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Tesla Found Partly Liable in 2019 Autopilot Death

A Miami jury has ordered the automaker to pay up to $243 million after finding that the Tesla vehicle had a “defect.” It's the first time Tesla has been found liable in an Autopilot-related crash.

The lawsuit stemmed from a 2019 crash in the Florida Keys in which the driver of a Tesla Model S in Autopilot mode allegedly came to a T-intersection and, failing to see that the roadway was ending, kept his foot on the accelerator; the car slammed into a parked vehicle and two people standing nearby. Separately, Tesla faced a California administrative hearing last month after the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles sued the carmaker, alleging that it misled customers about the limits of Autopilot and its newer and more advanced feature, Full Self-Driving (Supervised). Lead attorney Brett Schreiber cited a 2016 press conference in which Musk said Tesla’s vision system meant its cars “should not hit” anything—even “an alien spaceship, a pile of junk metal that fell off the back of a truck.”

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