In some relief for Tesla CEO Elon Musk, jurors in an Autopilot-related 2019 crash in the US have ruled in favor of the electric car company. The jury in a California state court awarded no damages to Justin Hsu, the plaintiff who sued Tesla in 2020, reports The Verge. Jurors found that the Tesla Autopilot software “was not at fault in the accident where the car turned into a median on a city street while Autopilot was engaged”.
Tesla is under intense scrutiny for its Autopilot and its Full Self-Driving (FSD) driver assistance features. In February, Tesla received a clean chit from the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in 2021 over a fatal crash involving the Tesla Model S Autopilot system.
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The US transportation agency determined that “the probable cause of the Spring, Texas, electric vehicle crash was the driver’s excessive speed and failure to control his car”.
As for Autopilot, the NTSB determined that it was not in use because the system was not programmed to go faster than 30 miles per hour, the road that Tesla last traveled. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is also investigating the self-driving claims made by Musk.
The SEC probe is to determine whether the electric carmaker violated its rules in promoting its full-self driving (FSD) and autopilot software. In February, Tesla halted the rollout of its full self-driving beta software in the US and Canada after recalling the system.