New York State Law
A major Tesla Autopilot verdict divided responsibility between the driver and the automaker. As fully autonomous vehicles become more common, determining liability after a crash could become far more complicated.
In August 2025, a federal jury in Miami returned a verdict against Tesla arising from a fatal accident involving a Tesla operating on Autopilot. The resulting judgment against Tesla was approximately $242.6 million, including $200 million in punitive damages.
The size of the verdict certainly got my attention. But as a Long Island car accident attorney, what interests me even more is how the jury decided responsibility for the accident.
The jury did not simply blame the driver. It did not simply blame Tesla either.
It blamed both.
The human driver was found 67% responsible, while Tesla was found 33% responsible.
“I believe that allocation provides an important glimpse into what car accident litigation may look like as vehicles assume more of the responsibilities that historically belonged to human drivers.”
Steven Palermo
And we may be approaching that future much faster than many people realize.
The accident occurred in Florida in April 2019.
George McGee was driving a Tesla Model S with Tesla’s Autopilot system engaged. As McGee approached a T-intersection, he dropped his cellphone and looked down to retrieve it.
The Tesla continued through the intersection and crashed into a Chevrolet Tahoe. Twenty-year-old Naibel Benavides Leon was killed, and her boyfriend, Dillon Angulo, was seriously injured.
There was little question that McGee bore substantial responsibility for what happened. He was distracted and was supposed to remain attentive while using Autopilot.
But the victims argued that McGee’s negligence did not necessarily absolve Tesla of responsibility.
They pursued claims against Tesla based upon theories that included defective design and failure to warn. Among other things, they challenged limitations in the Autopilot system and the safeguards Tesla used to ensure drivers properly supervised it.
In August 2025, the jury found Tesla liable and allocated 33% of the responsibility to the company.
The jury awarded $129 million in compensatory damages and another $200 million in punitive damages against Tesla. After application of the jury’s allocation of responsibility, the federal court entered a judgment against Tesla of $242.57 million.
Tesla challenged the verdict after trial. In February 2026, the federal district court rejected Tesla’s request for judgment as a matter of law or a new trial. Tesla has appealed, so the judgment should not be considered finally resolved.
You can read the federal court’s February 2026 decision addressing Tesla’s post-trial challenges here.
There is an important distinction that can easily get lost when discussing this case.
The Tesla involved in the 2019 accident was not a fully autonomous vehicle.
Tesla’s Autopilot was a Level 2 driver-assistance system. It could perform significant driving functions, including steering, accelerating and braking, but the human driver was still responsible for supervising the vehicle.
McGee was still the driver.
He was supposed to watch the road, remain attentive and be prepared to intervene.
That makes the Miami verdict particularly interesting. This was not a case involving a driverless robotaxi. It arose during what I consider the transitional period between traditional automobiles and truly autonomous vehicles.
The human and the technology were both participating in the driving task.
The jury ultimately found responsibility on both sides.
A lot.
When this accident occurred in 2019, the idea of regularly seeing automobiles traveling on public roads without anyone behind the wheel still seemed futuristic to most people.
Seven years later, that future is arriving.
Level 4 autonomous vehicles can perform the entire driving task within their approved operating environments without a human driver continuously supervising them.
That is fundamentally different from the Tesla Autopilot system involved in the Miami accident.
The distinction can be thought of this way:
| Type | Who’s driving |
|---|---|
| Traditional automobile | The person drives the car. |
| Level 2 driver assistance | The person drives with substantial assistance from the car. |
| Level 4 autonomous vehicle | The car drives itself within the conditions and areas in which its automated system is designed to operate. |
We have moved remarkably quickly from the first category toward the third.
Florida was already ahead of many states when the Tesla accident occurred.
In fact, only months after the April 2019 accident, a major change to Florida’s autonomous-vehicle law took effect.
Effective July 1, 2019, Florida expressly authorized fully autonomous vehicles to operate without a human operator physically present in the vehicle. Florida law also provided that when an automated driving system is engaged, the system itself can be deemed the operator of the vehicle.
The Florida Senate’s summary of the 2019 autonomous-vehicle legislation shows just how early Florida began preparing its motor vehicle laws for automobiles without human drivers.
That concept would have sounded extraordinary not long ago.
Today, it is becoming reality.
