A man is suing Tesla after half his family was killed when their Model X, which was running one of the automaker’s driving assistance features, veered across the road line and into a tractor-trailer — crushing his wife, two daughters, son-in-law, and family dog, according to a grim new lawsuit reported by The Independent.
The man, Nathan Blaine, is accusing Tesla and CEO Elon Musk of having “intentionally misrepresented the safety of their vehicles” and the driver assistance features, the outlet noted, and says that the misleading claims lulled him and his wife into a “false sense of security.”
“Based on representations the Blaines heard made by Musk and Tesla,” the complaint states, per The Independent, “[they] believed [it] was a safer driver than a human driver of convention[al] vehicles.”
The suit targets Tesla’s “Autosteer” feature, a punched-up version of cruise control that “detects lane markings, road edges, and the presence of vehicles and objects to intelligently keep your vehicle in its driving lane,” per Tesla. Though it’s in beta, the feature is available to Tesla owners for free, unlike the automaker’s more advanced Autopilot and Full Self-Driving modes — though the Blaines did pay for FSD. The suit also implicates Tesla’s other safety systems, such as its “lane departure warning” and “emergency lane departure avoidance” systems, arguing they “defectively failed.”
“Tesla’s done a lot of good things, in my calculation, but they did this inadequately,” family attorney Lynn Shumway told The Independent. “I think the technology is fantastic, but not the way Tesla is implementing it.”
According to Nathan’s complaint, his wife Jennifer Blaine, 46, was driving the the car to pick up their daughters Denali, 11, and Emily, 22, along with Emily’s husband Zachary Leavitt, 24, to meet up with himself and one of their surviving sons, Bronco, for a mountain backpacking trip. After stopping at Idaho Falls, the four members hit the road again and headed east on Idaho State Highway 33.
Later that night, just before 10 PM, the Model X suddenly swerved into the oncoming lane while driving through a “gentle southward curve,” the complaint said. The Tesla slammed into an oncoming semi truck hauling a load weighing 90,000 pounds. The front end was “crushed rearward,” the complaint said, “crushing all of the occupants.” All four family members, and their dog Peaches, died at the scene.
Autosteer was at fault for the accident, the suit alleges. Though it’s not as autonomous as Autopilot — and though it’s unclear if Autopilot was engaged at the time of the crash — the system should have kept the car in the lane as advertised.
“Disengagement of Autopilot should not reduce the effectiveness of safety features the vehicle is equipped with,” the suit says.
Most people, and probably even most Tesla owners, would probably have to consult a manual to explain the differences between Autosteer, Autopilot, and Full Self-Driving, all of which have names suggesting a high level of automation. Musk, who has promised every year for the past decade that completely autonomous driving is right around the corner, has often conflated their capabilities while making grand boasts about his driving tech, including frequently repeating the claim that Teslas can “drive themselves.”
That’s despite the fact that, technically and in practice, Teslas decidedly do not drive themselves, not even while using Full Self-Driving mode. On a scale of one through five, its driving software is only considered Level 2 based on a widely used standard set by the Society of Automotive Engineers, meaning the cars require constant human supervision. Waymo robotaxis, for comparison, are considered Level 4, needing no supervision as long as the car is limited to certain locations.
Musk’s spurious claims, and Tesla’s dubious naming schemes, have landed it in hot water with regulators. The National Transportation Safety Board skewered FSD’s branding as “misleading,” and the California DMV sued the automaker for false advertising for the same reason. The suit suggests that the Blaines are a victim of Musk and Tesla’s arguably deceptive marketing.
Jennifer and Nathan Blaine, it says, were “just two members of the public exposed to Tesla’s long-term advertising campaign designed to persuade the public that its vehicles were capable of driving themselves,” per The Independent.
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