Driver’s claim of self-driving engagement contradicted by data
The National Transportation Safety Board said Wednesday that the driver of a Tesla Model 3 that crashed into a home in Katy, Texas, last month had pressed the accelerator to full speed moments before impact, overriding the vehicle’s Full Self-Driving system.
The crash on June 19 killed 76-year-old Martha Avila, who was standing in the front room of the house. The driver had told police that the self-driving software was engaged at the time, according to the NTSB.
The NTSB’s preliminary report concluded that the driver manually overrode the Full Self-Driving (Supervised) system by pressing the accelerator pedal to 100 percent. The vehicle reached highway speeds on a residential street before slamming into a brick home.
The crash drew national attention because Tesla CEO Elon Musk is seeking to reassure the public about the safety of the self-driving feature as the company prepares to turn hundreds of thousands of Teslas already on the road into fully autonomous vehicles and begin selling two-seat Cybercabs without steering wheels or pedals.
The crash came two months after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration elevated its investigation of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving system to an “engineering analysis” level, a step that could lead to a recall of 3.2 million Tesla vehicles.