KATY, Texas (The Hill) – Tesla CEO Elon Musk has dismissed accusations that the company’s full self-driving software was responsible for a recent accident in Texas that claimed the life of a local woman.
The tragic incident involved 76-year-old Martha Avila, who died when a Tesla vehicle careened through her home in Katy, Texas, last Friday. Authorities and the driver have suggested that the automated driving assistance system was active during the crash, according to a lawsuit filed by Avila’s daughter.
“This makes no sense,” Musk commented on X in response to the claims. “FSD [full self-driving] operates at low speeds on neighborhood streets, while this incident involved high speeds!”
Echoing Musk’s skepticism, Tesla’s Vice President of AI Software, Ashok Elluswamy, explained that the driver had “manually taken over by fully pressing the accelerator in this residential area,” possibly leading to the crash.
In the wake of the incident, Jennifer Barbour, Avila’s daughter, alongside her husband Justin Barbour, has filed a lawsuit against both Tesla and the driver, Michael Butler, seeking accountability for the crash.
The lawsuit alleges the accident was “caused by the concurrent negligence of Defendant Butler and the defective condition of the Vehicle and its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving systems as designed, manufactured, and marketed by Defendant Tesla.”
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said it has launched a special crash investigation into the incident.
The federal regulator previously opened a probe into Tesla’s full-self driving software, which escalated in March from a preliminary evaluation to an engineering analysis. It is investigating nine other crashes, including one fatal, in which the system is alleged to have failed to detect poor driving conditions and alert drivers quickly enough.