The Tesla logo is displayed at a dealership in Miami. (Lynn Sladky/Associated Press, File)
key takeaways:
- A driver slammed down the accelerator, overriding Tesla’s self-driving software and crashing into a Katy, Texas home, killing a woman, the NTSB said.
- The driver had told the police that he had turned on self-driving software.
- Tesla CEO Elon Musk wants to reassure the public that its self-driving feature is safe as he prepares to convert the hundreds of thousands of Teslas already on the road into fully automated vehicles.
Federal safety investigators investigating a runaway Tesla that killed a grandmother in her home say the driver pressed the accelerator at full throttle, suggesting the vehicle’s self-driving software was not to blame.
The driver had told police that he had turned on the self-driving software, but a report by the National Transportation Safety Board on July 15 concluded that he had actually overridden that feature when he pushed hard on the pedals. Moments later, the Tesla Model 3 traveled at highway speeds down a residential street in Katy, Texas, crashing into a brick house and killing a 76-year-old woman standing in the front room.
Connected: Tesla sued after woman dies after car crashes into home
The crash last month drew national attention, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk wants to reassure the public that its self-driving feature is safe as he prepares to convert hundreds of thousands of Teslas already on the road into fully automated vehicles and sell two-seat Cybercabs that don’t have steering wheels or pedals.
The crash came two months after officials with a separate federal agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, announced it was elevating its 2024 investigation of the self-driving feature to a new “engineering analysis” level, raising the possibility of a recall of 3.2 million Tesla vehicles.
The NHTSA investigation was triggered by crashes where the self-driving feature failed to alert drivers to take control in fog and other poor visibility conditions.
The agency launched an investigation last year into 58 incidents in which Teslas allegedly violated traffic safety laws while using self-driving technology, leading to more than a dozen crashes and fires and nearly two dozen injuries.
Separate from the NTSB, NHTSA is also investigating the Tesla House crash in Texas, one of 46 “special crash” investigations of Tesla’s self-driving or driver-assistance technology over the past decade, according to agency records. In more than a dozen of these accidents, at least one person – a driver, passenger or pedestrian – was killed.
Tesla originally called its driver assistance software Full Self-Driving, but auto experts and regulators complained that was misleading because drivers must always keep their eyes on the road and be ready to take over at any time.
The company has since changed the name to Full Self-Driving (Supervised).
Video of the Katy, Texas crash shows the Tesla traveling at more than 70 mph, careening across a lawn before crushing the brick wall of a home. A woman standing a short distance away, Martha Avila, was found among the broken plaster, broken beams and pieces of furniture and was taken to the hospital but died.
A 76-year-old grandmother died after a Tesla car crashed into the front of her home in Katy, Texas on Friday.
The 44-year-old driver of the Tesla Model 3 was taken to a local hospital after the incident. The driver told investigators that a self-driving… pic.twitter.com/Lty7SwcPXi
– CBS News (@CBSNews) 21 June 2026
Sales of Tesla cars have still not fully recovered from last year’s boycott over Musk’s far-right political stance, but the stock is rising anyway as he successfully diverted attention away from sales figures. He says these matter less now as the company is on the cusp of major technological advances, such as Tesla turning to hands-free vehicles and its Optimus robot replacing humans for home and work tasks.
Tesla’s stock is up 22% in the past year and currently trades at 170 times expected annual earnings compared to 20 for the S&P 500.
As for its second-quarter financial results due next week, financial analysts surveyed by FactSet expect earnings per share to barely grow — 32 cents versus 33 cents a year earlier — continuing its sixth-quarter streak of flat or falling profits.
