Latest news with #TeslaModelS
Canada News.Net
14 hours ago
- Automotive
- Canada News.Net
High-stakes Miami trial puts Tesla's safety claims under scrutiny
NEW YORK CITY, New York: A high-stakes trial involving Tesla began this week in Miami, where a jury will determine whether the company bears any responsibility for the death of a university student and the serious injury of her boyfriend in a 2019 crash involving one of its vehicles. The incident occurred near Key West, Florida, when a Tesla Model S, traveling nearly 70 mph, ran through flashing red lights, a stop sign, and a T-intersection before crashing into a parked Chevrolet Tahoe. The collision killed Naibel Benavides Leon, who had been stargazing nearby, and seriously injured her boyfriend, Dillon Angulo. She was thrown 75 feet into a wooded area. The plaintiffs argue that Tesla's driver-assistance feature, Autopilot, should have recognized the vehicle ahead and either warned the driver or slowed down. They claim Tesla's system failed to do so, despite detecting the Tahoe. According to the lawsuit, the driver, George McGee, relied on Autopilot and was distracted, reaching for a dropped phone when the car crashed. McGee was sued separately, and that case has been settled. Tesla, however, rejects any blame. In a statement, the company said, "The evidence clearly shows that this crash had nothing to do with Tesla's Autopilot technology. Instead, like so many unfortunate accidents since cellphones were invented, this was caused by a distracted driver." Tesla also emphasized that its user manuals instruct drivers to remain alert and ready to take control at all times, noting that its vehicles are not fully autonomous. What makes this case particularly significant is that U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom has allowed the plaintiffs to seek punitive damages, a rare development in lawsuits against Tesla. In her ruling last month, she dismissed claims of manufacturing defects and negligent misrepresentation but allowed other liability claims to move forward. "A reasonable jury could find that Tesla acted in reckless disregard of human life for the sake of developing their product and maximizing profit," Judge Bloom wrote. The lawsuit contends that Tesla should have restricted the use of Autopilot to major roads for which it was designed, preventing drivers from activating it on smaller, rural roads like the one where the crash occurred. The plaintiffs cite data and video evidence showing the system detected the Tahoe but failed to act appropriately. Tesla has since updated its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving systems, but concerns remain. In 2023, the company recalled 2.3 million vehicles after federal safety regulators found Autopilot did not do enough to ensure driver attention. Regulators later opened an investigation into whether Tesla had truly addressed the issue. Despite ongoing scrutiny, Elon Musk continues to tout the capabilities of Tesla's "Full Self-Driving" technology, which he claims allows vehicles to operate independently. Federal officials have cautioned that such claims can mislead drivers into overreliance, potentially leading to crashes. The Full Self-Driving system has been linked to at least three fatal accidents and is under investigation for poor performance in conditions like sun glare and fog. Tesla is pushing forward with plans to deploy a fleet of driverless robotaxis in the U.S. by the end of next year. Early test runs in Austin, Texas, have been largely successful, though isolated incidents—such as a car veering into the wrong lane—highlight persistent challenges.
The Star
2 days ago
- Automotive
- The Star
Tesla spars in court over Autopilot alert two seconds before crash
A Tesla vehicle passes the Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. U.S. Courthouse as jury selection began in connection with allegations regarding the safety of Tesla's autopilot system on July 14, 2025 in Miami, Florida. The federal case follows a fatal crash in 2019 of a Tesla on autopilot that crashed into a parked car in Key Largo, Florida. The collision led to the death of 22-year-old Naibel Benavides Leon and the serious injury of her boyfriend, Dillon Angulo. — AFP The final two seconds before a Tesla Model S crashed into a parked SUV took centre stage on July 17 in a court showdown over who's responsible for the 2019 collision – the distracted driver or his car's Autopilot system. Tesla is seeking to show a jury that the company's technology performed as it should and that the driver is fully to blame for running through a stop sign at a T intersection in the Florida Keys and ramming into a Chevrolet Tahoe, killing a woman who stood next to the SUV and seriously injuring her boyfriend. A three-week trial in Miami federal court over a suit filed by the woman's family and the boyfriend is putting close scrutiny on a decade-long experiment with semi-autonomous driving at Elon Musk's electric vehicle maker. A verdict against Tesla would be a blow at a time when the company is staking its future on self-driving and pushing to launch a long-promised robotaxi business. The first few days of the trial have taken jurors deep into how the technology works and what its limitations are. The company's lawyer, Joel Smith, pressed a key witness for the plaintiffs to agree that an audible alert 1.65 seconds before impact – when the car's automated steering function aborted – would have been enough time for the driver to avoid or at least mitigate the accident. Smith demonstrated what the alarm sounds like for jurors to hear. Data recovered from the car's computer shows that driver George McGee was pressing the accelerator to 17 miles (27.4 kilometers) per hour over the posted speed limit, leading him to override the vehicle's adaptive cruise control before he went off the road. He hit the brakes just .55 seconds before impact, but it remains in dispute whether he saw or heard warnings from the Model S while he was reaching to the floorboard for his dropped cell phone. Safety expert Mary "Missy' Cummings, an engineering