ARS TECHNICA – At the beginning of August, Tesla was found partly liable in a wrongful death lawsuit involving the death of a pedestrian in Florida in 2019.
The automaker—which could have settled the case for far less—claimed that it did not have the fatal crash’s data. That’s until a hacker was able to recover it from the crashed car, according to a report in The Washington Post.
In the past, Tesla has been famously quick to offer up customer data stored on its servers to rebut claims made against the company. But in this case, the company said it had nothing.
Specifically, the lawyers for the family wanted what’s known as the “collision snapshot,” data captured by the car’s cameras and other sensors in the seconds leading up to and after the crash.
According to the trial, moments after the collision snapshot was uploaded to Tesla’s servers, the local copy on the car was marked for deletion …
“Self-driving cars have 9.1 crashes per million miles driven, while regular vehicles have 4.1 crashes per million miles. This means that, on average, self-driving cars have more than twice as many accidents as human-driven cars.
:It is important to note that these rates are based on data up to 2021. Since then, self-driving technology has advanced, potentially leading to improved safety and lower accident rates. However, it is still crucial to understand that continued development and improvement of autonomous vehicle technology are essential.”
– consumershield.com
Tesla asks court to toss wrongful death verdict that cost it $243 million
The company says the plaintiffs shouldn’t have been allowed to involve Elon Musk’s past statements about autonomy.
by Andrew J. Hawkins, Aug 29, 2025
THE VERGE – Lawyers for Tesla filed a motion in court Friday to throw out a jury verdict that found the company’s Autopilot software had contributed to the death of a woman in a crash from 2019.
Earlier this month, a jury found Tesla partially responsible for the death of 22-year-old Naibel Benavides, who was killed by a Model S driver who plowed into her and her boyfriend Dillon Angulo.
Tesla was ordered to pay the families of the victims $243 million in compensatory and punitive damages, a stunning outcome for a company that has managed to avoid taking responsibility for crashes involving its partially autonomous software.
In the filing, Tesla’s legal team said the Model S driver bore all the responsibility for the crash. And they are requesting the court invalidate the verdict, or at least order a new jury trial.
“The $243 million judgment against Tesla flies in the face of basic Florida tort law, the Due Process Clause, and common sense,” the company’s lawyers write, noting that McGee had pressed the accelerator to override Autopilot in the seconds before the crash. “Auto manufacturers do not insure the world against harms caused by reckless drivers.”
The lawyers also claim that the plaintiffs should not have been allowed to enter into evidence statements from Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has long claimed that the company’s vehicles are capable of higher levels of autonomy than they actually are.
And they called claims about data coverup on the part of Tesla — the company was accused of withholding camera data from police investigating the crash — were false and “inflamed” the jury against the company …
