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Home/AI Incident Database/Tesla Autopilot linked to hundreds of crashes and dozens of deaths, leading to a two-million-vehicle recall and a $243 million verdict

Tesla Autopilot linked to hundreds of crashes and dozens of deaths, leading to a two-million-vehicle recall and a $243 million verdict

From Joshua Brown's 2016 death to the 2025 Benavides verdict, Tesla's Autopilot has been the most litigated driver-assistance system, with regulators finding its driver-monitoring insufficient and juries assigning liability.

Severity: Highteslaautopilotnhtsarecall

At a glance

Organisation: Tesla
Industry: Automotive and mobility
Country or region: United States
Occurred: 7 May 2016
Disclosed: 12 Dec 2023
Type of harm: Physical injury or death, Medical and safety-critical error, Regulatory penalties and legal liability

All details 13

Kind of system: Autonomous vehicles
Severity: High
Confirmation: Established in court
Technique: Driver-assistance system permitting misuse and failing to detect crossing trucks and stationary emergency vehicles
Primary root cause: Missing human oversight
Scale: NHTSA linked Autopilot to 467 crashes and 13 deaths by April 2024; recall of 2.03 million vehicles; $243 million Benavides verdict (August 2025)
Outcome: Tesla issued an over-the-air recall in December 2023, faced a further NHTSA investigation into the fix and lost its first Autopilot wrongful-death jury trial in Florida in 2025; California's DMV pursued false-advertising claims.

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Tesla Autopilot linked to hundreds of crashes and dozens of deaths, leading to a two-million-vehicle recall and a $243 million verdict

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