Tesla settles lawsuit over man’s death in crash involving its semi-autonomous driving software
SANTA CLARA, California — Tesla has settled a lawsuit filed by the family of a Silicon Valley engineer who died in an accident while relying on the company’s semi-autonomous driving software.
The size of the settlement was not disclosed in court documents filed Monday, just a day before the trial over the 2018 crash on a San Francisco Bay Area freeway was set to begin.
The Walter Huang family filed a negligence and wrongful death lawsuit in 2019 to hold Tesla — and by extension CEO Elon Musk — liable for repeatedly exaggerating the capabilities of Tesla’s self-driving car technology. They alleged that the technology, called Autopilot, was promoted in blatant ways, making car owners believe they did not need to remain vigilant while behind the wheel.
Evidence suggests Huang was playing a video game on his iPhone when he crashed into a concrete highway barrier on March 23, 2018.
After dropping his son off at preschool, Huang activated the Autopilot feature on his Model X for his commute to work at Apple. But less than twenty minutes later, Autopilot steered the vehicle out of its lane and began accelerating before crashing into a barrier at a dangerous intersection on a busy highway in Mountain View, California. The Model X was still traveling at over 70 miles per hour (110 kilometers per hour).
Huang, 38, died at the gruesome scene, leaving behind his wife and two children, now aged 12 and 9.
The case was just one of dozens across the U.S. that raised questions about whether Musk’s boasts about the effectiveness of Tesla’s autonomous technology are promoting misplaced confidence in the company’s Autopilot and Full Self Driving mode (FSD). The U.S. Justice Department also opened an investigation last year into the way Tesla and Musk promote their autonomous technology, according to regulatory filings that did not provide many details about the nature of the investigation.
Tesla, based in Austin, Texas, prevailed last year in a trial in Southern California focused on whether misconceptions about Tesla’s Autopilot feature contributed to a driver in a 2019 crash involving one of the company’s cars was involved.