In march 2018, a serious incident took place that got everyone thinking about how reliable driverless cars could be for the future, because currently, the error prone features have costed more than a few deaths and is not completely reliable. Among these deaths was the death of Wei “Walter” Huang, a software engineer who died when his Model X with Autopilot engaged crashed into a highway safety barrier in March 2018.In the complaint, the family claims that Huang’s Model X lacked safety features, such as an automatic emergency braking system. Such features are available on much less expensive vehicles from other carmakers as well as on more recent Model Xs, Huang’s family said. The Model X does come with automatic emergency braking, according to the owners manual.
Bloomberg reported the story:
The family also alleges that Tesla knew, or should have known, “that the Tesla Model X was likely to cause injury to its occupants by leaving travel lanes and striking fixed objects when used in a reasonably foreseeable manner.” The carmaker should have issued a recall or provided a warning “in light of the risk of harm,” the family said in the complaint. Huang died because “Tesla is beta testing its Autopilot software on live drivers,” B. Mark Fong, a lawyer for the family, said in a statement to Bloomberg. “The Huang family wants to help prevent this tragedy from happening to other drivers using Tesla vehicles or any semi-autonomous vehicles.”
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The incident was as follows:
Huang was traveling south on US Highway 101 on March 23rd, 2018, when his Model X P100D smashed into the safety barrier section of a divider that separates the carpool lane from the off-ramp to the left. The front end of his SUV was ripped apart, the vehicle caught fire, and two other cars crashed into the rear end. Huang was removed from the vehicle by rescuers and brought to Stanford Hospital where he died from injuries sustained in the crash.
