The sixty-year-old taxi driver has been under judicial supervision for three years for involuntary manslaughter and involuntary injuries. On December 11, 2021 around 8 p.m., he got into his car, a Tesla Model 3, with his partner and his two daughters-in-law. They go to a restaurant in the 13th arrondissement of Paris. Avenue d’Ivry, the car stops at the red light. The driver who is driving in automatic (and not autonomous) mode restarts, but the Tesla seems out of control. “ I pump with one foot on the brake but it doesn’t work », he will tell Le Parisien. The vehicle gains speed until it reaches 142km/h. The sixty-year-old then pulls over onto the cycle path to do less damage…but he hits a cyclist who dies as a result of the impact. He continued his course for a few hundred meters, injuring around twenty people, some seriously, before crashing into a fire van.
“Incompatible” statements
The driver claims that the accident was due to a technical fault in the car, which continued to accelerate despite the attempt to brake. The sixty-year-old filed a complaint against Tesla, leading to the opening of an investigation. He was indicted. While awaiting the results, the G7 company to which the driver was attached has decided to discontinue the Model 3s in its fleet.
Expertise from the Criminal Research Institute of the National Gendarmerie was quickly carried out on the vehicle, which did not present any mechanical anomalies. Worse, the results overwhelm the driver by specifying that “no brake application was detected during the accident”. Thus, the statements of the respondent are “ incompatible with regard to pressing the brakes and pressing the accelerator with the data reported by the Tesla vehicle “. Conclusions which do not shock the victims’ lawyers. “ We are used to these files and we know that technical errors are extremely rare. In almost 100% of cases, it is human error. », Indicates Me Grégory Guyard. But for the taxi driver and his lawyer Me Sarah Saldmann, “this expertise is terse”. They therefore request a second opinion.
