Miami – A federal jury revealed Friday In a 2019 car accident that killed a pedestrian and left another seriously injured person when the car was in automatic pilot mode.
The jury granted complainants $ 200 million in punitive damages, the more compensatory pain and suffering damages.
The verdict is a blow for Tesla and the CEO Elon Musk as they try to convince the public, the regulators of the government and the investors that their autonomous software is sure.
The eight people ‘jury said Tesla was partly responsible for the accident in Florida Keys six years ago, when neither the Tesla sedan driver nor the automatic pilot software was prepared in time for an intersection. The jury awarded Tesla a third of the repairs and allocated two thirds to the driver, who was continued separately.
The jury concluded that the complainants were due to $ 129 million for pain and suffering, although the amount due of Tesla can be smaller than that.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comments sent by e-mail to the verdict.
The verdict follows a three -week test in Miami which highlighted the way Tesla and Musk have marketed their driver assistance software, which despite its name requires constant monitoring by a human in the driver’s seat.
The complainants’ lawyers argued that Tesla has exceeded the capabilities of the automatic pilot, leading the driver of a Model S sedan to leave the eyes of the road as he approached a t t in the Florida Keys after sunset. The Tesla failed to stop at the intersection and slammed a parked SUV, killing Naibel Benavides, 20, while she was standing next to the SUV and injuring her boyfriend, Dillon Angulo. The Tesla roamed 62 miles per hour just before the accident, according to the data cited at the trial.
The family of Benavids Leon and Angulo continued the driver and also Tesla, arguing that her automatic driver software should have warned the driver and braking before the vehicle started.
The jurors deliberated for seven hours Thursday afternoon and Friday before returning a verdict. The Verdict form asked the jurors if Tesla placed a vehicle on the market “with a defect which was a legal cause of damage” to the complainants. The jurors found that the answer was yes.
After the verdict was read in court, the two families have embellished and their lawyers, with crying. Angulo hugged his mother in his arms, visibly emotional.
Most of the unjustified death proceedings come to a settlement or are rejected, but this trial has been judged as a major public test of the Tesla security file. Tesla argued that the driver of the model was solely responsible for the accident because he was looking for an abandoned mobile phone when it happened.
The driver, George McGee, testified during the trial he thought that the automatic pilot had failed him.
“My concept was that it would help me if I had a failure or if I miss something, if I make a mistake-that the car could help me. And in this case, I have the impression that it failed me,” he said.
The complainants continued McGee separately and this case was settled.
The automatic driver comes standard on all Tesla vehicles and is a set of several driver assistance features. Tesla warns drivers in its online owner manual that the automatic driver requires supervision and does not make its vehicles fully autonomous.
But the complainants said Tesla had rocked drivers in a false feeling of security, having drivers distracted.
The complainants asked for $ 109 million in Tesla compensatory damages and $ 236 million in punitive damages.
Tesla and Musk have for years the pilot pilot and another driver assistance software package, the complete self-commissioner, while the main ones go ahead of automotive security. Musk said Tesla cars using the software is safer than human drivers, and he has bet the future of the company on the development of an autonomous and safe feat.
But federal regulators and their counterparts in California have questioned Tesla systems security for years. Last year, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said that there was a “critical security gap” in the automatic pilot which contributed to at least 467 collisions, including 13 accidents resulting in deaths.
Brett Schreiber, lawyer for the complainants, blamed musk individually in his summary of closing the jury on Thursday.
“It is Tesla CEO who created an expectation among consumers that the automatic pilot can work beyond its limits,” he said.
He also said that Tesla’s driving assistance technology was not proven, but that the company had excited it anyway.
“We are here because Dillon Angulo and Neima Benavids were part of a beta test for which they never signed up,” he said.
Joel Smith, lawyer for Tesla, told the jury in his fence summary that the driver of the S model, and not the vehicle software, was to blame for the accident.
“Can it happen in any car? Of course, it can.
Smith told the jurors that McGee had traveled safely through the same intersection 30 to 40 times before, without incident.
“The only thing that changed was the driver’s behavior,” he said.
Musk did not appear in the federal courtroom of Miami during the three -week trial, although his name appeared, including during the jury selection process.
David Ingram reported on San Francisco and Maria Piñero from Miami.
