ADVERTISEMENT

Family of Man Killed in Fatal 2016 Tesla Crash Defends Company

Family of Man Killed in Fatal 2016 Tesla Crash Defends Company

(Bloomberg) -- The family of a man killed last year in a fatal crash involving Tesla Inc.’s Autopilot system defended the electric-car manufacturer and said autonomous driving technology is saving lives.

“We heard numerous times that the car killed our son,” the family of Joshua Brown, who died in May 2016 when his Tesla Model S collided with a semi in Florida, said in a statement released by attorneys Monday. “That is simply not the case.”

The law firm Landskroner Grieco Merriman LLC released the statement a day before a National Transportation Safety Board hearing to determine the probable cause of the incident. Brown’s family said it isn’t feasible to expect new technology to be perfect and that the death has led Tesla to improve the safety of its autonomous features.

To contact the reporter on this story: Dana Hull in San Francisco at dhull12@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Craig Trudell at ctrudell1@bloomberg.net, Anne Riley Moffat