Back in 2019, the family of Apple engineer Weilun Huang (aka Walter Huang) sued Tesla a year after his Tesla crashed into a Mountain View median while Autopilot was engaged. The case is officially settled, with the automaker settling the lawsuit on the day of jury selection.according to CNBC and New York TimesTesla’s lawyers later asked the court to seal the settlement so that the exact amount the company paid would not be made public. The company does not want “other potential claimants (or plaintiffs at the bar) [to] Viewing the settlement amount as evidence of Tesla’s potential liability for losses could have a chilling effect on settlement chances in subsequent cases. “
Shortly after the crash, Tesla confirmed that Autopilot was on at the time of the crash, but also insisted Huang had time to react and had an unobstructed view of the divider. In a statement to the media, the company maintained that the driver was at fault and that the accident occurred solely because Huang “failed to pay attention to the road, despite multiple warnings from the car.” In the lawsuit, Huang’s lawyers pointed out that Tesla’s Autopilot marketing materials indicate that its cars are safe enough to be used on the road without drivers needing to keep their hands on the steering wheel at all times. The image above, taken from a video on Tesla’s Autopilot page, shows a driver putting his hands on his lap.
The incident was large enough to attract the attention of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which investigated and found that Huang had previously reported that the vehicle had veered off the highway on a previous trip. In fact, his family says he complained about his car veering into the exact obstacle he hit and even reported it to a Tesla dealer, who was unable to reproduce the problem. The agency also concluded that Tesla’s collision warning system did not alert the driver and that its emergency braking system did not activate as it should when the car began to drive toward an obstacle.
Nonetheless, the National Transportation Safety Board also found that Huang was running a mobile game on his phone at the time of the accident. It’s just not certain whether the phone was in his hand at the time of the accident. era Tesla said it was preparing to present evidence to the court that Huang was playing the game when he crashed, but his lawyer denied this. Regardless of who is truly at fault, a test could bring renewed attention to the safety of Tesla’s driver-assist systems. The settlement comes just months before the company launches its own robo-taxis on August 8.
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