Next Autopilot trial to test Tesla's blame-the-driver defense

March 11 (Reuters) - Six weeks before the first fatal U.S. accident involving Tesla's Autopilot in 2016, the automaker's president Jon McNeill tried it out in a Model X and emailed feedback to automated-driving chief Sterling Anderson, cc’ing Elon Musk.

The system performed perfectly, McNeill wrote, with the smoothness of a human driver.

"I got so comfortable under Autopilot, that I ended up blowing by exits because I was immersed in emails or calls (I know, I know, not a recommended use)," he wrote in the email dated March 25 that year.

Now McNeill's email, which has not been previously reported, is being used in a new line of legal attack against Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab over Autopilot.

Plaintiffs' lawyers in a California wrongful-death lawsuit cited the message in a deposition as they asked a Tesla witness whether the company knew drivers would not watch the road when using its driver-assistance system, according to previously unreported transcripts reviewed by Reuters.

The Autopilot system can steer, accelerate and brake by itself on the open road but can't fully replace a human driver, especially in city driving. Tesla materials explaining the system warn that it doesn't make the car autonomous and requires a "fully attentive driver" who can "take over at any moment".

The case, set for trial in San Jose the week of March 18, involves a fatal March 2018 crash and follows two previous California trials over Autopilot that Tesla won by arguing the drivers involved had not heeded its instructions to maintain attention while using the system.

This time, lawyers in the San Jose case have testimony from Tesla witnesses indicating that, before the accident, the automaker never studied how quickly and effectively drivers could take control if Autopilot accidentally steers towards an obstacle, the deposition transcripts show.

One witness testified that Tesla waited until 2021 to add a system monitoring drivers' attentiveness with cameras - about three years after first considering it. The technology is designed to track a driver's movements and alert them if they fail to focus on the road ahead.

The case involves a highway accident near San Francisco that killed Apple engineer Walter Huang. Tesla contends Huang misused the system because he was playing a video game just before the accident.

Lawyers for Huang's family are raising questions about whether Tesla understood that drivers - like McNeill, its own president - likely wouldn't or couldn't use the system as directed, and what steps the automaker took to protect them.

Experts in autonomous-vehicle law say the case could pose the stiffest test to date of Tesla's insistence that Autopilot is safe - if drivers do their part.

Matthew Wansley, a Cardozo law school associate professor with experience in the automated-vehicle industry, said Tesla's knowledge of likely driver behavior could prove legally pivotal.

"If it was reasonably foreseeable to ...
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