— Tesla has settled a lawsuit over the death of 31-year-old Giovanni Mendoza Martinez who was killed when his Model S slammed into the side of a California ladder fire truck.
The crash occurred when Giovanni was "driving" his 2014 Tesla Model S on Interstate 680 in California at about 4 a.m. with his brother in the passenger seat.
The highway was blocked by a large ladder fire truck parked across two lanes of traffic with several other parked emergency vehicles, all with their emergency flashing lights activated due to a previous crash.
According to the lawsuit, the crash would not have occurred and Giovanni would not have been killed if the Tesla Autopilot system had performed as advertised. Data show the driver engaged Autopilot about 12 minutes before the Model S crashed into the fire truck.
The lawsuit references Elon Musk and comments he made in 2016 about Autopilot even though Giovanni was driving a 2014 Model S. But the judge still found a jury could find the 2016 statements "plausibly" misleading.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigated Tesla vehicles crashing into stationary emergency vehicles and determined drivers were misusing Autopilot, and the vehicles.
In the case of the Giovanni Mendoza Martinez crash into the fire truck, the lawsuit admits he was not driving the vehicle even though he was the driver. According to the lawsuit, "Giovanni was not controlling the Subject Vehicle, but he was instead passively sitting in the driver's seat with the 'Autopilot' feature engaged."
According to the lawsuit, Giovanni believed the Model S “would drive itself and he no longer needed to drive it." At that time he allowed his vehicle to slam head-on into the side of the ladder fire truck at 70 mph without braking or taking evasive actions.
Tesla argued it wasn't at fault if a driver isn't "driving," ignores his surroundings, ignores warnings from the owner's manual, ignores repeated active warnings from the vehicle, and ignores the obvious emergency vehicles with flashing lights parked across a highway.
However, the judge continued to allow the lawsuit to move forward in court to reach the trial stage.
It's guaranteed Tesla is fully aware of what can happen with a jury trial, not only based on its own past jury trials, but trials that involved other automakers which led to billion dollar verdicts.
Tesla settled the Giovanni Mendoza Martinez lawsuit but details of the settlement were not made public.
The Tesla Model S fire truck crash lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California: Mendoza, et al., v. Tesla, Inc.