Two federal agencies are now investigating a June crash in suburban Houston that killed a 76-year-old resident when a Tesla struck her home, while the victim's family has filed a civil suit alleging gross negligence by the automaker.
The National Transportation Safety Board announced Wednesday it was opening an investigation into the June 19 crash that killed Martha Avila in Katy. The move came two days after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it too would investigate the incident.
Avila's daughter Jennifer Barbour and her husband Justin filed a wrongful death complaint in Texas state court Tuesday, naming Tesla as a defendant and seeking more than $1 million in damages plus punitive damages. The lawsuit alleges the Tesla Model 3's "autopilot" and "full self-driving" systems were defective and that the company failed to warn of risks.
According to the Barbours, the driver, Michael Butler, told law enforcement he had engaged the vehicle's driver-assistance technology before it crashed through the front wall of Avila's home. Justin Barbour was also injured in the wreck. Avila died at a nearby hospital.
The Harris County Sheriff's Department confirmed that the driver described using a driver-assistance system at the time of the crash. Tesla and CEO Elon Musk did not respond to requests for comment, though Musk posted on his social media platform X on Monday evening defending Tesla. "FSD drives slowly through neighborhood streets and this was a high speed crash," he wrote. Tesla's vice president of artificial intelligence software separately posted that the driver manually overrode the self-driving system by pressing the accelerator pedal to 100 percent in a residential area.
The latest investigation adds to a lengthening roster of federal scrutiny aimed at Tesla's autonomous systems. Since 2016, the NHTSA has opened nearly 50 special investigations into Tesla crashes believed to involve advanced driver-assistance systems, with approximately two dozen deaths reported. In March, regulators escalated their focus by launching an investigation into 3.2 million Teslas equipped with full self-driving technology, citing concerns the system may fail to detect or warn drivers in poor visibility conditions.
Tesla issued a recall in 2023 affecting nearly 2 million vehicles on U.S. roads to enhance driver attention while using autopilot. The company has stated that autopilot allows vehicles to steer, accelerate and brake within their lanes, while full self-driving enables them to obey traffic signals and change lanes. Both systems, Tesla says, require fully attentive drivers with hands on the wheel.
The lawsuit also names Butler as a defendant. It remains unclear whether he has legal representation, and efforts to reach him were unsuccessful.
Author James Rodriguez: "Every new Tesla investigation carries weight, but the gap between what the company claims its systems can do and what happens on the road keeps widening."
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