Tesla settles another lawsuit over Autopilot crash (electrek.co)

Tesla quietly settled James Tran v. Tesla, a lawsuit over a November 15, 2020 crash in which a 2020 Model Y operating on Autopilot struck a stationary Harris County constable vehicle on I‑10 in Texas. Filed in Harris County, the suit alleged Autopilot “failed to detect” emergency vehicles with flashing lights and lacked adequate warnings; Tesla repeatedly blamed the driver, even alleging intoxication and drowsing. Days before a scheduled November 11, 2025 trial the parties filed a notice of settlement. This is at least Tesla’s fourth known post‑trial settlement since a jury in August assigned Tesla one‑third of the blame in the first case to go to trial and awarded plaintiffs $243 million. Terms were not disclosed. For the AI/ML and autonomous‑driving community this underscores rising regulatory, legal, and technical scrutiny of ADAS/FSD systems. NHTSA found multiple incidents (11 crashes, 17 injuries, one death) where Autopilot hit emergency vehicles and concluded Tesla’s driver‑monitoring system (DMS) was inadequate, prompting a recall and a follow‑on probe of the recall fix. The pattern—failure to detect high‑contrast, flashing emergency lights and insufficient driver supervision—highlights systemic perception and human‑machine‑interface gaps in deployed models. With discovery from recent trials exposing internal data and design choices, manufacturers face growing incentives to settle rather than risk further disclosures, accelerating calls for stronger DMS, clearer capability limits, and tighter regulation of real‑world ADAS deployment.