IT·Science News

US safety regulator probes fatal Tesla crash into a Texas home; Musk says FSD wasn’t to blame

The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened a special investigation on Monday 22 June into a fatal crash in Katy, Texas, in which a Tesla Model 3 left the road and struck a brick home on 19 June, IBTimes UK reports. A 76-year-old woman inside the house died of her injuries after being airlifted to hospital. The driver, who was injured, told investigators that a driver-assistance system was engaged.

Tesla rejected that account. Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s vice president of AI software, said vehicle data showed the driver overrode the system by pressing the accelerator fully to the floor, and that the car reached 73 mph, IBTimes UK says.

“Yes, this makes no sense. FSD drives slowly through neighborhood streets and this was a high speed crash!” — Elon Musk, on X, via IBTimes UK

How each outlet framed it

• RTTNews — the pattern: the probe joins more than thirty NHTSA investigations since 2016 into Tesla crashes where driver-assistance may have played a role, and Tesla renamed Autopilot earlier this year after California regulators said the name could mislead.
• IBTimes UK — the dispute: the driver’s account against Tesla’s data, and Musk’s public denial.
• TechCrunch — the investigators’ view, weeks later.

What happened next: in July, TechCrunch reported that the National Transportation Safety Board’s preliminary findings confirmed the driver “pressed the accelerator pedal to 100%”, overriding Full Self-Driving (Supervised), and that the car was going more than 70 mph on a residential road with a 30 mph limit.