However, while stopped at a light in south Carson City, Paxin had a still-unsolved medical incident and his car began to roll, drifting off the road and up and over a mild shrub-covered 20-degree slope, his lawyer said in opening arguments.
The Titan’s internal computers misjudged the speed at which the car’s angle was changing, thought it was rolling over, and deployed the airbags, his lawyer said.
Jones said Paxin maintained some consciousness during at least seven seconds of drifting off the road and was able to steer straight across a rocky ditch.
After 36 days in the first hospital, Paxin then did 34 days of rehab and then went back to a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs hospital, where he spent 500 days. He moved hospitals again and again, never recovering from being paralyzed and bedbound, his lawyer said, malnourished and being fed through a tube. He incurred $6.57 million in medical bills during that time and, because of severe bedsores, could not ever progress to a wheelchair. He was able to return home to Washington state for a couple of months and passed away a little over three years after the crash, on Dec. 21, 2020, from COVID-19-related pneumonia.