professor at George Mason University, acknowledged in her second day on the witness stand that McGee may have braked in response to the alert, but she suggested his reaction time was too slow to know for sure. Cummings, who has criticised Tesla's technology in the past and previously served as an adviser to the National Highway Safety Administration, didn't yield much to Smith's questioning. At one point the lawyer highlighted past comments by Musk, in which the Tesla chief executive officer said the use of "beta' to describe the Autopilot system is meant to convey that the software is not a final product and to discourage drivers from "complacency' and taking their hands off the steering wheel. "I do not have any evidence in front of me that the word 'beta' is trying to communicate anything to drivers,' Cummings said. "What it is trying to do, in my professional opinion, is avoid legal liability.' The jury also heard Thursday from an accident reconstruction specialist, Alan Moore, who argued that if Tesla had programmed its software not to operate on roadways it wasn't designed for – like the one on Key Largo – "this crash would not have happened'. But he also testified that McGee had a history of disregarding alerts. Moore explained to jurors that Autopilot automatically disengages if a driver fails to put hands on the wheel after receiving three audible warnings. "Almost every time he commuted from his office to his condo, he would get a strikeout,' Moore said. When that happened, McGee would pull over, put the car in park, shift it back into drive and turn Autopilot back on, the witness said. In his opening argument, Smith had said the data history for McGee showed that he'd safely travelled through the intersection where the crash happened almost 50 times in the same Model S. "The only thing that changed was his driver behaviour,' Smith told the jury. "He dropped something and was trying to pick it up.' – Bloomberg
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Business Standard
2 days ago
- Automotive
- Business Standard
Tesla spars in court over autopilot alert 2 seconds before 2019 crash
Tesla is seeking to show a jury that the company's technology performed as it should and that the driver is fully to blame for running through a stop sign at a T intersection Bloomberg The final two seconds before a Tesla Model S crashed into a parked SUV took center stage Thursday in a court showdown over who's responsible for the 2019 collision — the distracted driver or his car's Autopilot system. Tesla is seeking to show a jury that the company's technology performed as it should and that the driver is fully to blame for running through a stop sign at a T intersection in the Florida Keys and ramming into a Chevrolet Tahoe, killing a woman who stood next to the SUV and seriously injuring her boyfriend. A three-week trial in Miami federal court over a suit filed by the woman's family and the boyfriend is putting close scrutiny on a decade-long experiment with semi-autonomous driving at Elon Musk's electric vehicle maker. A verdict against Tesla would be a blow at a time when the company is staking its future on self-driving and pushing to launch a long-promised robotaxi business. The first few days of the trial have taken jurors deep into how the technology works and what its limitations are. The company's lawyer, Joel Smith, pressed a key witness for the plaintiffs to agree that an audible alert 1.65 seconds before impact — when the car's automated steering function aborted — would have been enough time for the driver to avoid or at least mitigate the accident. Smith demonstrated what the alarm sounds like for jurors to hear. Data recovered from the car's computer shows that driver George McGee was pressing the accelerator to 17 miles (27.4 kilometers) per hour over the posted speed limit, leading him to override the vehicle's adaptive cruise control before he went off the road. He hit the brakes just .55 seconds before impact, but it remains in dispute whether he saw or heard warnings from the Model S while he was reaching to the floorboard for his dropped cell phone. Safety expert Mary 'Missy' Cummings, an engineering professor at George Mason University, acknowledged in her second day on the witness stand that McGee may have braked in response to the alert, but she suggested his reaction time was too slow to know for sure. Cummings, who has criticized Tesla's technology in the past and previously served as an adviser to the National Highway Safety Administration, didn't yield much to Smith's questioning. At one point the lawyer highlighted past comments by Musk, in which the Tesla chief executive officer said the use of 'beta' to describe the Autopilot system is meant to convey that the software is not a final product and to discourage drivers from 'complacency' and taking their hands off the steering wheel. 'I do not have any evidence in front of me that the word 'beta' is trying to communicate anything to drivers,' Cummings said. 'What it is trying to do, in my professional opinion, is avoid legal liability.' The jury also heard Thursday from an accident reconstruction specialist, Alan Moore, who argued that if Tesla had programmed its software not to operate on roadways it wasn't designed for — like the one on Key Largo — 'this crash would not have happened.' But he also testified that McGee had a history of disregarding alerts. Moore explained to jurors that Autopilot automatically disengages if a driver fails to put hands on the wheel after receiving three audible warnings. 'Almost every time he commuted from his office to his condo, he would get a strikeout,' Moore said. When that happened, McGee would pull over, put the car in park, shift it back into drive and turn Autopilot back on, the witness said. In his opening argument, Smith had said the data history for McGee showed that he'd safely traveled through the intersection where the crash happened almost 50 times in the same Model S. 'The only thing that changed was his driver behavior,' Smith told the jury. 'He dropped something and was trying to pick it up.'
