California Prosecutors File Felony Prices In opposition to Tesla Autopilot Driver – CBS San Francisco

FREMONT (CBS SF/AP) – California prosecutors recently made history when they filed two counts of involuntary manslaughter against the driver of a Tesla who ran a red light in 2019, crashed into another car and killed two people while on autopilot drove.

The defendant appears to be the first person charged in the United States in a fatal accident involving a motorist using a semi-automated driving system. Los Angeles County prosecutors filed the charges in October, but they didn’t come to light until last week.

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The driver, Kevin George Aziz Riyadh, 27, has pleaded not guilty. Riyadh, a limousine service driver, is out on bail while the case is pending.

Abuse of the autopilot, which can control steering, speed and braking, has occurred on multiple occasions and is the subject of investigations by two federal agencies. The filing of charges in the California crash could tell drivers who use systems like Autopilot that they can’t be trusted to steer vehicles.

The lawsuits aren’t the first to affect an automated driving system, but they are the first to affect a widely used driver technology. Arizona authorities filed involuntary manslaughter charges in 2020 against a driver Uber hired to participate in testing a fully autonomous vehicle on public roads. The Uber vehicle, an SUV with the backup human driver on board, struck and killed a pedestrian.

In contrast, autopilots and other driver assistance systems are widespread on roads around the world. An estimated 765,000 Tesla vehicles are equipped with it in the USA alone.

In the Tesla accident, police said a Model S was traveling at high speed when it exited a freeway and ran a red light in Gardena, a Los Angeles suburb, on December 29, 2019, and hit a Honda Civic met at an intersection. Two people who were in the Civic, Gilberto Alcazar Lopez and Maria Guadalupe Nieves-Lopez died at the scene. Riyadh and a woman in the Tesla were taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

Criminal prosecution documents make no mention of Autopilot. But the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which dispatched investigators to the crash, confirmed last week that Autopilot was being used in the Tesla at the time of the crash.

Riyadh’s defense attorneys did not respond to requests for comment last week, and the Los Angeles County Attorney’s Office declined to discuss the case. Riyadh’s preliminary hearing is scheduled for February 23.

NHTSA and the National Transportation Safety Board have investigated widespread autopilot abuse by drivers, whose overconfidence and inattentiveness have been blamed for several accidents, including fatal ones. In a crash report, the NTSB described its abuse as an “automation courtesy.”

The agency said that in a 2018 accident in Culver City where a Tesla struck a fire truck, the design of the autopilot system “had allowed the driver to disengage from the task of driving.” No one was injured in this crash.

Last May, a California man was arrested after officers noticed his Tesla driving down a freeway with the man in the back seat and no one behind the wheel.

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Teslas using autopilot have also crashed into a freeway barrier or tractor-trailers crossing roads. NHTSA has sent investigation teams into 26 autopilot accidents that have killed at least 11 people since 2016.

Messages were left asking for comment from Tesla, which has disbanded its media relations department. Since the Autopilot crashes began, Tesla has updated the software to make it harder for drivers to abuse it. An attempt was also made to improve the autopilot’s ability to detect emergency vehicles.

The company has explained that Autopilot and a more sophisticated “Full Self-Driving” system cannot drive themselves and that drivers must be alert and responsive at all times. “Full Self-Driving” is being tested by hundreds of Tesla owners on public roads in the US

Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina who studies automated vehicles, said this is the first US case to his knowledge of a serious criminal charge in a fatal crash involving a semi-automated driver assistance system. Tesla, he said, could be “criminal, civil or morally guilty” if it is found to have put dangerous technology on the road.

Donald Slavik, a Colorado attorney who has served as counsel in automotive technology lawsuits, including many against Tesla, said he too is not aware of any previous criminal charges filed against a US driver who used semi-automated driver technology who was involved in a fatal accident.
The Lopez and Nieves-Lopez families have sued Tesla and Riyadh in separate lawsuits.
They have accused Riyadh of negligence and accused Tesla of selling defective vehicles that can suddenly accelerate and lack an effective automatic emergency braking system. A joint trial is planned for mid-2023.

Lopez’s family alleges in court documents that the car “suddenly and unintentionally accelerated to an excessive, unsafe and uncontrollable speed.” Nieves-Lopez’s family further allege that Riyadh was an unsafe driver, with multiple moving violations on his record, and could not handle the high-performance Tesla.

Separately, NHTSA is investigating a dozen accidents in which a Tesla on autopilot drove into multiple parked emergency vehicles. At least 17 people were injured and one person was killed in the investigated accidents.

When asked about the manslaughter charges against Riyadh, the agency issued a statement saying it would not have any vehicle for sale that could drive itself. And whether or not a car uses a semi-automated system, the agency said, “Every vehicle requires the human driver to be in control at all times.”

NHTSA added that all state laws hold human drivers responsible for the operation of their vehicles. Although automated systems can help drivers avoid accidents, the technology must be used responsibly, the agency says.

Rafaela Vasquez, the driver of the Uber autonomous test vehicle, was charged with involuntary manslaughter in 2020 after the SUV fatally struck a pedestrian in a Phoenix suburb in 2018. Vasquez has pleaded not guilty. Arizona prosecutors declined to file criminal charges against Uber.

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