A Miami court has found Elon Musk’s Tesla partly liable for a fatal crash in Florida involving its autopilot driver-assistance system.
The jury has ordered the company to pay over $240 million in damages to the victims. The federal jury ruled that Tesla’s technology was at fault and that the responsibility didn’t lie solely with the driver, who admitted to being distracted by his phone before crashing into a young couple.
This verdict comes as Elon Musk pushes to prove the safety of Tesla’s self-driving features, with plans to launch a driverless taxi service in multiple cities soon.
The case, which lasted four years, stands out not just for its outcome but also for making it to trial. The company has typically avoided court by settling or having similar lawsuits dismissed before reaching this stage.
“This will open the floodgates. It will embolden a lot of people to come to court,” AP quoted Miguel Custodio, a car crash lawyer not involved in the Tesla case, as saying.
Tesla admits car involved in crash was defective
The lawyers representing the victims, the deceased girl and her injured boyfriend, said the EV manufacturing company either hid or lost key evidence of the case, including video and data recorded before the crash. The company, however, accepted the fault, saying that the car involved in the crash was defective.
Earlier, the victims of one such accident blamed the company for processing the data very slowly, a claim that the company had refuted.
Tesla refutes charges
The company has refuted such allegations saying the company was being blamed even as the driver has accepted the responsibility.
“Today’s verdict is wrong and only works to set back automotive safety and jeopardize Tesla’s and the entire industry’s efforts to develop and implement lifesaving technology,” Testa said in a statement, adding that the plaintiffs concocted a story ”blaming the car when the driver – from day one – admitted and accepted responsibility.