Just ahead of a court case, Tesla has settled a lawsuit regarding the gruesome death of a man who was playing video games on an iPhone while traveling at around 70 miles per hour having switched on the car’s autopilot and believing it required no human supervision. The car involved was the Model X and it was being driven by a man working at Apple.
Notably, Tesla had claimed that the man had misued the system as he was playing a video game in the car. Tesla materials also states that the car requires a “fully attentive driver”
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Here are 10 points to note:
1. Tesla settled a lawsuit brought by the family of a Silicon Valley engineer who died in a crash while using the company’s semi-autonomous driving software.
2. The settlement amount was not disclosed in court documents filed just before the trial was scheduled to begin, Associated Press reported.
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3. Reason for the out of court settlement, according to Tesla, was to avoid years of litigation.
4. The family of Walter Huang, who died in the accident, filed a negligence and wrongful death lawsuit in 2019
5. The case was filed against both Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk.
6. They accused Tesla of exaggerating the capabilities of its self-driving technology. Those who believed this claim were less vigilant as a result, even careless about what they were doing.
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7. The crash happened while Huang was playing a video game on his iPhone even as the car was traveling at a high speed.
8. He has activated Tesla’s Autopilot feature, but the vehicle actually crashed.
9. This is not the only such claim. There are others that question Musk’s claims about the capabilities of autonomous technology.
10. However, in a 2019 case, Tesla had won a trial regarding misperceptions about its Autopilot feature.
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Notably, Elon Musk, back in 2022, had taken to social media to post this statement, “We will never surrender/settle an unjust case against us, even if we will probably lose.”
