PipeRoll - Agent Incident Registry ·
about ·
contribute ·
data ·
notes ·
constitution ·
seismograph ↗
Benavides v. Tesla: $243M verdict over fatal Autopilot crash, upheld post-trial
PIR-2026-0001PIR-2026-0001id: PIR-2026-0001title: Federal jury holds Tesla 33% liable for a fatal 2019 Autopilot crash; $242.57M against Tesla survives post-trial motionsdate_occurred: 2019-04-25 (crash, Key Largo FL)date_detected: immediate (fatal collision)date_disclosed: jury verdict 2025-08-01 (S.D. Fla., Miami); verdict upheld 2026-02-20 (Judge Beth Bloom); appellate review continuingstatus: corroborated (verdict and post-trial ruling on public record; dollar amount not final pending appeal)agent_description: Tesla Model S with Autopilot engaged - Level-2 driver-assist (lane keeping + traffic-aware cruise) marketed under branding the jury found overstated its capability; human driver remains the formal operator.operator_type: individual (driver) atop an enterprise-provided automation stackautonomy_level: human-on-the-loop (L2: automation steers/accelerates continuously, human nominally supervising)model_stack: Tesla Autopilot (2019-era hardware/software; exact version not public)harness: Tesla vehicle firmwarefailure_locus: agent-reasoning (primary - the design failures the jury priced: no enforcement of the operational design domain, no stop-sign response; contributing operator locus: distracted driver carried 67% of fault. Previously recorded as "shared" - the fault split lives here in prose, one primary token per v0.2)authority_scope: physical systems (vehicle control at speed on public roads)funds_at_risk_usd: unknown (bodily-injury liability; effectively unbounded per-incident)blast_radius: public (third parties outside the vehicle were the ones killed and injured)root_cause: plain-error (primary - no adversary; the automation continued at speed through an intersection it was not designed for); contributing operator-error (driver inattention; use outside the operational design domain that the design permitted)mechanism: Driver George McGee, with Autopilot engaged on a road outside its design domain, dropped his phone and looked away. The car went through the intersection at ~62 mph and struck a parked Chevrolet Tahoe, killing 22-year-old Naibel Benavides Leon and severely injuring Dillon Angulo. The Miami federal jury (2025-08-01) allocated 33% of fault to Tesla, resting on Tesla permitting Autopilot use outside its operational design domain and overstating its capability. Award against Tesla: $242.57M - $19.47M compensatory to the Benavides estate + $23.1M compensatory to Angulo (Tesla's 33% share of ~$129M total compensatory) + $200M punitive. On 2026-02-20 Judge Beth Bloom denied Tesla's post-trial motions, ruling the evidence "more than supports" the verdict.adversary_present: noexploitation_status: in-wild-malfunction (real crash, real deaths, no attacker - reclassified from in-wild-exploited, which implies an adversary; adversary_present is no)severity: catastrophic (one death, one severe permanent injury)direct_loss_usd: 242,570,000 judgment against Tesla - not final; appeal continuing as of Aug 2026indirect_loss_usd: unknown (litigation exposure across the wider Autopilot docket)downtime: n/adata_exposure: none (vehicle telemetry recovery was litigated at trial)detected_by: third-party (crash scene; liability established only through six years of litigation)time_to_detect: immediatetime_to_recover: n/a (fatal outcome; legal resolution still running seven years on)remediation: none specific to this crash disclosed by Teslastructural_fix: none on public record tied to this case (geofencing/ODD enforcement remained the central unadopted fix argued at trial)controls_that_worked: none identified - neither driver-monitoring nor ODD restriction prevented or mitigated the crashliability_holder: split by jury - Tesla 33% (design/marketing), driver 67%; punitive award falls on Tesla aloneprecedent_set: first major federal jury verdict against Tesla over Autopilot to survive post-trial motions; establishes that fault can be allocated to the automation's design even with a distracted human formally in controlsealed_material: no (trial record public)telemetry_grade: operator-logs (vehicle/fleet telemetry in Tesla's custody; availability and completeness of crash data were themselves contested at trial)sources:independence: multiple independent outlets reporting a public court ruling - strong. (All four URLs verified resolving, v0.2 pass 2026-08-15.)confidence: high on verdict, breakdown, and post-trial ruling; the loss figure is conservative-flagged as non-final (appellate review pending).All intake facts verified, with the damages breakdown sharpened: $242.57M = $19.47M (estate) + $23.1M (Angulo) compensatory + $200M punitive, matching the intake's "~$43M of ~$129M compensatory + $200M punitive." Boundary aspect (L2 driver assist, human formally in control) retained because the verdict itself maps liability onto the automation's design - the legal block is the point of the record.