• Tesla has avoided a trial by settling with Walter Huang’s family
  • The Apple employee died in 2018 when his Model X swerved off the road
  • Huang had Autopilot engaged but Tesla believed he was playing a game on his phone

Tesla’s legal team has performed an emergency braking maneuver to avoid a full-blown trial over a high-profile EV crash. The automaker reached a settlement with the family of the late Walter Huang only hours before the trial was due to start.

The Apple engineer was driving to work in March 2018 with Autopilot engaged when his Model X swerved off the highway and collided with a barrier in Mountain View, California. Huang was traveling at around 71 mph (114 kmh) in the seconds before the crash and died at the scene.

Related: Apple Engineer Killed In Tesla Model X Had Autopilot Concerns

While a National Transportation Safety Board investigation uncovered what it described as “limitations” with Tesla’s Autopilot autonomous tech, it also suggested that Huang was probably playing a game on his iPhone just before the accident, meaning he wasn’t paying attention to the road. Drivers using Autopilot are still required to be ready to take back control, Bloomberg reported.

Though investigators couldn’t be sure Huang was playing a game when the car lost control, the 38-year-old dad of two reportedly did regularly play games while commuting, and a game was the most-recently-used app on his phone at the time of the accident, The Verge says. Tesla wanted Apple to provide evidence that he was playing a game, but the tech company has resisted.

Tesla Settles Autopilot Crash Suit A Day Before Trial

The settlement terms have been agreed by both sides and not disclosed. They still have to be approved by a judge, but before that can happen the California Department of Transportation will get its chance to object. The CDT is also a defendant in the case, with Huang’s family accusing it of failing to fix the barrier following an earlier accident. 

Tesla’s choice to settle will come as a surprise to some given that the automaker has already come out victorious in two previous trials related to crashes, one of which was fatal. In both cases, the accidents were judged to be down to driver error and not the fault of Tesla’s autonomous systems.

But there are more cases scheduled for trial in the U.S. later this year and Tesla’s willingness to settle with Huang’s family will give hope to the parties bringing the upcoming suits.