Tesla has been found partly liable for a fatal car accident involving its autopilot system and ordered to pay more than $200mn to the victims, as Elon Musk tries to win regulatory approval for his self-driving software.
A federal jury found that Tesla bore a third of the responsibility for a 2019 accident in Florida where a pedestrian was killed and another maimed when a Tesla Model S drove through an intersection and hit a parked car at 50 miles per hour.
The plaintiffs’ lawyers argued that the accident was caused by driver complacency stemming from Tesla exaggerating the capabilities of its assistance systems, failing to upgrade the technology after prior incidents, as well as for allowing drivers to use autopilot on roads it was not designed for.