Posted on 06/29/2025 8:33:55 AM PDT by ChicagoConservative27
A New Jersey man has filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk’s Tesla, alleging that the EV giant’s design defects led to a fatal crash on the Garden State Parkway that claimed the lives of his parents and teenage sister.
New York Daily News reports that Max Dryerman, a 19-year-old resident of New Jersey, is seeking damages from Tesla following a tragic accident on September 14, 2024, which resulted in the deaths of his 54-year-old parents and 17-year-old sister. The family was traveling in a 2024 Tesla Model S on the Garden State Parkway in Woodbridge when the vehicle veered off the road, striking a guardrail and a concrete bridge support.
According to the lawsuit filed last week in a Camden federal court, Dryerman claims that the Tesla’s “defective and unreasonably dangerous design” was responsible for the fatal crash. The car was equipped with advanced safety features, including forward collision warning, lane departure avoidance, and emergency lane departure, which the suit claims should have prevented the vehicle from leaving its lane and crashing.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Our Model Y is a wonder. The human factor needs to be determiined.
I think he has a case. In all of recorded history, something like this has never happened with any other brand of automobile.
Haven’t read the entirety of the article yet, but the question of what the driver may or may not have consumed, ingested, injected or imbibed before driving comes to mind.
Very droll!
“The driver of the Tesla, Romeo Lagman Yalung, had activated the vehicle’s autopilot feature, which he trusted based on Tesla’s claims that the software was “safer than a human driver.”
It makes little differences how many advanced safety features that a new car has... The “autopilot feature” was obviously not quite ready for prime time.
The claim appears to be that the Tesla should have prevented it happening in this instance. There is a question of how much reliance on safety features lead to negligence and poor driving.
Air bags do not save lives. Air bags provide no better margin of safety than seat belts alone. The argument for air bags is that they passive restrains. However empirical evidence does not show any safety benefit for similar vehicles with over those without.
Tesla safety features may encourage bad driving, which cancels whatever supposed increase in safety is available, much like radar assisted braking.
I recently carefully passed what I thought was a drunk driver. The driver was not drunk. She was attempting to eat a burger and talk on her cell phone and drive all at the same time
“Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (Supervised) are intended for use with a fully attentive driver, who has their hands on the wheel and is prepared to take over at any moment. While these features are designed to become more capable over time, the currently enabled features do not make the vehicle autonomous.”
Not saying women as a whole are stupid . . . but the one you described sure was.
“The biggest cause of rear end crashes are cell phones.”
That is why I don’t let my cell phone drive.
Agree. Discovery will be VERY interesting. Especially who is representing the plaintiff and if cell phone records show that SOMEBODY wasn’t “safe driving” the vehicle.
Heh. Pretty good. Thanks for the chuckle. :-)
I’ve heard physicians say the opposite though - when airbags became more common, they saw a decrease in the severity of injuries.
I agree that L3 driving assistance features can encourage the driver to pay less attention. The data is mixed, automatic emergency brake systems do reduce rear-end collisions.
In this instance, I think we’d need to understand the details better.
Reminds me of when I was in The Border Patrol in the 1950’s we saw a car driven off the road and the female driver covered with blood. Naw! Actually, the driver was eating a hotdog while driving-and putting catsup on it while driving. So it still happens.
“ The car was equipped with advanced safety features, including forward collision warning, lane departure avoidance, and emergency lane departure, which the suit claims should have prevented the vehicle from leaving its lane and crashing.”
The suit fails to include a brake pedal, which, when properly applied could prevent a lane departure and crash.
EC
I was driving down the interstate and saw a FEDex double trailer truck swerving across the two lanes of traffic. I followed for a while watching this truck frequently swerving. He got in one lane and I sped past him. The idiot was watching a movie or something on a device he was holding on the steering wheel. I called FedEx and gave them the trailer numbers and where he was located and headed towards. They told me they needed the truck cab number.
I should have called 911.
On the accident, which happened at 11:55 PM.
Struck a sign, then a guardrail, then a bridge support.
Did the guardrail fail?
How fast was the driver going?
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