Tesla pushes back on Autopilot narrative after fatal Texas crash
Quick Answer
Tesla is contesting claims regarding the Autopilot system's status during a fatal Texas crash, emphasizing that the investigation into the vehicle's data logs will clarify whether Autopilot was active, overridden, or malfunctioning.
Quick Take
Tesla is contesting claims regarding the Autopilot system's status during a fatal Texas crash, emphasizing that the investigation into the vehicle's data logs will clarify whether Autopilot was active, overridden, or malfunctioning. The outcome could significantly impact public perception and regulatory scrutiny of Tesla's autonomous driving technology.
Key Points
- Investigation into the crash will analyze vehicle data logs for clarity.
- Tesla's Autopilot system's status remains uncertain pending investigation.
- Public perception of Tesla's technology may shift based on findings.
- Regulatory scrutiny could increase depending on investigation outcomes.
📖 Reader Mode
~3 min readA fatal 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 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 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.
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Loizos has been reporting on Silicon Valley since the late ’90s, when she joined the original Red Herring magazine. Previously the Silicon Valley Editor of TechCrunch, she was named Editor in Chief and General Manager of TechCrunch in September 2023. She’s also the founder of StrictlyVC, a daily e-newsletter and lecture series acquired by Yahoo in August 2023 and now operated as a sub brand of TechCrunch.
You can contact or verify outreach from Connie by emailing connie@strictlyvc.com or connie@techcrunch.com, or via encrypted message at ConnieLoizos.53 on Signal.
— Originally published at techcrunch.com
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