During ongoing litigation in Miami, a vehicle accident reconstruction expert testified Thursday that Tesla Inc. deleted critical data from a 2019 Tesla Model S involved in a fatal crash in the Florida Keys. The expert’s testimony calls into question the integrity of evidence related to the automaker’s autopilot system, which Tesla is vigorously defending in court.
Alan Moore, a mechanical and forensic engineer at A.B. Moore Forensic Engineering, testified on the second day of his appearance that data from driver George McGee’s Tesla was “unlinked” or deleted following the April 25, 2019 crash. Moore emphasized the importance of preserving evidence in forensic investigations, stating, “In the forensic world, one thing we never want to do is change evidence. Here is evidence being changed.”
Moore further revealed that after the crash, Tesla added vision detection and forward radar object detection systems to the vehicle at a service center. Tesla has maintained that the deleted data was unrelated to the crash, but Moore challenged this assertion, noting he had never encountered data autodeletion before and found no references to autodelete in the vehicle’s extensive data logs.
The crash occurred when McGee, traveling 16 mph over the speed limit, ran a stop sign and collided with a parked vehicle, killing 22-year-old Naibel Benavides Leon and injuring her boyfriend Dillon Angulo. Benavides’ family and Angulo have filed suit against Tesla, alleging defects in the autopilot system contributed to the tragedy.
In court, Tesla’s attorneys argued that McGee’s distraction due to a dropped cellphone was solely responsible for the crash, but Moore clarified that determining distraction causes was beyond his investigative scope. “For me, all that matters is attentive or inattentive. Here we have an inattentive driver. It doesn’t matter why,” Moore stated.
Moore also criticized Tesla’s autopilot system for lacking safety features adopted by other automakers, such as driver monitoring cameras and geofencing to restrict autopilot use to appropriate road types.
The family seeks compensatory and punitive damages. The trial, Benavides v. Tesla Inc., case number 1:21-cv-21940, is underway in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida and is expected to continue for two more weeks.
