wireless update that includes lane-keeping assist without Autopilot engaged. The new system will be enabled in all Tesla models built after October 2016.
It is unknown what software version Huang's car had at the time of the crash. But until the NTSB finishes its investigation-which may hinge more on the state of California's maintenance of that highway barrier than Autopilot's alleged failure-we won't know whether or not Huang's car should have been capable of preventing or mitigating the crash.
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