Mint
2 days ago
- Automotive
- Mint
Tesla Spars in Court Over Autopilot Alert 2 Seconds Before Crash
(Bloomberg) -- The final two seconds before a Tesla Model S crashed into a parked SUV took center stage Thursday in a court showdown over who's responsible for the 2019 collision — the distracted driver or his car's Autopilot system. Tesla is seeking to show a jury that the company's technology performed as it should and that the driver is fully to blame for running through a stop sign at a T intersection in the Florida Keys and ramming into a Chevrolet Tahoe, killing a woman who stood next to the SUV and seriously injuring her boyfriend. A three-week trial in Miami federal court over a suit filed by the woman's family and the boyfriend is putting close scrutiny on a decade-long experiment with semi-autonomous driving at Elon Musk's electric vehicle maker. A verdict against Tesla would be a blow at a time when the company is staking its future on self-driving and pushing to launch a long-promised robotaxi business. The first few days of the trial have taken jurors deep into how the technology works and what its limitations are. The company's lawyer, Joel Smith, pressed a key witness for the plaintiffs to agree that an audible alert 1.65 seconds before impact — when the car's automated steering function aborted — would have been enough time for the driver to avoid or at least mitigate the accident. Smith demonstrated what the alarm sounds like for jurors to hear. Data recovered from the car's computer shows that driver George McGee was pressing the accelerator to 17 miles (27.4 kilometers) per hour over the posted speed limit, leading him to override the vehicle's adaptive cruise control before he went off the road. He hit the brakes just .55 seconds before impact, but it remains in dispute whether he saw or heard warnings from the Model S while he was reaching to the floorboard for his dropped cell phone. Safety expert Mary 'Missy' Cummings, an engineering professor at George Mason University, acknowledged in her second day on the witness stand that McGee may have braked in response to the alert, but she suggested his reaction time was too slow to know for sure. Cummings, who has criticized Tesla's technology in the past and previously served as an adviser to the National Highway Safety Administration, didn't yield much to Smith's questioning. At one point the lawyer highlighted past comments by Musk, in which the Tesla chief executive officer said the use of 'beta' to describe the Autopilot system is meant to convey that the software is not a final product and to discourage drivers from 'complacency' and taking their hands off the steering wheel. 'I do not have any evidence in front of me that the word 'beta' is trying to communicate anything to drivers,' Cummings said. 'What it is trying to do, in my professional opinion, is avoid legal liability.' The jury also heard Thursday from an accident reconstruction specialist, Alan Moore, who argued that if Tesla had programmed its software not to operate on roadways it wasn't designed for — like the one on Key Largo — 'this crash would not have happened.' But he also testified that McGee had a history of disregarding alerts. Moore explained to jurors that Autopilot automatically disengages if a driver fails to put hands on the wheel after receiving three audible warnings. 'Almost every time he commuted from his office to his condo, he would get a strikeout,' Moore said. When that happened, McGee would pull over, put the car in park, shift it back into drive and turn Autopilot back on, the witness said. In his opening argument, Smith had said the data history for McGee showed that he'd safely traveled through the intersection where the crash happened almost 50 times in the same Model S. 'The only thing that changed was his driver behavior,' Smith told the jury. 'He dropped something and was trying to pick it up.' More stories like this are available on
Bloomberg
2 days ago
- Automotive
- Bloomberg
Tesla Spars in Court Over Autopilot Alert 2 Seconds Before Crash
The final two seconds before a Tesla Model S crashed into a parked SUV took center stage Thursday in a court showdown over who's responsible for the 2019 collision — the distracted driver or his car's Autopilot system. Tesla is seeking to show a jury that the company's technology performed as it should and that the driver is fully to blame for running through a stop sign at a T intersection in the Florida Keys and ramming into a Chevrolet Tahoe, killing a woman who stood next to the SUV and seriously injuring her boyfriend.