New York has proceeded much more slowly.
New York began allowing approved autonomous-vehicle testing and demonstrations on public roads in 2017. But the state’s existing testing framework generally requires a licensed human to remain in the driver’s seat and be prepared to take control.
In other words, New York is not presently operating under the same broad legal framework that Florida adopted for fully driverless vehicles.
That may eventually change.
Legislation currently pending in Albany would create a legal framework permitting fully autonomous vehicles to operate on New York public roads without a human driver when specified requirements are satisfied.
For example, New York Senate Bill S344B and its Assembly counterpart, A4901B, propose allowing fully autonomous vehicles without a human driver, subject to requirements involving registration, insurance, the automated driving system and other safeguards.
Anyone interested in seeing where New York may be heading can read the current New York Senate autonomous-vehicle legislation.
The bills have not become law as of this writing. But their existence tells us that New York lawmakers are already confronting a question that once seemed theoretical.
What happens when the automobile no longer needs a driver?
This is where autonomous vehicles become particularly interesting to me as a personal injury attorney.
For generations, car accident litigation has primarily focused on human behavior.
When two vehicles collide at an intersection, I want to know what each driver did.
Those questions are not going away anytime soon. If you are injured in a traditional collision, determining what the drivers did remains central to a Long Island car accident claim.
But autonomous vehicles introduce an entirely different category of questions.
What happens when there is nobody behind the steering wheel?
If a fully autonomous vehicle runs a red light and strikes another vehicle, asking whether the driver was paying attention no longer makes sense.
Instead, I may want to know:
Those are very different questions from the ones attorneys traditionally ask after a car accident.
I recently wrote about how black box data and other information stored by modern vehicles are changing Long Island car accident cases.
Autonomous vehicles take that concept much further.
Modern vehicles can potentially generate enormous amounts of information concerning what happened immediately before a collision.
Depending upon the vehicle and system involved, evidence could potentially include event data, cameras, sensor information, GPS data, steering commands, braking commands, driver warnings, driver-monitoring information, software versions and system logs.
In a truly autonomous vehicle, this evidence may become even more important because there may be no human driver to testify about what happened.
The question may no longer be just, “What did the driver see?”
It may be:
What did the car see, and what did it do about it?
For attorneys handling these cases, preserving that information quickly could become critical.
The Miami Tesla verdict also illustrates another important point.
The existence of driver error does not necessarily mean that everyone else is free from responsibility.
The Miami jury found the human driver primarily responsible for the accident, but it also imposed responsibility on Tesla.
That concept could become increasingly important as vehicles become more automated.
Depending upon the circumstances, a future Long Island self-driving car accident could potentially require investigating the responsibility of a driver, vehicle owner, automobile manufacturer, autonomous-driving-system developer, fleet operator, component manufacturer, maintenance provider or another entity involved with the vehicle or its technology.
The responsible parties will depend entirely upon what caused the accident.
Free Consultation
As vehicles become more automated, a crash can involve the driver, the owner, the manufacturer, the system developer, a fleet operator, and more. Identifying every responsible party takes a thorough investigation. If you were seriously injured, Palermo Law can help. Contact us today for a free consultation, and there’s no fee unless we recover for you.
Autonomous vehicles also present important questions for pedestrians.
A human driver approaching a pedestrian may process countless visual clues almost instinctively. Is the pedestrian looking toward traffic? Are they about to step off the curb? Is a child behaving unpredictably? Is someone partially hidden by a parked vehicle?
Autonomous systems must identify and react appropriately to these situations through cameras, sensors, software and other technology.
When a pedestrian is seriously injured, determining exactly what the autonomous system detected and how it responded may therefore become critical.
These questions could become increasingly important in future Long Island pedestrian accident cases, particularly in busy downtown areas and other places where vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists constantly interact.
The most significant autonomous-vehicle cases are likely to involve catastrophic injuries and deaths.
These cases could also become considerably more expensive and technically complicated to litigate than traditional automobile cases.
A serious Long Island catastrophic injury case involving autonomous technology may require accident reconstruction experts, engineers, software specialists, human-factors experts and extensive electronic discovery.
It may also require attorneys to move quickly to preserve evidence before information is overwritten, changed or lost.
