The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened a special investigation Monday after a Tesla Model 3 using an automated driving feature slammed into a Texas home near Houston on Friday and killed Martha Avila. Avila, 76, was standing inside the home in Katy when the car hit the front room.
Police identified Avila as the woman killed in the crash. The driver told the Harris County Sheriff’s Office that he was using the technology, and the report said he was not drunk and is cooperating.
Video obtained by KHOU-TV showed the car traveling at top speed over the front lawn of a brick home in Katy before ramming into the front room. The next shot showed the car encased in the home amid piles of crumbling plaster, split beams and bits of furniture.
Harris County crash report
The case leaves one central question for investigators: what role the automated driving feature played as the Tesla struck the house. The police report says the driver said he was using it, but the source does not establish whether the system caused the crash, reduced the driver’s control or had no role at all.
That distinction is important because the NHTSA has already opened 46 special crash investigations involving Teslas using self-driving or driver-assistance technology over the past decade. In more than a dozen of those crashes, at least one person was killed.
NHTSA Tesla scrutiny
Monday’s review adds another fatal crash to an agency file that has already grown through several earlier probes. Late last year, the NHTSA opened an investigation into 58 incidents in which Teslas reportedly violated traffic safety laws while using self-driving technology, and those cases led 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. Tesla has not responded immediately to a request for comment, leaving the federal review to focus on the crash report, the video and the car’s automation settings.
Elon Musk and robotaxis
The crash also lands as Tesla’s automated driving technology remains central to Elon Musk’s plans for the company’s future. The source says he 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 across the country.
For now, the immediate consequence is federal scrutiny of a fatal crash in Houston in Texas and a local report that says Martha Avila died inside her home while the driver said he was using the technology. The unanswered issue is whether the system played any part in the impact that left the Tesla buried in the house.
