Tesla in Trouble Again: Injuries & Accidents Due to Sudden Unintended Acceleration
In late January, Tesla was sued by eight different vehicle owners who experienced injuries and damages due to their Tesla Models 3. S, and X vehicles suddenly accelerating for no reason. The lawsuit comes after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened a review into a petition calling for an investigation into 500,000 Tesla cars that allegedly experienced acceleration incidents. Several of these incidents involved the vehicles lurching forward completely on their own, one of which was even locked at the time, and accelerated forward into a parked car; others said that the cars moved into a chain link fence near a school when they tried to pull into a parking lot, or closed garage doors.
In fact, a number of these complaints involved dramatic, frightening incidents. One driver experienced two sudden acceleration incidents in three months, with the uncontrolled acceleration resulting in cracked ribs and almost $20,000 in property damages.
Class Action Lawsuit
Tesla has responded that the issue could be linked to the vehicles having two independent position sensors and defaulting to cut off motor torque if there is any error, and maintains that their vehicles are built to override the accelerator pedal input and stop the car. However, the company also just reportedly resolved a class action lawsuit related to this same issue with the Model S and X vehicles. According to this lawsuit, reports of sudden unintended acceleration in the Tesla cars are 71 times higher than historical rates for other cars and:
- These vehicles were leased or sold with defects
- Tesla knew about the defects but did not disclose them
- Tesla misrepresented the safety of their vehicles
- These misrepresentations were likely to deceive a reasonable person
- Tesla breached its express warranties regarding the quality and safety of the vehicles
- Tesla also breached the implied warranty of merchantability because its vehicles were not fit for their ordinary purpose due to the acceleration defect
Yet, despite its knowledge of these problems, the company has also failed to address or even acknowledge the problem, which leaves tens of thousands of Tesla owners at risk of their vehicles suddenly accelerating out of control.
This same issue also plagued Toyota Motor Company, which was sued by hundreds of injured parties for sudden acceleration events in their vehicles, and paid hundreds of millions in settlement funds to victims and owners and more than $1.2 billion to the government in connection with the claim that there was an electrical defect causing the issue.
If You Have Been Injured, Contact Our Texas Personal Injury Attorneys
If you or a loved one has been injured in an accident, contact the Houston auto accident attorneys at The West Law Office today to find out how we can help you obtain justice.
Resources:
bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-13/tesla-resolves-most-of-lawsuit-that-alleges-sudden-acceleration
consumerreports.org/hybrids-evs/nhtsa-reviewing-tesla-sudden-unintended-acceleration-claims/
finance.yahoo.com/news/teslas-tsla-unintended-acceleration-problem-195407131.html
foxbusiness.com/technology/tesla-new-lawsuit-acceleration
