Tesla has settled a wrongful death lawsuit stemming from the first known pedestrian fatality involving its Full Self-Driving technology. The crash happened in Arizona in 2023 and killed 71-year-old Johna Story.
Story had stepped out of her own car to direct traffic around a separate collision caused by sun glare. She was then struck and killed by a Tesla Model Y that was operating in Full Self-Driving mode at the time. The family sued Tesla later that year, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched a federal investigation into how FSD handles poor-visibility conditions.
Terms of the settlement haven’t been disclosed. The case is notable because it’s the first fatality directly attributed to Full Self-Driving — most prior incidents involving Tesla’s driver assistance features concerned the older Autopilot system.
Tesla has since rebranded the feature to “Full Self-Driving (Supervised),” a nod to the ongoing debate about how much autonomy the system actually provides. The company has also settled other cases involving Autopilot-related deaths, including one involving an Apple engineer in a Model X.
Meanwhile, Tesla is facing a fresh lawsuit from the family of a woman killed in Texas last month in a crash where the driver was allegedly using an automated driving assistance system. The legal scrutiny around these features isn’t letting up — and neither are the crashes.
