Tesla settles lawsuit over fatal autopilot crash: report
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San Francisco: Elon Musk’s Tesla avoided trial in a case related to the death of an apple engineer after his Model X crashed in Silicon Valley six years ago, news agency AFP reported citing court filings.
Ahead of jury trial next week, Tesla settled with Wei Lun Huang’s family the ‘wrongful death suit’ accusing the company of not “living up to its marketing when it came to driver-assistance and safety technology in its cars”
According to the complaint against Tesla, the engineer believed that Model X’s technology would be capable of avoiding the‘risk of harm to the driver’.
The harm that Model X technology expected to eliminate as per the complaint are those ‘caused by the vehicle failing to drive at safe speeds, failing to operate only within marked travel lanes, failing to avoid other vehicles or obstacles while driving on highways, or accelerating into fixed objects or vehicles while in autopilot mode.’
The accident occurred in 2018 when Huang was traveling along a highway in the California city of Mountain View.
According to the lawasuit, the autopilot feature was on as the Model X hit a concrete median, fatally injuring him.
Huang's family accused Tesla in the court filings of being ‘negligent and careless in building and marketing the 2017 Model X’, according to the report.