Judge: Tesla driver with active Autopilot is not allowed to hold a phone
According to the law, a driver of a car with an Autopilot function or similar function remains the actual driver, and it is therefore prohibited to hold a smartphone while driving. The Leeuwarden Court of Appeal ruled that on appeal.
The Court agrees with the decision of the subdistrict court in November 2018. He rejected the appeal of a Tesla driver against the decision and thus upheld two fines that were imposed on him in October 2017. The Court’s judgment only mentions the fine of 10 October 2017, amounting to 230 euros. He was ordered to hold a smartphone while driving.
The Public Prosecution Service agrees with the subdistrict court and believes that despite the Autopilot of the Tesla Model X being switched on, the person behind the wheel should still be regarded as the driver of the vehicle. The Court follows this reading: “Turning on the Autopilot entails that the controls are used in this way, which influences the movement and direction of travel of the motor vehicle. Using such a system means that the person concerned must be regarded as the actual driver. .”
The Court of Appeal emphasizes that this is an absolute prohibition. According to the Court, it is therefore not up to the individual driver to determine, depending on the use of an Autopilot or comparable system, whether he behaves safely to such an extent that he can determine for himself whether the prohibition can be deviated from.
The driver believes that he should not be regarded as the actual driver when an Autopilot system is switched on, but the software. According to him, driving with an Autopilot has similarities with the role of a driving instructor, who according to the law is not the actual driver and can therefore hold a mobile phone.
He also believes that the use of a mobile phone in a self-driving vehicle does not affect road safety and he refers to studies by Tesla and the US government that show that the number of accidents due to the automatic steering of self-driving Teslas has decreased significantly. The driver states that driving with the Autopilot is six times safer than driving with hands on the wheel and that it is 140 times safer than a driver with a smartphone in hand. According to him, the latter happens very regularly in traffic and he calls it ‘tremendously dangerous’.