Tesla disputes Autopilot narrative after fatal Texas crash

A fatal weekend crash in which a Tesla plowed through a brick home in Katy, Texas, killing a 76-year-old woman, set off alarms about the company’s driver assistance technology. By Monday afternoon, Tesla was fighting back against the framing. The crash occurred Friday night when a Tesla Model 3 driven by Michael Butler left the road and slammed into the home of Martha Avila, who was airlifted to a hospital and later pronounced dead.

Butler told Harris County sheriff’s deputies that the vehicle was on Autopilot at the time. That detail spread quickly, and by the weekend the story had become the centerpiece of long-running debate over Tesla’s Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (Supervised) driver assistance systems. But Tesla, a company that famously dismantled its PR department years ago, broke from its usual silence Monday to push back.

Ashok Elluswamy, vice president of AI software at Tesla and the first engineer hired for the Autopilot team back in 2014, took to X to offer a very different account of what the data showed. “In this case, the driver manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100% of the accel pedal in this residential area,” he wrote. “They reached a speed of 73 mph during the crash, and had the accelerator pressed even after the crash.” The implication was that whatever system may have been engaged, a human foot on the gas pedal at full throttle was responsible for what ensued, not the car.

Elon Musk amplified Elluswamy’s point on his own X account soon after. “This [allegation] makes no sense. FSD drives slowly through neighborhood streets and this was a high speed crash!” he wrote.

Tesla discontinued Autopilot, its basic driver-assistance system, in January, following a California ruling that the name was misleading to consumers. Full Self-Driving (Supervised), which requires a $99 monthly subscription, handles driver maneuvers including route navigation, steering, lane changes, and parking but still requires the driver to actively supervise the system at all times. Either way, federal regulators appear determined to come to their own conclusions.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration confirmed to TechCrunch on Monday it was opening a special crash investigation into the crash. The probe is reportedly the latest in more than 40 such probes the agency has launched into Tesla crashes believed to involve advanced driver-assistance systems in recent years. The Harris County Sheriff’s Office said it would present its findings to the local district attorney to determine whether criminal charges are warranted.

Whether the Autopilot system was truly active, overridden, or malfunctioning likely won’t be resolved until investigators finish combing through the vehicle’s data logs. Why this matters: This incident highlights the ongoing scrutiny of Tesla's driver assistance systems, particularly as the company faces increased regulatory attention. The dispute over Autopilot's role in the crash underscores the complexities of shared responsibility between drivers and autonomous systems.