A US federal jury in Florida found that Tesla was partly to blame for a 2019 fatal accident that occurred while its Autopilot system was engaged, in a blow to the company’s plans to pin its future on autonomous driving.
The jury awarded $243 million (£183m) in compensatory and punitive damages to the parents of the woman killed in the crash and her boyfriend, who was severely injured.
The jury concluded that Tesla bore one-third of the responsibility for the crash, while driver George Brian McGee was responsible for the remaining two-thirds.
‘Lifesaving technology’
Tesla said it would appeal and that McGee was entirely to blame.
“Today’s verdict is wrong and only works to set back automotive safety and jeopardise Tesla’s and the entire industry’s efforts to develop and implement lifesaving technology,” Tesla said in a statement.
Jury damage awards are frequently reduced by higher courts.
In February a Florida appeals court ruled that Tesla could not be made to pay punitive damages in a case in which a Tesla driver was killed after it struck a tractor-trailer, saying the plaintiffs had not proven that Tesla “knew or should have known” that its technology was “likely to cause death or great bodily injury”.
The Friday verdict was the first federal jury trial surrounding a fatal accident involving Autopilot. Tesla has won at least one similar case filed in a California state court, has settled several others, and has at least five more pending, according to plaintiffs’ lawyers.
Naibel Benavides, a college student, was killed on 25 April, 2019, when she was struck by a Tesla Model S driven by McGee on a darkened road that led to a T-junction.
McGee had Autopilot engaged and had dropped his phone and was reaching for it when he arrived at the junction, passing through it at more than 60 miles per hour and striking a black SUV parked legally on the other side, with Benavides and her boyfriend Angulo standing outside it, according to court testimony.
False sense of security
Tesla says it has always told drivers that Autopilot requires constant oversight, but the plaintiffs’ said Tesla oversold the technology and lulled drivers into a false sense of security.
When asked whether Tesla had placed a vehicle on the market “with a defect which was a legal cause of damage” to the plaintiffs, the jury returned a positive answer.
The driver, McGee, testified that he believed Autopilot would assist him if he should make a mistake, and that he felt the product had failed him.
Tesla has tied its future to self-driving cars and humanoid robots as its vehicle sales have slumped, and has launched nascent self-driving taxi services in Austin, Texas and California.