Tesla is pushing back on claims that a failure of its “Autopilot” feature was to blame for a head-on collision that killed four people, instead accusing the Tesla’s driver of being dangerously drunk at the time of the deadly wreck.
Further, Heath Miller could not have had his Model Y in Autopilot when he smashed into a Ford Explorer on February 17, 2023, because he was traveling as fast as 100 mph – and the high-tech feature disengages at high speeds, according to Tesla.
A lawsuit filed two years later by the widow of the 47-year-old, who paid $6,000 for “Enhanced Autopilot” when he bought the Model Y in October 2022, took Tesla to task for allegedly exaggerating the capabilities of the high-tech feature, asserting that the vehicle should have automatically braked when its sensors anticipated the impending crash.
The civil complaint by Sarah Mai Pugh Miller suggested – but did not explicitly say – that her late husband had the $80,000 car in self-driving mode when it smashed into a Ford Explorer on Long Island’s North Fork. The compact crossover’s lithium-ion battery caught fire soon after impact, burning so hot it prevented first responders from getting close to either vehicle.
Tesla responded to Pugh Miller’s complaint in March, and included a copy of the New York State Police Collision Reconstruction Unit’s crash investigation report. It said that Miller and his passenger, 55-year-old William Price, died of “vehicular crash injuries including thermal injuries… and vehicle fire,” according to an investigation by the New York State Police Collision Reconstruction Unit.
The two people in the Explorer, physicians Peter Smith, 80, and Patricia O’Neill, 66, died upon impact, according to the report.
In the immediate aftermath, police initially said alcohol did not appear to be a factor. Pugh Miller’s complaint put the onus entirely on Tesla, calling its cars “defective,” and “unreasonably dangerous.” But, in a response filed the following month by Tesla, the carmaker claims that “the undisputed evidence establishes that Mr. Miller was solely responsible” for the accident, seeking to absolve the Elon Musk-owned company of any wrongdoing.
A toxicology report by the Suffolk County, New York, Office of the Medical Examiner, which Tesla submitted to the court as an exhibit, says Miller was driving with a blood alcohol content of 0.25 percent. This, Tesla points out in a companion filing, is more than three times the legal driving limit.
The filing also claims Miller was driving “at an egregious speed of at least 99 mph, 60 mph above the speed limit,” and possibly as fast as 100 mph, when he “crossed the centerline” and fatally smacked into the Explorer.
Investigators were unable to retrieve the Model Y’s so-called black box due to “significant fire damage,” according to Tesla’s response. However, Tesla maintains that experts it hired to determine how fast Miller was driving, through “the application of photogrammetric techniques to still-frame images” taken from surveillance cameras along his route, provide evidence that allegedly shows Miller was “traveling at a minimum speed of 99 mph at the time of the accident,” with a second calculation that said the speed “likely exceeded 100 mph.”
According to Tesla, its cars’ self-driving features shut off at speeds above 85 mph, establishing proof that “the ‘automatic driving system’ was not engaged at the time of the accident or during the nine seconds immediately preceding it.” Therefore, it could not have been a factor in causing the deadly wreck, Tesla argues.
At the same time, the attorney for one of the two people who died in the Explorer filed a motion on September 4, accusing Tesla of withholding various other datapoints collected by Miller’s Model Y.
As for Pugh Miller’s contention that her husband burned to death while trapped inside the car by “thermal runaway,” that is, an out-of-control blaze that prevents rescuers from getting close, Tesla’s response in court argues that the toxicology report found “an absence of carbon monoxide in his chest blood, establishing that he did not survive the initial impact long enough to inhale smoke or fumes from the fire.”
Although the New York State Police listed “thermal injuries” as a cause of death alongside “vehicular crash injuries,” the Tesla filing contends that the lack of carbon monoxide in Miller’s system “proves that the Decedent’s fatal injuries were caused by the collision, prior to the subsequent fire.” (On the flip side of the coin, the Suffolk County M.E. found that Smith and O’Neill died from “blunt force trauma of the head, torso, and extremities,” without any mention of thermal injuries.)
Overall, Tesla contends that Pugh Miller’s allegations of “inadequate crashworthiness” should be disregarded altogether, insisting that the speed at which Miller was driving made “catastrophic injuries unavoidable.”
“This excessive speed, coupled with the fact that the Decedent was driving under the influence, is, in itself, sufficient to warrant dismissal of the present matter,” Tesla’s filing states. “... These facts prove that Decedent’s actions, rather than any alleged defect in the Subject Vehicle, were the proximate cause of the accident.”
Tesla has faced similar lawsuits from families who went after the carmaker over “defective design” that left their loved ones vulnerable.
In 2023, the wife of a New Jersey man whose Tesla Model 3 slammed into a tree and exploded sued the company, claiming her husband survived the crash but died in the raging battery fire that engulfed the car in the moments following. That same year, an Indianapolis woman sued Tesla after her husband, a former FBI agent, was unable to escape his Tesla Model S when it caught fire following an accident, instantly incinerating him, according to court filings. In 2024, the widow of a Marine Corps reservist in Colorado sued Tesla after her late husband’s Model 3 struck a tree and went up in flames, allegedly trapping the new father inside, where he perished.
Tesla and its attorneys in the case, as well as Pugh Miller’s lawyer, did not respond to a request for comment Monday.
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