A Texas woman is suing Tesla and a driver for at least $1m (£759,000) in damages after one of the electric vehicles crashed into her family home, killing her mother
Jennifer Barbour filed her lawsuit in a local court on Tuesday, just days after her 76-year-old mother Martha Avila died from injuries she sustained after a Tesla Model 3 sped into their shared home.
The Tesla driver told police that he was using the car’s autonomous or “full self-driving” technology at the time of the crash.
In the lawsuit Barbour accuses Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company of defective design and negligence by promoting technology that is unsafe, while Musk on social media denied the technology was to blame.
Tesla was approached for comment.
Musk took to X, the social media platform he owns, to refute the idea that Tesla’s self-driving technology was to blame for the crash because it happened at a high speed.
“This makes no sense,” Musk wrote on Monday.
Tesla’s vice president of AI software Ashok Elluswamy followed up on Musk’s comment with more apparent detail on the accident.
Elluswamy wrote that the driver was going at 73mph (117 km/h) and had overridden the car’s self-driving mode “by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100%.”
He also claimed that the driver “had the accelerator pushed even after the crash”.
Barbour’s complaint, filed with her husband Justin Barbour, puts forward a different explanation.
It argues that the driver was operating his Tesla on “in a reasonably foreseeable manner” with full self-driving engaged when the car’s technology “failed to detect the end of the street”, went into “sudden unintended acceleration” and crashed into the Barbour residence.
In addition to the death of her mother, Barbour claims her husband also suffered severe and grievous injuries as a result of the crash.
Monetary damages being sought include those for anguish, injury and medical expenses, as well as “exemplary” damages because Tesla’s actions have been “grossly negligent.”
The crash remains under investigation by police in Texas and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the US government’s auto safety regulator.
Tesla’s self-driving technology has come under increased criticism and scrutiny.
Last week, Democratic Senators Edward Markey and Richard Blumenthal sent a letter, external to the NHTSA demanding that the agency investigate Tesla’s full self-driving technology for its safety risks.
