In December 2021, a car from the American manufacturer Tesla mowed down several people in the streets of the 13th arrondissement of Paris, causing the death of one person and injuring 21 others.
Accused of malfunction by the driver, the vehicle and the manufacturer are in the process of being cleared according to our colleagues at Parisian.
Expertise contradicts the driver’s version
The criminal research institute of the national gendarmerie has just issued a report in which no technical fault on the vehicle was noted, reports the daily. On the contrary, gendarmerie experts note a “discrepancy” between the driver’s hearings.
This 60-year-old taxi driver has assured since the accident that his Tesla Model 2 would have started to accelerate on its own and that the brake pedal would no longer respond. He has since filed a complaint against Elon Musk’s company and is still under investigation under judicial supervision.
According to this driver, on the day of the accident, when restarting after a red light, while he pressed the accelerator to leave, his car sped off on its own without him being able to stop it until it reached a speed of 142 km/h, mowing down the victim, 19-year-old Alexis, who died instantly, before crashing into a candelabra and then into a van.
The defense requests a second opinion
If the experts confirm the version of continuous acceleration, they have not detected any mechanical anomaly in terms of braking, nor digital: “No brake application is detected during the accident sequence”, point out the technicians cited by The Parisian. Data that would implicate the taxi driver.
His lawyer, Me Sarah Saldmann, denounces a “terse expertise” and ensures that he is requesting a second opinion.