Florida Judge Denies Tesla Motion For Summary Judgement In Wrongful Death Suit - CleanTechnica

On April 25, 2019, George McGee was driving his 2019 Tesla Model S near his home in Key Largo, Florida, when he failed to slow at a T intersection and crashed into a Chevy Tahoe, killing a bystander and severely injuring another. McGee had activated Tesla’s Autopilot and set Traffic Aware Cruise Control (TACC) to 45 mph but manually increased the speed to 62 mph before the crash. He admitted to searching for his dropped cell phone at the time of the accident and reported no visual or audible warnings from the car prior to the collision. The estate of the deceased contends that Tesla’s Autopilot malfunctioned and was a proximate cause of the crash, particularly focusing on the system’s behavior after McGee manually overrode the TACC speed. Tesla filed a motion for summary judgment arguing it was not legally responsible, claiming that certain Autopilot features, like forward emergency braking, are disabled when the driver accelerates