Updates on the Latest High-Profile Tesla Crash

A few weeks ago I wrote about the latest high-profile crash involving Tesla’s level 2 automation system, in which a car drove into a two-story brick house on a quiet residential street in Katy, Texas, killing a woman who was standing in her living room. Some developments since then merit an update.

Both the NTSB and the NHTSA have opened investigations into the incident. The NTSB has preliminarily confirmed Tesla’s initial reaction to the event: the driver had “overridden” the automation system by pressing the accelerator, in this case to 100%, causing the car to accelerate to a speed of 73 miles per hour before it hit the house.

The driver, meanwhile, has been charged with manslaughter. To my knowledge, this is only the second time a driver has been criminally prosecuted for a crash resulting from misuse of an automated driving system. In the previous case, the driver was using Autopilot when he ran a red light, killing two people.

The above facts will likely cause many to conclude that this crash was not Tesla’s fault. A bit more context complicates the picture. First, it is worth noting the similarities to Benavides, last summer’s blockbuster verdict against Tesla. In that case, the driver also “overrode” Autopilot by putting his foot on the accelerator. As the evidence showed at trial, accelerating with Autopilot engaged does not completely disable the system; rather, it overrides “traffic aware cruise control” (the system that adjusts the car’s speed in response to traffic in the lane ahead) but not “autosteer,” automatic emergency braking, or forward collision warning. I am not certain how Tesla’s latest system, which it calls “Full Self Driving (Supervised)” responds in these situations, but to say that the automation system has been “overridden” by a foot on the accelerator is probably at least somewhat misleading.

My sense is that the involvement of criminal law is a welcome development here. Crashes like these implicate complex questions of responsibility. To what extent do we expect drivers to understand the nuances of the automation systems they use and take responsibility for maintaining vigilance on the roads? To what extent do we expect manufacturers to design their systems to mitigate the effects of known human imperfections, which products liability law would call “foreseeable misuse”? The driver in Benavides, George McGee, who killed a young woman and caused permanent injuries to her boyfriend, got little more than a slap on the wrist (he was fined $1,000 and settled a tort suit for an undisclosed sum).

It will be interesting to watch how criminal and tort law develop in this area.

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Yet Another Fatal “Autopilot” Crash

The latest fatal crash involving Tesla’s level 2 automation system is particularly chilling. The victim, Martha Avila, was standing inside her house on a quiet back street when a Tesla Model 3, reportedly with “an automated driving assistance system” engaged, ran off the road and into the two-story brick home, killing her. Local police and the NHTSA have opened investigations.

The driver, Michael Butler, was not intoxicated. Doorbell camera footage shows the car running off the road so fast as to be barely visible. Tesla has not responded to requests for comment from the media, but its vice president of AI and software, Ashok Elluswamy, posted on X that the car was going 73 miles per hour and that the driver “manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100%.”

One of my scholarly projects for the summer is an article about the first fatal autonomous driving case to result in a jury trial, Benavides v. Tesla. That crash, which I blogged about last summer, killed a young woman and severely injured her boyfriend, resulting in a verdict holding Tesla 33% responsible and imposing $42 million in compensatory damages and $200 million in punitive damages.

There are some striking similarities between the two incidents. In both cases, the driver had his foot on the accelerator, causing the car to travel far in excess of the speed limit. Both incidents occurred on surface streets. The Benavides crash, which occurred in 2019, involved an older level 2 system that Tesla controversially called “Autopilot.” (Following the jury verdict, Tesla settled a series of other pending cases and retired the name.) Autopilot was not supposed to be used on surface streets, and one of the plaintiff’s theories of defect was that, given the number of fatal crashes that had already occurred, it shouldn’t have been possible for users to activate Autopilot in an area it wasn’t designed for. Today, Tesla’s level 2 system is known as “Full Self Driving (Supervised),” a name that is arguably less sensationally inappropriate given its capabilities. “FSD,” as it is commonly known, now has a much broader operational design domain, and can be used on all kind of roads, including the quiet residential street on which Martha Avila lived.

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Quick Reactions to the Cox v. Sony Music Oral Argument

The Cox v. Sony Music Entertainment argument just ended as I started this; here are my immediate takeaways. (For more detail on the case, see my blog series over the weekend: Part 1 on the contributory infringement test, Part 2 on the confusion about the required mental state after Grokster, and Part 3 on the connections between contributory copyright infringement doctrine and the common law.)

It’s almost always difficult to predict a result, or even votes, based on the oral argument, and I haven’t even had the opportunity to read the transcript yet. But here’s a few things that stood out to me:

1. Much of the argument focused on the required state of mind for liability. There was basically no appetite from anyone for adopting the Restatement/Gershwin standard of knowledge of the wrongdoing. Cox, represented by Joshua Rosenkranz, and the Solicitor General’s office, represented by Malcolm Stewart, argued that contributory liability requires a showing that the defendant shared the same purpose as the direct infringer, and wanted to accomplish the same goal — a standard drawn from the many criminal aiding and abetting cases cited in Twitter. A number of questions from the justices seemed to support this idea, leading Justice Gorsuch at one point to conclude, perhaps optimistically, that a consensus view had emerged on that. In response, Paul Clement, representing the music companies, argued that intent was the correct standard, defining intent as including, under Restatement 2d of Torts sec. 8A, substantial certainty that harm to the plaintiff will result from one’s actions.

Continue ReadingQuick Reactions to the Cox v. Sony Music Oral Argument
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