Tesla won a lawsuit that attempted to blame the company’s Autopilot driver-assistance software for the 2019 crash. Reuters reports. Jurors in the case found that the software was not at fault in a crash where the car turned into a median on a city street while on autopilot. The jury awarded plaintiff Justine Hsu, who sued Tesla in 2020, no damages.
The trial is believed to be a first involving Autopilot, and could be an important case if Tesla faces future lawsuits over the technology. while Reuters Reports say the result of the trial is “not legally binding in other cases,” Tesla is under intense scrutiny over its Autopilot and fully self-driving driver-assist features, which don’t make its cars fully self-driving and still require the driver to be engaged.
Last year, for example, the company’s self-driving claims were found to be the subject of a criminal investigation by the US Department of Justice. In 2021, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) launched an Autopilot investigation after several crashes with stopped emergency vehicles. The California Department of Motor Vehicles has accused Tesla of making false claims about its self-driving capabilities and recently expensive full self-driving (FSD) capabilities.
Despite the scrutiny, Tesla continued to press ahead with development of its driver assistance technologies, making FSD beta available to anyone in the US who purchased the feature in November. However, Tesla has issued a recall of nearly 363,000 vehicles with FSD after NHTSA deemed the technology a “crash risk,” and the company plans to ship them. Over-the-air software update to address specific issues.