Family sues Apple over FaceTime’s role in fatal car crash
The family claims that Apple failed to ‘lock out the ability of drivers to utilise the FaceTime application on the Apple iPhone while driving a motor vehicle’
By Tim Biggs
A family in the US is suing Apple after a man using the FaceTime app on his iPhone while driving collided with their car, killing their five-year-old daughter.
On Christmas eve, 2014, James and Bethany Modisette were driving on the highway in Texas with their two daughters when they were forced to stop their Camry ahead of a blockage caused by police activity.
Driving behind them, Garrett Wilhelm failed to stop and his SUV slammed into the car at 105km/h, tearing it apart and riding up over the top. Bethany and the older daughter, Isabella, were injured but managed to escape the car, while James and the younger daughter, Moriah, had to be extracted by rescue workers.
Moriah Modisette, who was strapped into a booster seat at the time of the crash, was flown to a nearby hospital but died.
Wilhelm - whose iPhone, the family allege, was still running FaceTime when the police recovered it after the crash - was charged with manslaughter in the case, but the Modisettes also hold Apple partly responsible.