Back in 2019, California prosecutors filed two felony charges against Kevin George Aziz Riad, the owner of a Tesla Model S car, for a fatal accident, AP News reported. It is worth noting that this is the first criminal charge involving a car autopilot – according to the prosecutor, on December 29, 2019, the driver drove onto the ring highway in his black electric car, ran a red light and crashed into a Honda Civic. As a result, two people died – the Tesla driver, remarkably, survived.
Accordingly, prosecutors have filed two vehicular manslaughter charges in the California Supreme Court — pending trial due to begin in the foreseeable future, Kevin was released on bail. At the same time, over the past few years, especially in 2021, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has investigated more than a dozen incidents involving Tesla cars that got into an accident using an automatic piloting system. The loudest scandal, perhaps, broke out when an electric car crashed into an ambulance, which was tritely standing on the side of the road.
What’s more, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in its 2019 accident investigation documents indicated that Kevin’s auto-steer function was activated while driving. Most likely, the driver decided to violate the rules of driving with an autopilot and did not control the situation with the exit to the highway. However, the participation of an autopilot is not mentioned in the documents on criminal prosecution – experts note that this is apparently due to the fact that unmanned vehicles and their participation in offenses are not registered in the current US legislation. But, in any case, the logic of the legislative framework will not change – the person who was driving is fully responsible for the accident, even if the autopilot was activated.
“Whether the L2 automated driving system is enabled or not, every available vehicle requires the driver to be in control at all times, and all state laws make the driver fully responsible for the operation of their vehicles,” the NHTSA said.
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