According to foreign media reports, a few days ago, Tesla was sued by the estate administrator of the deceased for a fatal traffic accident. In September last year, three people driving a 2024 Model S equipped with Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (FSD) were killed in a crash on Garden State Parkway in New Jersey, USA.
The manslaughter lawsuit was filed in federal court in Camden, New Jersey, where the plaintiffs alleged that Tesla’s vehicle design was “flawed and unreasonably dangerous” that resulted in the deaths of 54-year-old David Dryerman, his 54-year-old wife Michele, and 17-year-old daughter Brooke. Brooke’s brother, Max Dryerman, who was not in the car at the time, was also a plaintiff in the case. The lawsuit seeks damages and punitive damages, the exact amount of which is unknown.
Image credit: Tesla
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the above report, and the plaintiff’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a similar request.
According to public reports, on September 14, 2024, when the Dryerman family was returning from a music festival, the Model S they were driving drove off the road in the town of Woodbridge, New Jersey, and hit road signs, guardrails and concrete bridge support structures. The lawsuit alleges that Tesla’s vehicle design flaws caused it to veer off its lane and fail to apply emergency braking, ultimately causing the accident.
The complaint also alleges that Tesla failed to fulfill its safety warning obligations and failed to inform David Dryerman, who was driving the Model S involved at the time, of the safety hazards of the vehicle. In particular, the indictment cites Musk’s controversial statement in 2016 that the Autopilot system “may be superior to human drivers” as key evidence. Judicial documents show that Dryerman’s family was wearing seat belts as required at the time of the accident.
The complaint also reads, “Thousands of Tesla owners rely on its ADAS technology and believe that with a small software update, the vehicle can achieve safe full self-driving, but in fact, the system cannot safely cope with a variety of conventional road scenarios without driver intervention.” ”
Austin, Texas-based Tesla has long faced questions about the safety of its self-driving technology.
Tesla has said that its self-driving system requires the driver to be “fully focused” and hold the steering wheel with both hands, and these features do not yet allow the vehicle to achieve independent autonomous driving.
In December 2023, under pressure from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Tesla agreed to recall more than 2 million vehicles in the United States to add safety protections to its Autopilot advanced driver assistance system (ADAS).
