Tesla settles lawsuit over fatal accident of Apple engineer in 2018, according to Washington Post – 04/09/2024 at 00:02

(Automatic translation by Reuters, please see disclaimer

(Added attempts to contact a lawyer and Tesla to paragraph 6)

Tesla TSLA.O has settled a lawsuit over a car crash that killed an Apple engineer in 2018 after his Autopilot-powered Model X skidded off a freeway near San Francisco, court documents showed Monday.

The settlement was reached as a trial was about to begin over a high-profile crash involving Tesla’s assistive technology, ending a five-year legal battle over the case.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The case is about the road accident that claimed the life of Walter Huang. Tesla had claimed that Walter Huang misused the Autopilot system because he was playing a video game just before the crash.

The Huang family claimed that the Autopilot system steered their 2017 Model X into a highway barrier. The lawyers of the family of Mr. Huang also raised questions about whether Tesla understood that drivers would not or could not use the system as intended, and what steps the automaker had taken to protect them.

The lawyer of Mr. Huang and Tesla were not immediately available for comment.

The crash that killed Huang is one of hundreds of U.S. crashes in which the Autopilot system has been suspected of being the cause of reports to auto safety regulators.

The Autopilot system can steer, accelerate and brake on its own on the road, but it cannot completely replace a human driver, especially in the city. Tesla documents describing the system note that it does not make the car autonomous and that it requires a “fully attentive driver” who can “take over at any time.”