Tesla's Autopilot Faces Lawsuit Over Safety Concerns

Tesla is set to go to trial in February in Palm Beach County, Florida, in a wrongful death lawsuit that involves the effectiveness of Autopilot, a much-vaunted system for the electric automaker that controls steering, speed and braking.

Tesla faces the core question of whether it overstated the performance of its Autopilot feature and therefore lulled drivers into a false sense of safety. Tesla's Autopilot remains the subject of investigations by two federal agencies.

In March 2019, Jeremy Banner, 50, died after his Tesla Model 3 collided with a semi-trailer in Delray Beach, Florida. Seconds before the accident, the father of three had put the vehicle into Autopilot.

Banner's widow filed the wrongful death lawsuit in August 2019.

According to a Bloomberg News report on Tuesday, Banner's attorney has called the trial an opportunity to hold Tesla accountable for using public roads as a testing ground for "their defective Autopilot system."

There have been similar fatalities that have allegedly been linked to Autopilot. In May 2016, Joshua Brown, 40, died after his Tesla Model S sedan collided with a tractor-trailer near Williston, Florida.

Tesla has issued warnings over Autopilot's limitations, as it potentially faces dozens more similar lawsuits. After Brown's accident, Tesla issued a statement stressing that Autopilot is not meant to make the vehicle autonomous and "still requires the driver to remain alert."

In June, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported that Autopilot was involved in 273 crashes over roughly the previous 11 months. It also noted that Tesla vehicles made up nearly 70% of the 392 crashes involving advanced driver-assistance systems reported from July 2021 to June 2022.

Reuters noted on Aug. 5 that since 2016, the NHTSA had opened 38 special investigations of crashes involving Tesla vehicles where advanced driver assistance systems were believed to have been used.