The family of a Foster City, Calif., man who died when his Tesla Model X vehicle crashed in Mountain View last year has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the electric carmaker.
Walter Huang, 38, died on March 23, 2018, shortly after the Tesla he was driving slammed into a traffic barrier on southbound Highway 101 in Mountain View, Calif. The lawsuit, filed by members of Huang's family, centers around the features of a Tesla that allow the vehicle to operate semi-autonomously, but don't provide a car with full self-driving capability.
"The navigation system of Huang's Tesla misread the lane lines on the roadway, failed to detect the concrete median, and failed to brake the car, but instead accelerated the car into the median," said a blog post by the San Francisco law firm Minami Tamaki LLP, which is representing the Huang family in the case.
The Huang family has said that Walter Huang complained about his car's Autopilot issue on multiple occasions, and that technicians with Tesla were unable to fix the problems Huang had with the technology.
Huang, who was working as an engineer at Apple at the time of his death, left behind his wife, Sevonne, and two children, a four-year-old son, and a seven-year-old daughter.
In addition to Tesla, the Huang family is also suing the state of California, alleging that its Caltrans division "failed to replace the guard after an earlier crash."
The Huang family is seeking undisclosed economic and non-economic damages and costs associated with the suit.
A Tesla spokesperson said the company had no comment on the Huang family's wrongful death suit. Last year, the National Transportaion Safety Board said its investigation into the crash found that Huang didn't have his hands on the steering wheel of his Model X in the final seconds before his accident. The NTSB also said that information downloaded from Huang's vehicle showed the car had its traffic-aware cruise control set at 75 miles per hour, and was traveling at 71 mph in a 65 mph zone.
