Tesla won a lawsuit trying to blame the company’s Autopilot driver software for a crash in 2019. Reuters reports. The jurors in the case found that the software was not at fault in a crash in which the car turned into a median on a city street while Autopilot was engaged. The jury did not award plaintiff Justine Hsu, who sued Tesla in 2020.
The lawsuit is believed to be the first involving Autopilot and could prove to be an important case if Tesla faces lawsuits over the technology in the future. While Reuters reports that the result of the trial “is not legally binding in other cases,” Tesla is under intense scrutiny for its autopilot and fully self-driving driver assistance features, which do not make its cars fully autonomous and still require the driver to be engaged.
For instance, it came to light last year that the company’s self-driving claims are reportedly under criminal investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. In 2021, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) launched an investigation into Autopilot after many crashes involving parked emergency vehicles. And California’s Department of Motor Vehicles has accused Tesla of making false claims about its Autopilot and recently more expensive Full Self-Driving (FSD) capabilities.
Despite the criticism, Tesla has continued to develop driver assistance technologies, making the FSD beta available to anyone in the US who purchased the feature in November. However, Tesla issued a recall for nearly 363,000 FSD-equipped vehicles after NHTSA deemed the technology an “accident risk” and the company plans to an over-the-air software update to address specific problems.
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