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240 Mio. USD Strafe für Tesla nach Crash bei Versagen des Autopiloten

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| Jury orders Tesla to pay more than $240 million in Autopilot crash case
| 
| Updated 1:11 AM GMT, August 2, 2025
| 
| MIAMI (AP) — A Miami jury decided that Elon Musk’s car company Tesla was
| partly responsible for a deadly crash in Florida involving its Autopilot
| driver assist technology and must pay the victims more than $240 million in
| damages.
| 
| The federal jury held that Tesla bore significant responsibility because its
| technology failed and that not all the blame can be put on a reckless
| driver, even one who admitted he was distracted by his cellphone before
| hitting a young couple out gazing at the stars. The decision comes as Musk
| seeks to convince Americans his cars are safe enough to drive on their own
| as he plans to roll out a driverless taxi service in several cities in the
| coming months.
| 
| The decision ends a four-year long case remarkable not just in its outcome
| but that it even made it to trial. Many similar cases against Tesla have
| been dismissed and, when that didn’t happen, settled by the company to avoid
| the spotlight of a trial.
| 
| “This will open the floodgates,” said Miguel Custodio, a car crash lawyer
| not involved in the Tesla case. “It will embolden a lot of people to come to
| court.”
| 
| The case also included startling charges by lawyers for the family of the
| deceased, 22-year-old, Naibel Benavides Leon, and for her injured boyfriend,
| Dillon Angulo. They claimed Tesla either hid or lost key evidence, including
| data and video recorded seconds before the accident. Tesla said it made a
| mistake after being shown the evidence and honestly hadn’t thought it was
| there.
| 
| “We finally learned what happened that night, that the car was actually
| defective,” said Benavides’ sister, Neima Benavides. “Justice was achieved.”
| 
| Tesla has previously faced criticism that it is slow to cough up crucial
| data by relatives of other victims in Tesla crashes, accusations that the
| car company has denied. In this case, the plaintiffs showed Tesla had the
| evidence all along, despite its repeated denials, by hiring a forensic data
| expert who dug it up.
| 
| “Today’s verdict is wrong,” Tesla said in a statement, “and only works to
| set back automotive safety and jeopardize Tesla’s and the entire industry’s
| efforts to develop and implement lifesaving technology,” They said the
| plaintiffs concocted a story ”blaming the car when the driver – from day one
| – admitted and accepted responsibility.”
| 
| In addition to a punitive award of $200 million, the jury said Tesla must
| also pay $43 million of a total $129 million in compensatory damages for the
| crash, bringing the total borne by the company to $243 million.
| 
| “It’s a big number that will send shock waves to others in the industry,”
| said financial analyst Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities. “It’s not a good day
| for Tesla.”
| 
| Tesla said it will appeal.
| 
| Even if that fails, the company says it will end up paying far less than
| what the jury decided because of a pre-trial agreement that limits punitive
| damages to three times Tesla’s compensatory damages. Translation: $172
| million, not $243 million. But the plaintiff says their deal was based on a
| multiple of all compensatory damages, not just Tesla’s, and the figure the
| jury awarded is the one the company will have to pay.
| 
| It’s not clear how much of a hit to Tesla’s reputation for safety the
| verdict in the Miami case will make. Tesla has vastly improved its
| technology since the crash on a dark, rural road in Key Largo, Florida, in
| 2019.
| 
| But the issue of trust generally in the company came up several times in the
| case, including in closing arguments Thursday. The plaintiffs’ lead lawyer,
| Brett Schreiber, said Tesla’s decision to even use the term Autopilot showed
| it was willing to mislead people and take big risks with their lives because
| the system only helps drivers with lane changes, slowing a car and other
| tasks, falling far short of driving the car itself.
| 
| Schreiber said other automakers use terms like “driver assist” and “copilot”
| to make sure drivers don’t rely too much on the technology.
| 
| “Words matter,” Schreiber said. “And if someone is playing fast and lose
| with words, they’re playing fast and lose with information and facts.”
| 
| Schreiber acknowledged that the driver, George McGee, was negligent when he
| blew through flashing lights, a stop sign and a T-intersection at 62 miles
| an hour before slamming into a Chevrolet Tahoe that the couple had parked to
| get a look at the stars.
| 
| The Tahoe spun around so hard it was able to launch Benavides 75 feet
| through the air into nearby woods where her body was later found. It also
| left Angulo, who walked into the courtroom Friday with a limp and cushion to
| sit on, with broken bones and a traumatic brain injury.
| 
| But Schreiber said Tesla was at fault nonetheless. He said Tesla allowed
| drivers to act recklessly by not disengaging the Autopilot as soon as they
| begin to show signs of distraction and by allowing them to use the system on
| smaller roads that it was not designed for, like the one McGee was driving
| on.
| 
| “I trusted the technology too much,” said McGee at one point in his
| testimony. “I believed that if the car saw something in front of it, it
| would provide a warning and apply the brakes.”
| 
| The lead defense lawyer in the Miami case, Joel Smith, countered that Tesla
| warns drivers that they must keep their eyes on the road and hands on the
| wheel yet McGee chose not to do that while he looked for a dropped
| cellphone, adding to the danger by speeding. Noting that McGee had gone
| through the same intersection 30 or 40 times previously and hadn’t crashed
| during any of those trips, Smith said that isolated the cause to one thing
| alone: “The cause is that he dropped his cellphone.”
| 
| The auto industry has been watching the case closely because a finding of
| Tesla liability despite a driver’s admission of reckless behavior would pose
| significant legal risks for every company as they develop cars that
| increasingly drive themselves.

<https://apnews.com/article/tesla-miami-musk-benavides-selfdriving-autopilot-autonomous-vehicles-c342f2716b1ec4e9ede09b8e958751b7>

Das wird autonomes Fahren sicher deutlich voranbringen.

Und nachdem sich der abgehobenen Börsenkurs vorwiegend durch Tesla als
Softwareschmiede und kaum mehr als Dünnblechverarbeiter definiert ...

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240 Mio. USD Strafe für Tesla nach Crash bei Versagen des Autopiloten Nomen Nescio <nobody@dizum.com> - 2025-08-02 17:06 +0200
  Re: 240 Mio. USD Strafe für Tesla nach Crash bei Versagen des Autopiloten Dietz Proepper <dietz.usenet@rotfl.franken.de> - 2025-08-03 09:16 +0200
  Re: 240 Mio. USD Strafe für Tesla nach Crash bei Versagen des Autopiloten Nomen Nescio <nobody@dizum.com> - 2025-08-03 14:09 +0200
    Re: 240 Mio. USD Strafe für Tesla nach Crash bei Versagen des Autopiloten Michael Bode <m.g.bode@web.de> - 2025-08-03 15:13 +0200

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