Tesla stops deadly self-driving crash lawsuit from trial as Canada bans Level 3 vehicle autonomy

Drivers in the Canadian province of British Columbia will not only be fined if they use the still rare Level 3 autonomous driving systems, but they can't even drive cars that have them as a feature.

Despite that Level 3 autonomous vehicles still require the driver to be alert and ready to override the system, they can take decisions to pass a slow vehicle on their own, for instance.

This is why the new Motor Vehicle Act in British Columbia has now banned any Level 3-5 autonomous driving systems on the province's roads unless explicitly authorized.

Tesla is smart enough to classify its free Autopilot and paid Full Self-Driving (Supervised) features as Level 2 systems to escape such regulatory scrutiny before the imminent FSD launch in Canada.

It is also smart enough to prevent the inner workings of those systems, and the data it has on them, from spilling out in the open for everyone to pick apart. Instead of allowing a deadly Autopilot crash lawsuit to reach trial stage, Tesla just settled for an undisclosed amount.

Previously, Tesla's argument in the case was that Apple's engineer Walter Huang, who died when his Model X slammed into a barrier while on Autopilot, was playing a video game on his phone. His relatives, who filed the lawsuit against Tesla, said that this can be disputed, so Tesla co-opted Apple to confirm that Huang was distracted with his iPhone. 

In its turn, a federal NTSB analysis reiterated Huang's fault. It, however, assigned equal blame to Tesla for overhyping the capabilities of its driver-assist system, and to the California highway authority that had failed to fix the barrier where Huang crashed, leaving it damaged from a previous accident.

In any case, the family countered, in 2018 when the deadly crash happened, there weren't nearly as many or as detailed warnings and classifications about the use of Tesla's driver-assist systems as there are now. 

Instead of going to trial on the matter, Tesla preferred to settle with the relatives and avoid opening statements and cross-examinations, which could serve as a precedent in other such trials, or for regulatory bodies that are investigating such incidents.

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