Good.
In the days after a driver crashed their Tesla into a Katy home, fatally striking a 76-year-old woman, a federal agency launched an investigation into Tesla, and Elon Musk cast doubt on his company’s driver assistance technology playing a role in the crash.
“Yes, this makes no sense,” Musk wrote on X Monday. “(Full Self Driving) drives slowly through neighborhood streets and this was a high speed crash!”
Ashok Elluswamy, director of Tesla’s Autopilot software, backed up Musk’s comment, alleging that the “driver manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way,” in a post on X.
Still, investigations into the crash are under way, as Tesla faces repeated probes from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration over the safety of its driver assistance technologies. A spokesperson for the highway safety administration told the Wall Street Journal Monday that the agency is launching a special investigation into the crash. Special crash investigations involve the agency’s most “in-depth and detailed” crash data, according to the agency.
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The driver of the Tesla told Harris County Sheriff’s Office investigators that at the time of the crash, they were using a driving assistance system. Tesla offers two: Autopilot and Full Self Driving, which have faced scrutiny from regulators and lawmakers in recent years. Both systems are considered Level 2 Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, meaning they require the driver to still be “fully engaged in the driving task at all times.” Tesla has been linked to over 3,400 crashes related to the systems, according to data from the highway safety agency.
The probe opened Monday is not the first time the agency has investigated Tesla. Over 3.2 million Tesla vehicles could be recalled after the agency in March escalated an investigation to the final procedural step before it can issue a defect decision. The agency opened the probe in October 2024 to assess reports that Full Self Driving technology failed to detect degraded roadway conditions. The agency also opened an investigation into over 2.8 million Tesla vehicles in October 2025 to assess reports that the technology failed to stop at red lights and detect wrong way driving.
Three days before the fatal crash in Katy, Senators Edwards Markey and Richard Blumenthal sent a letter to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration urging the agency to investigate allegedly “misleading and incomplete safety statistics” the company has put out to promote the technology. The senators, in their letter, alleged that the agency’s reporting requirements are not robust enough to get a full picture of all crashes related to Tesla vehicles.
“Misleading safety statistics can encourage drivers to over-rely on (Full Self Driving), obscure whether the technology is creating safety defects, and undermine (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s) ability to evaluate risks associated with vehicles already operating on public roads,” the senators wrote.
See here for the background. I make a habit of not believing anything Elmo says, but we’ll see what the NTHSA investigation yields. None of us know anything yet, so my lips are zipped until we hear from them.
The NYT adds a bit more detail.
A spokesman for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the division of the Department of Transportation that opened the federal investigation, said he could not provide details. According to the agency’s website, such “special crash investigations” are intended to examine accidents that happen under unusual circumstances.
A Tesla executive, Ashok Elluswamy, who is in charge of the company’s artificial intelligence software, said on X late on Monday that the driver “manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator.” He added that the car had accelerated to 73 miles per hour.
Tesla did not respond to a request for a comment.
No charges had been brought against the driver as of Monday afternoon, the Sheriff’s Office said. “Once all evidence has been gathered, it will be presented to the Harris County district attorney’s office to determine whether charges are appropriate,” a representative for the office said in an email.
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The company’s driver-assistance systems — Autopilot and Full Self-Driving — have been implicated in a number of accidents, some of them fatal.
In 2023, Tesla recalled more than two million vehicles after federal regulators said the company had not done enough to ensure that drivers remained attentive when using Autopilot, a system that can steer, accelerate and brake cars automatically.
Tesla owners’ manuals tell drivers that they should keep their hands on the wheel and take over if anything goes wrong while using Autopilot or Full Self-Driving. But lawsuits and police reports have documented cases in which drivers became distracted and failed to intervene before an accident.
Yes, let’s remember that the Sheriff’s office is also investigating this crash. I expect we’ll hear from them before we hear from the NHTSA.
Nikolas Guggenberger, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center, said Tuesday on Houston Matters that liability gradually shifts from the driver to the company as the car behaves more autonomously.
“Most likely, the driver is still considered to be the operator of the vehicle,” Guggenberger said. “Therefore [the driver] can be liable for anything that happens during the operation of the vehicle.”
A lawsuit against Tesla could still hold if there is a product or manufacturing liability, Guggenberger said.
No further word yet about the planned lawsuit. It won’t surprise me if they take their time before filing anything. At the very least, the ongoing investigations will tell us a lot about where the liability may lie.