Tesla retracts Autopilot narrative after fatal Texas crash

A fatal crash over the weekend, in which a Tesla crashed into a brick home in Katy, Texas, killing a 76-year-old woman, raised concern about the company’s self-driving technology, but by Monday afternoon, Tesla was fighting that framework.

The accident occurred Friday night when a Tesla Model 3 driven by Michael Butler left the road and Swipe at home Martha Avila, who was airlifted to the hospital and later pronounced dead. Butler told Harris County sheriff’s deputies the vehicle was on Autopilot at the time. These details spread quickly, and by the end of the week the story had become the center of a long-running debate over Tesla’s Autopilot and full self-driving features.

But Tesla, a company that has famously dismantled its public relations department for years and often responds to press inquiries with poop emojis, broke its usual silence on Monday to respond.

Ashok Elswami, Tesla’s Autopilot program manager and the first engineer hired for the Autopilot team in 2014, I took to X To provide a very different account than the data showed. “In this case, the driver manually overridden self-driving by depressing the accelerator pedal to 100% of the accelerator in this residential area,” he wrote. “They reached speeds of 73 mph during the accident, and the accelerator was depressed even after the accident.”

The point is that whatever system was triggered, the human foot pressing the accelerator at full speed was responsible for what happened, not the car.

Elon Musk Amplify the point On his X account shortly after. “This (claim) makes no sense. FSD is driving slowly through the neighborhood streets and this was a high speed crash!” books.

Unsurprisingly, federal regulators are intent on reaching their own conclusions. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced Monday that it has opened a special investigation into the crash. It is said to be the latest in More than 40 such investigations The agency has begun investigating Tesla crashes believed to involve advanced driver assistance systems in recent years.

The Harris County Sheriff’s Office said it will present its findings to the local district attorney to determine if criminal charges are warranted.

Whether the Autopilot system is actually active, overridden, or faulty likely won’t be resolved until investigators finish combing the vehicle’s data records.