Tesla hit with lawsuit over fatal crash of Model X in Mountain View
The family of a Foster City man who died when his Tesla Model X vehicle crashed in Mountain View last year has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the electric carmaker.
Walter Huang, 38, died March 23, 2018, shortly after the Tesla he was driving slammed into a traffic barrier on southbound Highway 101 in Mountain View. The lawsuit, filed by members of Huang’s family, centers around the
navigation system, which allows a driver to operate the vehicle semi-autonomously.
However, the system doesn’t provide a car with full self-driving capability. “The navigation system of Huang’s Tesla misread the lane lines on the roadway, failed to detect the concrete median, and failed to brake the car, but instead accelerated the car into the median,” according a blog post by the San Francisco law firm Minami Tamaki LLP, which is representing the Huang family in the case.
The family has said that Walter Huang complained about his car’s Autopilot issue on multiple occasions, and that technicians with Tesla were unable to fix the problems he had with the technology.
Huang, who worked as an engineer at Apple at the time of his death, left behind his wife, Sevonne, and two children, a 4-yearold son and a 7-year-old daughter.
In addition to Tesla, the Huang family is also suing the state of California, alleging that Caltrans “failed to replace the guard after an earlier crash.”
The Huang family is seeking undisclosed damages and costs associated with the suit.
A Tesla spokesperson said the company has no comment on the wrongful-death suit. Last year, the National Transportation Safety Board said its investigation into the crash found that Huang didn’t have his hands on the steering wheel of his Model X in the final seconds before his accident. The NTSB also said that information downloaded from Huang’s vehicle showed the car had its traffic-aware cruise control set at 75 miles per hour, and was traveling at 71 mph in a 65 mph zone.