Tesla Autopilot May Have Killed Apple Employee In Fatal Crash

The family of Apple engineer Walter Huang, who died last year after crashing his Tesla Model X along Highway 101 in Mountain View, California, has filed a lawsuit that claims the electric car company’s autopilot features caused the fatal crash.

According to Bloomberg, the suit states that Tesla should have been aware that the Tesla Model X was likely to cause injury by leaving travel lanes and that in fact, it can hit fixed objects and can fail to avoid a crash while in autopilot. Based on the lawsuit, the family argued that Tesla should have given more warning to consumers and even issued a recall.

Aside from this, the family also claims that the Model X lacked necessary safety features such as emergency brakes. Aside from Tesla, the complaint also named California DOT, saying that they lacked an effective crash attenuator guard.

According to Forbes, Huang has been “fooled” many times by the Tesla autopilot feature. In fact, before the accident he was already reporting about the supposed system failure and that it happened almost in the exact same spot. The report said that Huang has already reported the issue to Tesla’s service center seven times but that they couldn’t explain properly and or give a solution to the issue.

Based on the investigation conducted by the National Transportation Safety Board, Huang’s car was doing 65 miles per hour when it suddenly veered to the left. Instead of slowing down, however, the vehicle accelerated to 70.8 miles per hour and eventually hit the median.

Although there’s no statement from Tesla regarding the case yet, a blog post that was posted a week after the accident said that drivers eventually have responsibility for their driving. Elon Musk’s company claimed that the car gave driver one audible alert and several visual alerts throughout the drive, signaling that the car was detecting that his hands were not on the wheel for the last moments before the accident.

“Tesla Autopilot does not prevent all accidents—such a standard would be impossible—but it makes them much less likely to occur. It unequivocally makes the world safer for the vehicle occupants, pedestrians and cyclists,” the blog post said.

The lawsuit definitely carries weight today since Tesla has recently introduced its autonomous driving technology that would allow owners to enroll their cars to be used as robotaxis. Using a driverless technology, safety questions of both passengers and the vehicles are now being raised.