The family of a 15-year-old boy who was killed in a 2019 crash involving a Tesla Model 3 on Autopilot has sued the electric car giant.
Jovani Maldonado was traveling with his father Benjamin in the passenger's seat their Ford Explorer pickup truck on California Interstate 880 on August 24, 2019 when the Tesla reared-ended the truck, sending it rolling.
Jovani, who was not wearing his seatbelt at the time, was thrown from the vehicle and found lying facedown near the crash in a pool of blood, according to police reports.
The driver of the Tesla, nor the car's autopilot feature stopped until a fraction of a second before hitting the Explorer, just four miles from Tesla's main car factory in Fremont, according to data the car recorded.
Now, the crash is the subject of a lawsuit against the electric car giant as the reliability of its autopilot feature has been called into question, the New York Times reported.
'We are living day by day. There is so much sadness inside,' the distraught father told the outlet. 'We take family walks and try to do things together like going to church. There is a massive hole in the family,'
At least 10 people have been killed in eight accidents in which Tesla's Autopilot was engaged since 2016, according to reports from the National Highway Traffic Safety Agency.
Camera footage from the Model 3 shows the moments before the car rear-ends the Explorer. The Maldonado family's lawsuit is one of several involving crashes where Tesla's Autopilot system was engaged
The Maldonado's lawsuit is one of several that have been filed against Tesla in 2021 alone, with one filed in April involving a Tesla Model S that in 2019 failed to stop at an intersection in Florida, and crashed into a Chevrolet Tahoe stopped on a shoulder, killing 22-year-old Naibel Leon, the Times reported.
Another was filed in May by Darel Kyle, 55, who says he suffered a severe spinal injury when an Autopilot Tesla rear-ended the van he was driving, the Times also reported.
Filed by Benjamin Maldonado and his wife, Adriana Garcia, their suit alleges that Autopilot is defective, and also names the driver of the Tesla, Romeo Lagman Yalung and his wife Vilma, who was sitting in the passenger's seat as defendants.
The Maldonado's lawsuit is among the latest instances highlighting crashes involving Tesla's Autopilot. Investigations have been opened into 30 Tesla crashes involving 10 deaths since 2016 where system was in use. Pictured: The remains of a Tesla vehicle are seen after it crashed in The Woodlands, Texas, April 17, 2021 that caused the issue to gain new attention
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has defended the Autopilot system, saying it has reduced traffic crashes when it is in use
They were not injured in the crash, according to police reports.
In court filings Tesla has reportedly not responded to allegations of failures in the Autopilot system, but has instead blamed Yalung for the crash.
'The police faulted the Tesla driver — not the car — for his inattention and his driving at an unsafe speed,' Tesla attorney Ryan McCarthy wrote, according to the Times.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The carmaker's chief executive officer, Elon Musk has defended the feature, tweeting in April that cars with Autopilot engaged have a 10-times lower chance of a crash than a regular vehicle, citing the company's crash data.
Just last week he tweeted: 'accidents on Autopilot are becoming rarer.'
However, in communications with the California DMV in March, the company admitted that Musk's tweets have overstated the capability's of the company's Autopilot system, according to documents obtained by Plainsite.
So far the NHTSA has resisted forcing Tesla to disable the Autopilot systems on its cars but in June began requiring all companies to report crashes with vehicles that have similar systems.
In the case of the Maldonados, the Model 3 was traveling at 69 miles per hour, and increased its speed to 70 just before the impact before slowing down in the final second.
Video recorded from the Tesla shows Maldonado turning on his right-turn blinker and changing lanes as the Model 3 continues forward.
In the final moments Maldonado appears to try and swerve back into his original lane as the Tesla makes contact.
Raj Rajkumar, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who studies autonomous driving technology speculated the Autopilot could have been confused by another truck ahead of Maldonado's Explorer or because its cameras were facing the sun, the Times reported.
The car's radar system, he said also appeared to fail to recognize the Explorer.
Maldonado described his son as an outgoing boy, who had planned to go to college, become a professional soccer player and buy his parents a house.
'Like any grateful child, he wanted to take care of his parents like they did for him,' he told the Times.
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