A driver in Britain was cleared this week over the death of a five-year-old boy, after he claimed that his electric car “jumped forward”.
The Times is among outlets who report that Ashenafei Demissie was found not guilty of careless driving causing the death of Fareed Amir, aged five, in 2022.
During the “horrific” accident, the driver’s own son, Raphael, aged 12, also suffered serious leg injuries leaving him permanently disabled.
Over the course of the week-long trial, it emerged that Mr Demissie had stopped his Volkswagen ID 4 in the car park of his London home for around ten minutes when it suddenly accelerated into the boys.
A jury at the Old Bailey found the driver not guilty on two charges, delivering a unanimous verdict after five hours of deliberations. Whilst the judge did not allow evidence from other drivers of the same car model, the UK media is now able to report on Volkswagen facing a lawsuit in the United States over alleged acceleration faults with the car.
The Volkswagen ID 4 is the manufacturer’s first all-electric SUV, launched globally in late 2020 and early 2021. VW boasted that the car offers EV technology like a large touchscreen, voice control, and available all-wheel drive, becoming a “core model” in the car company’s push towards electric.
The model targeted middle-class families, with a starting price tag of £37,800 including a government grant to boost electric-vehicle sales.
However, the 2021-2025 model year Volkswagen ID 4 has been pushed into the spotlight for the wrong reasons, and is now facing a class-action lawsuit in the US over the ID.4’s touch-sensitive steering wheel buttons, which owners have claimed are overly sensitive and cause unintended acceleration, leading to crashes, property damage, and injuries.
A 2022 review of the model in The Times described the the VW ID 4 GTX as “an infuriating car” due to complications in controlling features inside the vehicle.
In the lawsuit, plaintiffs have argued that the German company was aware of the defect but failed to fix it, despite acknowledging the issue and promising physical buttons on a newer model.
VW is accused of failing to disclose a “key defect” in the car’s “overly touch-sensitive capacitive steering wheels, [which] results in sudden and unintended acceleration while owners are driving.”
Following a report on the British tragedy by the Times, a number of drivers came forward to say they had experienced similar problems with the car. At judge at the Demissie trial ruled that the defence could not call evidence from four of “many” drivers who came forward with issues.
The US lawyers are now seeking details of Demissie’s case, the Times reports. VW, which was not involved in the Old Bailey case and has asked for the US civil case to be dismissed without a trial, was contacted for comment by the newspaper.
The young victim of the accident, Fareed Amir, was remembered as a “wonderful” and “intelligent” boy who was popular at school and loved by many children and parents.
A fundraiser launched after his death poignantly read: “He recently started to make huge progress in terms of development with speech and social skills. Mum and Dad were very proud of him.
“It was beautiful seeing him flourish and it showed amongst his teachers, friends and parents who have seen Fareed become a happy boy with a constant smile on his face. The school ain’t the same without him. The atmosphere has totally changed. He was our little light. He is truly missed.”
Demissie said he had stopped the Volkswagen, which had been leased, in the car park outside his South London flat, waiting for a parking space to become free.
His son and Fareed were playing nearby and Demissie had offered Fareed a lollipop before the car suddenly moved forward, hitting both boys and crashing into five parked cars. It stopped after crashing into the cars.
During the trial, 52-year-old father of three, Demissie, said that he had pressed the “P” button for the parking brake and had taken his foot off the pedals when the car jumped forward without warning.
He told the trial he believed that the acceleration had been caused by young Fareed playing with a sensor at the front of the car.
Demissie told the trial at the Old Bailey: “I tried to brake. It was like too late. It was just like a moment — second — whoosh and jump. It was not a normal drive, it was like the car jumped. I tried to steer but I don’t know what happened.”
A crash expert for the prosecution said the crash was down to Demissie inadvertently pressing the accelerator pedal. Yet, Demissie insisted the car had moved forward by itself, possibly because of a software malfunction.
The court heard that the car’s event data recorder did not store details of the incident because it was full and the incident may not have met the threshold for overwriting existing reports.
Mark Still, a Metropolitan Police forensic collision and automotive investigator, who produced a 30-page report on the crash, told the court that he was unable to find any defects that could have contributed to the collision or made the car accelerate without driver input.
“Without any evidence of a fault I could not get the vehicle to move, apart from putting my foot on the accelerator. The vehicle could not be set to drive without the input of the driver and the brakes would bring the car to a stop if applied,” said Still.
US LAWSUIT
The US class action, filed in November last year, claimed that drivers had been “involved in catastrophic crashes because of the defect, leaving them terrified and hesitant to drive their [cars]”.
Nine drivers are named in the class action, each of whom claim they have experienced sudden surges in acceleration, which the lawsuit blames on an “adaptive cruise-control system”.
It claims drivers “have been left with a vehicle that [can] without warning suddenly accelerate, at uncontrollable speeds, failing to trigger the emergency braking safety systems, resulting in an extreme safety risk to the owner, the vehicle, innocent bystanders and surrounding property”.
A driver in Florida claims in the suit that in June 2024, they had stopped at a junction when the car “without warning, accelerated at full throttle”.
The driver claimed: “Although my foot was on the brake, and I was braking as hard as I could, the car continued to lunge forward.”