Tesla has been sued by the family of a 44-year-old Japanese man who was killed when a Model X using Autopilot crashed into a group of people standing to the side of an expressway near Tokyo, Bloomberg reports.
According to the complaint filed in federal court in San Jose, California, the driver of the Tesla Model X fell asleep shortly before the crash. When a vehicle ahead of the Model X changed lanes to avoid the group of people, the Model X allegedly accelerated and ran into the group, killing Yoshihiro Umeda.
The lawsuit adds that the accident was the result of issues with the Autopilot system, in particular inadequate monitoring of whether the driver is alert, as well as a lack of safeguards against unforeseen traffic situations.
“If Tesla’s past behavior of blaming its vehicles’ drivers is any example, Tesla likely will portray this accident as the sole result of a drowsy, inattentive driver in order to distract from the obvious shortcomings of its automated driver assistance technology,” the widow and daughter of Umede said in the complaint.
Umeda was with a group of motorcyclists who were standing behind a van at the far right side of the Tomei Expressway following an earlier traffic collision. The complaint says this is the first case of a Tesla Autopilot-related pedestrian fatality.
This is not the first time the inadequacies of Tesla’s Autopilot system has been blamed on a crash. Earlier this year, the National Transportation Safety Board said the fatal crash involving a Model X in March of 2018 occurred in part because of Tesla’s “ineffective monitoring of driver engagement.”