(AmericanProsperity.com) – Tesla has finally settled a lawsuit that resulted from a 2018 fatal car crash that killed an Apple engineer in his car when his Tesla veered off the highway in San Francisco.
The settlement was made just before the trials started that involved Tesla’s self-driving feature. The terms of the settlement and the details of it aren’t disclosed to the public.
The car crash in question killed Walter Huang, and Tesla, for a long time, placed the blame on Huang, saying that he was playing a video game before the accident and therefore had misused the system. Tesla claimed that he failed to stay alert and take control of the wheel.
Placing the onus on Huang, Tesla said, “There is no dispute that, had he been paying attention to the road he would have had the opportunity to avoid this crash.”
The National Transport and Safety Board investigated the crash and concluded that Huang didn’t attempt to stop his vehicle when he was headed toward the barrier and that he was playing a video game on his phone right before the crash. However, Huang’s family claims that the Tesla’s self-driving feature is what ran him off the road.
This settlement could be one of many as Tesla faces backlash and a current trial regarding their autopilot systems. “It is striking to me that Tesla decided to go this far publicly and then settle,” said law professor, Bryant Walker Smith.
He continued, “What this does do, though, is it says to other attorneys, we might settle. We might not always fight it. That is the signal.”
The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigated nearly one thousand car accidents where autopilot was reported to be in use. They have also launched multiple investigations regarding accidents involving the Tesla autopilot feature that resulted in over twenty deaths.
Tesla has been in multiple cases prior to this one where they claimed that the reason for the accident while using the Autopilot feature was because the people weren’t using the program correctly.
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