That is another lesson I take from the evolution of modern automobiles. The investigation of a serious accident increasingly begins with preserving electronic evidence, not simply taking photographs and interviewing witnesses.
Nobody knows exactly how quickly fully autonomous vehicles will become commonplace on Long Island.
New York’s Legislature is still debating the rules under which vehicles without human drivers should be permitted on our roads.
But technological development is moving quickly.
The Miami accident occurred in 2019, when the Tesla still required an attentive human driver.
Six years later, a jury was asked to decide how responsibility for that accident should be divided between the human driver and the company responsible for the technology assisting him.
The jury’s answer was 67% to the driver and 33% to Tesla.
The next generation of cases could be much more complicated.
Eventually, a New York jury may confront an accident in which there was no human driver at all.
When that happens, the traditional question of who was driving the car may have a surprising answer:
No one was.
The more important question will be who, or what, was responsible for the decisions the vehicle made.
That is why I believe the Miami Tesla verdict is more than simply a large personal injury verdict. It may be an early preview of how automobile accident litigation will change as control of the vehicle gradually shifts from people to computers.
And if fully autonomous vehicles eventually become commonplace on Long Island, our laws, our courts and the attorneys investigating these accidents will have to change with them.
New York currently permits approved testing and demonstrations of autonomous vehicles, but its existing testing framework generally requires a licensed human driver to remain in the driver's seat and be prepared to take control. Proposed legislation would expand New York law to permit fully autonomous vehicles without human drivers, but that legislation has not yet become law.
Potentially. Whether an autonomous-vehicle manufacturer or technology company can be held liable depends on what caused the accident and the evidence available. A claim could potentially involve product liability, defective technology, inadequate warnings or other theories in addition to traditional negligence claims against a human driver or vehicle owner.
Responsibility depends upon why the collision occurred. Potentially responsible parties could include a human driver, vehicle owner, manufacturer, autonomous-driving-system developer, fleet operator, component manufacturer or maintenance provider. Determining liability may require examining both traditional accident evidence and electronic information generated by the vehicle and its autonomous-driving system.
The available data depends upon the vehicle and system. Potential evidence may include event data, speed, braking, steering inputs, cameras, sensor information, GPS information, system warnings, driver-monitoring information, software versions and automated-driving-system logs. Preserving this electronic evidence quickly may be extremely important following a serious autonomous-vehicle accident.
A fully autonomous vehicle presents different liability questions because there may be no negligent human driver behind the wheel. An investigation may instead focus on the vehicle manufacturer, autonomous-driving technology, fleet operator, maintenance history, sensors, software and other entities or systems responsible for the vehicle's operation when the collision occurred.
No. The Autopilot system involved in the 2019 Miami accident was a Level 2 driver-assistance system. The human driver remained responsible for supervising the vehicle and being prepared to intervene. That is fundamentally different from a Level 4 autonomous vehicle designed to perform the complete driving task within its approved operating conditions.
A Miami federal jury found Tesla partly responsible for a fatal 2019 crash involving a Model S using Autopilot. The jury allocated 67% of the responsibility to the human driver and 33% to Tesla. The resulting judgment against Tesla was approximately $242.6 million, including $200 million in punitive damages. Tesla has appealed.
Yes, if New York law changes. Pending legislation proposes a framework allowing fully autonomous vehicles to operate on public roads without human drivers if specified requirements are satisfied. The legislation has not become law, but it demonstrates that New York is actively considering the transition from supervised testing to fully autonomous vehicle operation.
After obtaining necessary medical treatment and reporting the accident, identifying the vehicle and autonomous system involved can be extremely important. Electronic evidence may need to be preserved quickly. An attorney investigating the collision may seek vehicle data, video, system logs, software information, maintenance records and other evidence showing what the vehicle detected and did before impact.
Some may be. Traditional car accident cases primarily examine driver conduct and roadway conditions. Autonomous-vehicle litigation can add product design, software, sensors, electronic data and human-machine interaction. Serious cases may therefore require engineers, accident reconstruction experts, software specialists and other experts in addition to the evidence normally obtained following a motor vehicle collision.
The information provided in this blog is for general informational purposes only and reflects the opinions of the author. It is not legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Every case is different, and results depend on the specific facts and applicable law. You should not act or rely on any information in this blog without first seeking advice from a qualified attorney regarding your individual situation.
