Our day isn’t complete without a Tesla-related headline in the news (bad publicity is still publicity I guess?)
In recent news which was due to past unresolved matters, five Texas cops filed a lawsuit against Tesla over a crash caused by the car’s Autopilot mode (the irony.) Back In February, the same cops had pulled over another car when Tesla’s Model X crashed into their vehicles at 70 mph, causing the cars to push into the officers and injure them in the process. The cops accused Tesla of fake advertising their Autopilot’s safety and how it had caused not one, but many accidents in the past.
The lawsuit is nothing new for Tesla but still comes at a very bad time for the CEO Elon Musk as the company is already facing high criticism for its assisted driving tech. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched an investigation into Tesla’s Autopilot mode due to the frequent incidents and has cited about 12 incidents since 2018.
Tony Buzbee, an attorney representing the cops told a local news channel KPRC 2, “You’ve probably seen that Elon Musk and Tesla have proudly touted Teslas on Autopilot are safer than your everyday driver, that Tesla’s on autopilot there are fewer accidents than they are otherwise. But what we’ve learned is that this information is misleading”
According to Insider, the cops are seeking between $1 to 20 million in the lawsuit against Tesla which also demands that the company immediately fix the flaws in the system which has led to crashes with emergency vehicles. It seems like Tesla has learnt from the mistakes and has released a revised version of the owner’s manual for Model 3 and Model Y that states ‘Autopilot will automatically slow down when they detect emergency lights at night but we wouldn’t just trust their word for it yet.