By Jonathan Stempel<\/p>\n
June 24 (Reuters) – Tesla has been sued by the family of a 76-year-old Texas grandmother killed last week when a driver using his Model 3’s automated driving \u200cassistance system crashed into her suburban Houston home, the family’s lawyers said.<\/p>\n
According to a complaint \u200cfiled on Tuesday, Elon Musk’s electric vehicle maker should be liable for the wrongful death of Martha Avila, reflecting its gross negligence \u200band failure to warn that its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving systems were defective.<\/p>\n
Avila’s daughter, Jennifer Barbour, and her husband, Justin Barbour, said the Model 3’s driver, Michael Butler, told law enforcement he engaged Autopilot before plowing through the front wall of Avila’s home in Katy, Texas, on June 19, pinning her.<\/p>\n
She died later at \u200ca nearby hospital, the complaint said. \u2060Justin Barbour said he was also injured.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit filed in a Harris County, Texas, state court seeks more than $1 million in damages, and punitive damages reflecting Tesla’s \u2060alleged “reckless disregard for a substantial risk of severe bodily injury.”<\/p>\n
Tesla and Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n
Musk, the world’s richest person, posted on X on Monday night: “FSD drives slowly through neighborhood streets and this \u200bwas \u200ba high speed crash!”<\/p>\n
Ashok Elluswamy, vice president of AI \u200bsoftware at Tesla, posted separately on X \u200cthat “the driver manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100% of the accel pedal in this residential area.”<\/p>\n
DOZENS OF TESLA PROBES<\/p>\n
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has been investigating the crash.<\/p>\n
It has since 2016 opened nearly 50 special investigations of Tesla crashes believed to involve advanced driver assistance systems. About two dozen deaths were reported.<\/p>\n
In March, the NHTSA escalated its probe into 3.2 million Teslas equipped \u200cwith Full Self-Driving, on concern the system may fail to \u200bdetect or warn drivers in poor visibility.<\/p>\n
And in 2023, Tesla \u200brecalled about 2 million vehicles, nearly all of \u200bits electric vehicles on U.S. roads, to better ensure that drivers pay attention \u200cwhen using Autopilot.<\/p>\n
Tesla has said Autopilot enables vehicles \u200bto steer, accelerate and \u200bbrake within their lanes, while Full Self-Driving lets vehicles obey traffic signals and change lanes.<\/p>\n
The automaker has also said both technologies require “fully attentive” drivers whose hands are on the wheel.<\/p>\n
Butler is \u200balso a defendant in the Barbours’ \u200clawsuit. It is unclear whether he has a lawyer. Efforts to reach him were not \u200bimmediately successful.<\/p>\n
The Barbours’ lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for additional comment.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by \u200bJonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Jonathan Stempel June 24 (Reuters) – Tesla has been sued by the family of a 76-year-old Texas…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348804,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[124402,8892,123287,124407,123284,123155,483,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-348803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-advanced-driver-assistance-systems","tag-elon-musk","tag-jennifer-barbour","tag-justin-barbour","tag-martha-avila","tag-michael-butler","tag-tesla","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}