A former NHTSA adviser said Tesla didn’t do enough to prevent misuse of Autopilot, and the victims’ families argue the company failed to warn drivers and ignored safety tools other automakers used.

Tesla faces legal proceedings in a Miami courtroom this week over a 2019 crash.

The case involves a Tesla Model S that veered off the road in Key Largo and slammed into a parked SUV. Two people standing nearby were hit—Naibel Benavides Leon was killed, and Dillon Angulo was seriously hurt. 

The driver, George McGee, had Autopilot turned on but had dropped his phone and was reaching for it when the crash happened, according to a Bloomberg report.

Tesla is being sued by the victims’ families, who say the crash should never have happened. 

They argue that the car’s Autopilot system failed to stop, even though onboard cameras clearly picked up road signs, stop lines, the parked SUV, and a person standing nearby. 

They also claim Tesla didn’t give drivers enough warning about the system’s limitations.

On Wednesday, Mary “Missy” Cummings, a former safety adviser at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, told jurors that Tesla didn’t do enough to stop drivers from putting too much trust in autopilot.

She said important safety warnings were buried in the owner’s manual, and that Tesla skipped using a common safety feature known as geo-fencing—something other automakers had already started using. 

When asked why Tesla didn’t include it back then, she said, “I believe they were using that as a way to sell more cars.”

Cummings also said the driver in this crash, like many Tesla owners, seemed to believe the car would take over and handle things on its own. 

“The car is doing a good job of driving,” she said, describing the mindset. “So I’m going to reach down and pick [the phone] up because my copilot is driving.”

Tesla, for its part, says McGee was at fault. According to the company, he was pressing the accelerator during the crash, which overrode the system. The company also argued that no driver-assistance tech available in 2019 would have prevented the accident.

Cummings pushed back on Tesla’s public claim that Autopilot had the best driver warnings in the industry. “I saw no evidence that would back up this claim,” she told the court.

The trial is expected to last about three weeks.

On Stocktwits, retail sentiment for Tesla was ‘neutral’ amid ‘low’ message volume.

Tesla’s stock has declined 15.2% so far in 2025.

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