Tesla Sued for Another Fatal, Autopilot-Related Death
Tesla’s safety and driver assistance features are under the microscope once again after a man sued over an accident last year that killed his wife and daughter. As per usual, the circumstances (and legal liability) is very much in dispute.
According to the plaintiff, David Dryerman, 54, of New Jersey, he was driving his Tesla 2024 Model S on the Garden State Parkway on Sept. 14, 2024, when the car veered off the road, hitting a sign, guardrail and concrete bridge support.
And here’s where the story (and its resultant liability) gets hazy.
Tesla’s Autopilot falls under their general Active Safety Feature umbrella, which is “designed to assist drivers, but cannot respond in every situation. It is your responsibility to stay alert, drive safely and be in control of your vehicle at all times.”
Its Automatic Emergency Braking is supposedly “Detects cars or obstacles that the vehicle may impact and applies the brakes accordingly.” Meanwhile, Lane Departure Avoidance “Applies corrective steering to keep your vehicle in the intended lane.”
If Dryerman is to be believed, both fail safe mechanisms failed, leading to the fatal crash, though the circumstances of the crash are still, as of this writing, unclear.
And it doesn’t help that the official complaint appears to misunderstand the very nature of Tesla’s Autopilot and validates their assertion that their systems require the driver’s attention at all times –
"Thousands of Tesla drivers have relied on Tesla's ADAS technology as though it were capable of safe, fully autonomous self-driving with minor software updates when in fact it is incapable of safely handling a variety of routine roadway scenarios without driver input." (emphasis mine)
Whether the driver’s misapplication of Autopilot or a system glitch caused the crash remains to be seen.
