Weeks after a 76-year-old woman was killed when a Tesla, operating on Full Self-Driving, crashed into her Texas home, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the car’s driver overrode the driver assistance mode and accelerated into the building.Subscribe to read this story ad-freeGet unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.Michael Butler, 44, was operating the Tesla Model 3 that killed Martha Avila on June 19.
The vehicle was going at 70 mph when the crash occurred, the agency said.According to a NTSB report released Wednesday, the car was on a residential road when it “partially entered a driveway, and crashed into a residence.” The driver had engaged Tesla’s Advanced Driver Assistance System, Full Self-Driving (Supervised) at the time of the crash, the NTSB report said.
But, it continued, “electronic data recovered from the vehicle indicated that before the crash, the driver manually overrode FSD (Supervised) by pressing the accelerator pedal to 100%, and the vehicle’s speed was greater than 70 mph when the crash occurred.” The driver of the car, Michael Butler, was charged this week with manslaughter in connection with Avila’s death.Courtesy Barbour familyAs a result, the woman inside the home was killed, and the driver sustained minor injuries, the NTSB said.Butler has since been charged with manslaughter in connection with Avila’s death.
Prosecutors and investigators have not yet said whether the car was at all to blame.An attorney for Butler did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the findings.The agency pointed out that the residential road, Rose Hollow Lane, has a speed limit of 30 mph.
Also, at the time of the crash, “the weather was clear, the roadway was dry, and daylight conditions were present,” the NTSB report said.The NTSB findings echo what Ashok Elluswamy, vice president of AI software at Tesla, said days after the crash, defending the vehicle’s systems.“In this case,...