Is Tesla’s Autopilot safe? Legal challenges abound
Tesla has, so far, won or settled wrongful death cases claiming the electric car maker’s Autopilot driving assist feature is unsafe and led to fatal accidents.
The most recent lawsuit, settled for undisclosed terms just days ahead of a trial scheduled in March, may have been set to pose the most powerful argument yet over the safety of Tesla’s automation systems by focusing on what level of understanding the company has about drivers’ behavior when driving with driver assist software engaged.
Matthew Wansley, a Cardozo School of Law associate professor with experience in the automated-vehicle industry, told Reuters ahead of the trial and before the settlement was announced that Tesla’s knowledge of likely driver behavior could prove legally pivotal.
“If it was reasonably foreseeable to Tesla that someone would misuse the system, Tesla had an obligation to design the system in a way that prevented foreseeable misuse,” Wansley said.
Recall redux
In December, Tesla recalled over 2 million vehicles — nearly every car it has ever sold in the U.S. — following the conclusion of a two-year long investigation by federal regulators into Tesla’s driving automation features.
In a letter to Tesla, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it had reviewed 956 Tesla crashes where the manufacturer’s Autopilot was initially alleged to have been in use, then focused on a narrower set of 322 Autopilot-involved crashes, including frontal impacts and impacts from potential inadvertent disengagement of the system.
At the time, federal regulators determined the configuration of Tesla’s driving automation systems can put drivers in hazardous situations.
“In certain circumstances when Autosteer is engaged, and the driver does not maintain responsibility for vehicle operation and is unprepared to intervene as necessary or fails to recognize when Autosteer is canceled or not engaged, there may be an increased risk of a crash,” the NHTSA wrote in its letter to Tesla.
Per the recall, Tesla’s plan was to issue over-the-air software updates to most owners of Model 3, Model S, Model X and Model Y vehicles that will increase the number of alerts and warnings that the driving automation software issues to drivers to ensure they are engaged or ready to engage with driving responsibly.
Last week, NHTSA announced it was opening a follow-up investigation after it found evidence of 20 Tesla vehicles involved in crashes that had been operating with the updated software. Its Office of Defect Investigation said it was opening the investigation to “further evaluate the adequacy of the remedy” following the December recall.
Adding to the woes surrounding Tesla’s driving automation systems, The Washington Post reports the company has at least eight lawsuits headed to trial in the coming year that involve fatal or otherwise serious crashes that occurred while the driver was allegedly relying on Autopilot.
“A reckoning is coming as more and more of these cases are going to see the light of a jury trial,” Brett Schreiber, a lawyer with Singleton Schreiber who is representing the family of Jovani Maldonado, 15, who was killed in Northern California when a Tesla in Autopilot rear-ended his family’s pickup truck in 2019, told the Post.
Negative outcomes from legal challenges could put the world’s most popular electric car brand in deeper financial straights as it works to navigate a slowdown in the growth of EV sales and a smaller slice of the overall market. Earlier this month, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced the company’s plans to lay off 14,000 employees, about 10% of its global workforce of around 140,000.
In a memo to Tesla employees, Musk cited the need to find savings and achieve his goal of making Tesla more “lean, innovative and hungry for the next growth phase cycle.”
“As we prepare the company for our next phase of growth, it is extremely important to look at every aspect of the company for cost reductions and increasing productivity,” Musk wrote in the email.
