Tesla will go to trial over wrongful death lawsuit involving Apple engineer Walter Huang

Tesla will go to trial over a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the family of Apple engineer Walter Huang, reports Business Insider.

The family alleges that flaws in Tesla’s Autopilot system caused the 2018 crash that killed Huang. Tesla could face financial repercussions if a jury finds it was at fault for the collision. 

In March 2018, Huang died after his Autopilot-enabled Model X crashed into a safety barrier along US Highway 101 in Mountain View, California. An investigation from the National Transportation Safety Board later found that both Autopilot and distracted driving contributed to the crash, as phone data indicated Huang was playing a mobile game.

The family said in the lawsuit that Huang was traveling along US Highway 101 in Mountain View and, as his car approached a left exit ramp, “the autopilot feature of the Tesla turned the vehicle left, out of the designated travel lane, and drove it straight into a concrete highway median” at a speed of about 70 mph.

The married 38-year-old father of two died because Tesla was “beta testing its Autopilot software on live drivers,” B. Mark Fong, an attorney representing Huang’s family, said in a statement at the time the lawsuit was filed.

Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor and expert in automotive technologies, told Business Insider that the case likely won’t have any real consequences for Tesla, but if it loses it would almost certainly “bolster regulatory scrutiny” around its Autopilot driver-assist software. This is one case and Tesla will be able to absorb whatever final damages it ends up with, if any,” in the event that the company lost, he added.