Terrifying dashcam footage shows what it's like trapped inside a self-driving Tesla that crashed and KILLED woman
Naibel Benavides Leon, 22, died after the Tesla Model S slammed in to her and boyfriend Dillon Angulo, then 27, in 2019.
The couple had pulled over to look at the stars at the side of a road near Key Largo, Florida, when they were struck by the vehicle after driver George McGee took his eye off the road to reach for his phone.
Footage from the Tesla's front camera showed McGee blow through a red light as he speeds down the road at nearly 70mph.
The car passes a stop sign and crashes through several other road signs before striking the couple's vehicle, which was parked 40 feet off Card Sound Road by County Road 905.
Benavides Leon was thrown 75 feet and died at the scene, while Angulo suffered serious injuries, according to a wrongful death lawsuit filed against Tesla by the woman's estate.
The filings accuse Tesla of advertising its self-driving system Autopilot, 'in a way that greatly exaggerated its capabilities and hid its deficiencies '.
'The McGee Tesla Model S had an Autopilot system that was still in Beta, meaning it was not fully tested for safety, and, further, the system was not designed to be used on roadways with cross-traffic or intersections,' the lawsuit states.
'Nevertheless, Tesla programed the system so that it could be operated in such areas.'
The documents call-out Tesla boss Elon Musk and allege he ignored previous reports about issues with the Autopilot feature, listing out 56 alleged incidents.
'Tesla and its CEO, Elon Musk, made the intentional decision to continue encouraging Tesla drivers to over-rely on its Autopilot system,' the filing states.
'Tesla chose to continue profiting from the sales of their defective vehicles and software systems rather than heed warnings from government agencies, experts, and other car companies.'
The lawsuit provides allegations about the fatal crash on April 25, 2019.
'While McGee was reaching for his phone, the vehicle detected a stop sign, a stop bar, the road's edge, a pedestrian, and a parked Chevrolet Tahoe, but the Vehicle did not provide McGee with any audio alert or other warning of the obstacles and never engaged its emergency brakes,' court documents said.
McGee told cops he was driving in 'cruise' and he took his hand off the wheel to retrieve his dropped cell phone and then hit the truck, according to the complaint.
'McGee stated to officers, "[i]t was actually because I was driving. I looked down and I've been using cruise control, and I looked down, I didn't realize (INAUDIBLE) and then I sat up. The minute I sat up, I hit the brakes and saw his truck,' the legal filings state.
The lawsuit also claims that McGee told a 911 operator he was not paying attention during the drive.
'Shortly after the crash, McGee called 911, telling the operator: 'Oh my God, I wasn't looking," "I don't know what happened. I ended up missing the turn. I was looking down," and "I dropped my phone. Oh my God,"' the document said.
The complaint claims that McGee relied on Tesla's autopilot feature to drive him home.
Tesla Traffic Aware Cruise Control claims to help drivers maintain safe distance from the car in front, automatically break and with lane control.
The Elon Musk founded company has said its features are meant for 'fully attentive' drivers, opens new tab holding the steering wheel, and the features do not make its vehicles autonomous.
Proceedings in the case are scheduled to being on July 14, marking the first time a wrongful death case against Tesla is heading to trial.
Daily Mail has contacted Tesla for comment on this story.
In June, Tesla failed to persuade a federal judge to end the lawsuit after the judge said the plaintiffs offered sufficient evidence that Autopilot defects were a 'substantial factor' in their injuries.
While McGee, who is not a defendant, conceded he was not driving safely, but that didn't automatically make him solely responsible, 'particularly given McGee's testimony that he expected Autopilot to avoid the collision,' US District Judge Beth Bloom said.
Bloom said the failure to warn claim survived in part because Autopilot's risks might be hard to extract from the owner's manual on Model S touchscreens.
'Tesla deliberately blurs the distinction between whether its automation system is merely a 'driver assist' system or a fully autonomous system that does not require the driver's constant attention,' the complaint states.
They go on to quote Musk in September, 2016 when he asserted that: 'The exciting thing is that even if the vision system doesn't recognize what the object is because it could be a very strange looking vehicle, it could be a multi-car pileup, it could be a truck crossing the road, it really could be anything – an alien spaceship, a pile of junk metal that fell off the back of a truck, per the lawsuit.
'It actually doesn't matter what the object is, it just knows that there's something dense that it is going to hit – and it should not hit that.'
But the lawsuit claims Tesla is liable because its promises about Autopilot are what motivated McGee to purchase the vehicle.
'At all material times, George McGee purchased the vehicle in large part because of the Autopilot and other safety features advertised by Tesla,' the document states.
A summary judgement denial from Judge Bloom allowing the plaintiffs to pursue punitive damages states that: 'McGee testified that his beliefs about the capabilities of Autopilot came from "looking at information on the [V]ehicle" . . . [and] Plaintiffs contend that he likely watched videos online or on Tesla's website about the [V]ehicle's features and how they work . . . [including] [o]ne video show[ing] Tesla['s] drivers operating the vehicle without their hands.'
Bloom also dismissed the estate's manufacturing defect and negligent misrepresentation claims.
The lawsuit is seeking unspecified damages and the trial got underway this week.
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