Tesla, in its upcoming trial over the fatal Autopilot , wants to prove that Apple engineer Wei “Walter” Huang was playing a game on his phone when Model X crashed.
Tesla is going to court next week over the role its Autopilot system played in a fatal accident in 2018 – and it wants Apple to testify in its defense.
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Tesla wants to prove that Apple engineer Wei “Walter” Huang was playing a video game on his phone when his Autopilot-enabled Model X crashed into a guardrail along US 101 in Mountain View, California, in 2018. And now, Huang’s family, which sued Tesla for wrongful death, claims that Tesla is secretly working with Apple to help with its defense.
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In a pretrial motion filed this week, lawyers representing the Huang family accused Apple of “participating in a secret discovery that assists Tesla in defending this case.
In its initial investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board found a “multiplayer world-building strategy video game” as the first app on Huang’s phone at the time of the accident. However, investigators were unable to determine whether he was actively playing when his Model X collided with the concrete barrier.
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Huang's family lawyers now argue that Tesla, with the help of Apple, is trying to overturn this at the last minute by submitting a statement from an Apple engineer, James Harding, stating that the company concluded that Huang was actively playing the game at the time of the accident.
Lawyers for the Huang family have sued Apple, seeking more information about Harding's statement. Last month, Apple filed a motion to quash its injunction, arguing that Huang's lawyers were seeking "a large volume of Apple's privileged material.
Source: theverge
