NEW YORK — The top U.S. auto regulator opened an investigation Monday after a Tesla using an automated driving feature slammed into a Texas home at high speed and killed a 76-year-old woman standing inside.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it’s opening a special investigation into the Tesla Model 3 crash near Houston on Friday, a significant probe because the car was using technology that Elon Musk considers key to the company’s future.
The Tesla CEO is rolling out robotaxis using automated software in several U.S. cities this year and plans to invite Tesla owners to put their cars into the fleet using the same system across the country.
The driver told the Harris County Sheriff’s Office that he was using the technology, according to a police report on the crash, but it’s not clear what role it played in the incident, if any.
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment but the head of the company’s artificial intelligence efforts suggested on social media later Monday that the self-driving feature was not to blame.
“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,” wrote Ashok Elluswamy on X, the platform that is now part of Musk’s SpaceX. “They reached a speed of 73 mph during the crash, and had the accelerator pressed even after the crash.”
The police report noted that the driver was not drunk and is cooperating. It identified the woman killed as Martha Avila.
Video obtained by KHOU-TV shows the car traveling at high speed over the front lawn of a brick home in Katy and ramming into a front room. The next shot shows the car encased in the home amid piles of crumbling plaster, split beams and bits of furniture.
The auto safety regulator, known as NHTSA, has launched several investigations into Tesla, including one late last year into 58 incidents in which Teslas reportedly violated traffic safety laws while using self-driving technology, leading to more than a dozen crashes and fires and nearly two dozen injuries.
A few months earlier, the NHTSA opened an investigation into why Tesla apparently had not been reporting crashes promptly as required.
As for special crash investigations, the NHTSA has opened 46 involving Teslas using self-driving or driver-assistance technology over the last decade, according to the agency’s records. In more than a dozen of those crashes, at least one person — a driver, passenger or pedestrian — was killed.
Tesla stock fell sharply early last year as car sales plunged amid a boycott of Musk after he waded into politics, leading President Trump’s budget-cutting Department of Government Efficiency initiative and embracing European extremist candidates.
Musk has since shifted the Tesla story to one less about car sales and more about AI and robotaxis, and done so successfully. The stock is up 16% in the past year.
Condon writes for the Associated Press.
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