What just happened? Tesla is no stranger to being sued, but this new case is a little different. The automaker is facing a $1 million lawsuit from an angry Cybertruck owner who says the vehicle tried to drive off an overpass while in Full Self-Driving (FSD) mode. She also claims that Tesla was negligent in its hiring and retaining of Elon Musk as CEO.
According to a court filing at Harris County District Court, plaintiff Justine Saint Amour bought a Cybertruck with the FSD package from a Florida dealership in February 2025.
As reported by Electrek, Saint Amour was driving the Cybertruck on the 69 Eastex Freeway in Houston with FSD engaged on August 18. The vehicle should have followed a right curve as it approached a Y-shaped overpass split near 256 Eastex Park and Ride. Instead, it attempted to drive straight ahead, directly into a concrete barrier at the edge of the overpass with the freeway below.
While Saint Amour disengaged FSD and grabbed the wheel, it was too late to avoid colliding with the obstacle.
We've seen plenty of Autopilot-related lawsuits filed against Tesla in the past, but this one has several allegations aimed specifically at Musk, including the claim that allowing him to participate in product design decisions was negligent.
Part of the suit alleges that Tesla engineers recommended incorporating radar and LiDAR sensors – used by self-driving competitors such as Waymo – into its vehicles to improve the safety of its self-driving system, but Musk rejected this in favor of using only cameras. Tesla started phasing out radar and ultrasonic sensors in its vehicles in 2021, transitioning entirely to a camera-only system. Allowing the CEO to override engineers shows negligence, Saint Amour claims.
Musk is described in the petition as "an aggressive and irresponsible salesman, who has a long history of making dangerous design choices, and over-promising the features of his products."
"The promotion of products, for capabilities they do not have, is the reason for this incident, and many others," the suit continued.
Last week, a judge upheld the $243 million jury verdict in a case involving a fatal 2019 Florida crash in which Autopilot was engaged. Lawyers for the plaintiffs claimed that Musk and Tesla made false statements to customers, shareholders, and the public about the safety capabilities of Autopilot, thereby increasing drivers' reliance on the system.
Tesla stopped using the term Autopilot in California last month rather than being subject to a 30-day suspension by the California DMV. The automaker has also changed the name of its Full Self-Driving feature to Full Self-Driving (supervised).
In 2024, a report from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) linked Tesla's Autopilot systems to nearly 1,000 crashes from the last few years, over two dozen of them fatal.