Electric Car Blamed for Jumping Forward by Itself and Killing Five Year-Old as Driver Cleared
An electric car has been blamed for jumping forward by itself and killing a five year-old as the driver is cleared by a court of causing the child’s death amid similar reports of malfunctioning vehicles. The Telegraph has the story.
Ashenafei Demissie, 53, was behind the wheel of a Volkswagen ID.4 when it suddenly accelerated forward, killing Fareed Amir and seriously injuring his own 12 year-old son, on November 25th 2022.
At a week-long Old Bailey trial, a crash expert for the prosecution said Demissie, a minicab driver, had inadvertently pressed the accelerator pedal. But the defendant said the car had moved forward by itself, possibly because of a software malfunction.
A jury deliberated for five hours before finding Demissie not guilty of causing death and serious injury by careless driving.
The jurors had not been told that, as a result of publicity about the death of Fareed, a dozen EV drivers got in touch with lawyers to report concerns about their cars, including some with the same model involved in Demissie’s case.
After leaving the dock, a tearful Demissie dropped to his knees and prayed before leaving court.
Previously, the court had heard that the minicab driver had picked up his younger son from school on the afternoon of November 25th. He stopped his leased Volkswagen ID.4 in the car park outside his flat in Borough, south London, and waited for a parking space to become free.
Fareed, who was the son of a neighbour, was nearby with Demissie’s older son when the vehicle suddenly moved forward, hitting them and crashing into five parked cars.
The child died from his injuries, and the defendant’s son suffered fractures to his lower limbs in the crash, which was witnessed by both the boys’ mothers.
In a police interview, the defendant said: “Suddenly the car jumped. I believe the car jumped because Fareed triggered the sensor. I had never had any mechanical problems with the car before.
“Just like a moment of madness. I don’t know what happened exactly. I tried to brake. It was too late. It was just like a moment, second, whoosh and jump.”
Worth reading in full.
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Another example of why we need juries. Undoubtedly a professional jusge sitting without a jury would be bound to accept the prosectution case.
From what I can see there is no simple way of knowing for certain what happened, the vehicle has been damaged in the crash so the testing done cannot replicate the actual conditions that pertained. Software can behave in very strange ways, it requires a lot of testing to ensure it does what the programmers intend and there’s no easy way of covering all potential inputs and sequence of inputs.
I don’t have any way of determining whether the driver did or did not cause this accident, perhaps the jury also felt the same way.
Indeed – in the absence of being able to prove anything, that’s the right result. It’s an interesting twist though isn’t it – would an ICE car driver get the same result?
I was under the impression that new cars like this record all inputs and driving adjustments automatically to something akin to a black box recorder on a plane and automatically sends this information back to the manufacturer for whatever reasons they need it
If that were the case, then surely they would call for the ‘black box’ evidence after every significant crash or speeding incident. I haven’t heard of that. I think that really would be a ‘spy in the cab’, which is perhaps too far … at the moment.
They do have limited on-board recording for some things, The term used in the vehicle trade is “Event Data Recorder (EDR)”. Here’s a bit about it: https://support.toyota.com/s/article/What-is-an-Event-Data-7677?language=en_US
Whether it automatically transmits it to the manufacturer probably varies. Then it depends on who or what has access to it, and perhaps how competent the relevant authorities are in analysing it – a cynic might observe.
Without due care springs to mind or bad workman blames the tools ?
When this story was first posted in the Jan 6th Round-Up, it was a Daily Mail article that supplied important details missing from all of today’s media reports about this Muslim driver being let off scot-free: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15436749/Child-five-died-electric-vehicle-accelerated-London-court.html And as I commented at the time, “If you read the article itself, experts found nothing wrong with the car at all. You will see that it was most likely a deliberate act on the part of the angry Muslim man sitting inside it, who had just called out to a neighbour boy to come to his car to get a sweet treat from the Muslim man, but when the boy’s mother refused to let her son approach the car, explaining to the Muslim man that she was trying to reduce his sugar intake, the Muslim man angrily stomped on the accelerator in a fit of rage, and mowed down the boy and even his own son, to show the women not to ever defy the will of a Muslim man.” Vehicular Jihadists will now be rushing to buy electric vehicles, so they can blame the vehicles instead of their usual “mental health” or “sudden blackout” excuses. I hasten to add that I… Read more »
That does put a rather different complexion on the incident, but presumably this evidence was not presented in court.
I don’t know what occurred exactly but the complexity of modern vehicles is undoubtedly capable of confusing the human who is supposedly ‘in control’.
Or maybe this evidence was presented and then disregarded by a jury, packed with Muslim men and Weedy Wet Liberals, eager to hand him the Ethnic Free Pass card…