In April of 2019, a Tesla Model S with the Autopilot feature struck a parked car on the side of the road in Key Largo, Florida, killing one person standing beside it and injuring another. In August, a jury ruled that Tesla must pay $243 million in damages — a ruling handed down after, as Reuters reported, Tesla passed on settling the case for $60 million. That isn’t the only interesting wrinkle in the case, however — there’s also the matter of what Tesla knew about the crash and when they knew it.
Writing at The Washington Post, Trisha Thadani and Faiz Siddiqui revealed that the plaintiffs worked with what Thadani and Siddiqui call “a self-described hacker” to gain more information about the crash — something that proved decisive in how the legal case played out. The hacker, who goes by the alias @greentheonly on social media, was able to find the data in a chip taken from the Tesla.
Once that data had been found, the Post reports, Tesla shared that it had also found that information on its own servers. An attorney for Tesla told the Post that the company had not intentionally suppressed the data, calling the situation “the most ridiculous perfect storm you’ve ever heard.” Tesla has also argued that this is a case of distracted driving, not an issue with any of its own systems.
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It’s been a rough year for the automakerNevertheless, it’s not a great look for Tesla that they weren’t able to produce crash data that they had in this case. But this information is likely not the last you’ll hear about this lawsuit; as CNBC’s Lora Kolodny reported late last week, Tesla has filed an appeal in the case calling for either a reduction in the damages they must pay or a completely new trial.
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