Achi news desk-
Tesla has settled a lawsuit over a 2018 car crash that killed an Apple engineer after its Model X operating on Autopilot veered off a highway near San Francisco, court documents showed Monday.
The settlement was made as the trial was about to begin over the high-profile crash involving Tesla’s driver assistant technology, ending a five-year legal battle over the case.
The terms of the settlement were not disclosed.
The case is about a road accident that killed Walter Huang. Tesla had argued that Huang had misused the Autopilot system because he was playing a video game just before the crash.
Huang’s family had claimed that Autopilot steered their 2017 Model X into a highway barrier. Lawyers for the Huang family also raised questions about whether Tesla understood that drivers were likely not to use the system as directed and what steps the automaker took to protect them.
A lawyer for Huang and Tesla was not immediately available for comment.
The crash that killed Huang was among hundreds of crashes in the United States where Autopilot was a suspected factor in reports to auto safety regulators.
The Autopilot system can steer, accelerate and brake on its own on the open road but cannot fully replace a human driver, especially when driving in cities. Tesla materials explaining the system warn that it does not make the car autonomous and that it requires a “fully engaged driver” who can “take over at any moment.”
(Reporting by Aditya Soni in Bengaluru and Hyunjoo Jin in San Francisco; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri and Lisa Shumaker)
