In 2018, a Tesla Model S slammed into a wall at 116 miles an hour in Fort Lauderdale, killing its teenage driver. Months later, Elon Musk told the victim’s father that his company had erred in removing a speed limiter from the car, according to a lawyer. As Tesla’s first-ever negligence trial over a fatal crash began on Thursday, attorney Curtis Miner said Musk had made a “critical confession” while on the phone to James Riley. The Tesla chief, Miner alleged, told Riley that company technicians should have gotten parental permission before removing the limiter. “If Tesla had taken the most simplest steps to tell Jim and Jenny Riley what they’d done,” the accident might have been avoided, Miner said, according to Bloomberg News. “A speed limiter is not a safety device,” a lawyer for Tesla told the jury. “Is it all right if they crash at 85 mph instead of 116 mph?”
Read it at Bloomberg News
