The family of a man killed at the wheel of his Tesla car just after engaging the Autopilot autonomous driving mode may sue Elon Musk’s company.
A Florida judge has determined that the family of Jeremy Banner, a man who died in 2019 when his Tesla Model 3 rear-ended a truck, successfully raised doubts that Tesla executives knew about the Autopilot system’s failures .
A lawsuit could therefore be initiated against the company, with potentially millions of dollars in compensation at stake, various media in the United States have reported.
To support their case, Banner’s relatives pointed out in court that in 2016, another motorist lost his life in almost identical circumstances. They therefore allege that Tesla must have known about the problem with Autopilot and that it should have been corrected.
The allegations have not yet been proven in court.
This decision comes barely three weeks after Tesla succeeded in demonstrating, in another trial, that its Autopilot system was not responsible for the death of a motorist, Micah Lee, in California in 2019. In this case, the The driver’s Tesla Model 3 left the road and crashed into a tree, before catching fire, killing the motorist and seriously injuring his two passengers. They demanded US$400 million in compensation.
Tesla’s lawyers argued that the driver had been drinking before getting behind the wheel and that there was no proof that he had activated his car’s Autopilot, a defense that the jury ultimately accepted.
According to a compilation published by the Washington Post, Autopilot in Tesla cars has been linked to 736 accidents since 2019. These have resulted in 17 deaths.
