Tesla driver who blamed crash on autopilot pressed accelerator 100%, NTSB finds
On Wednesday, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released preliminary findings verifying Elon Muskβs and Teslaβs claims that a driver involved in a fatal Texas crash that killed a grandmother overrode Full Self Driving in the moments ahead of impact.
Last month, 44-year-old Michael Butler told police that the autopilot feature was engaged at the time of the crash. On X, Musk disputed the claim, writing that Butler must have overridden the feature because βFSD drives slowly through neighborhood streets, and this was a high-speed crash!β Moving to back Muskβs claim, Teslaβs vice president of AI software, Ashok Elluswamy, said that internal data showed βthe driver manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100 percent of the accel pedal in this residential area.β
NTSBβs preliminary report, which does not yet determine what caused the crash, confirmed Teslaβs claims. Its probe found that FSD was engaged at the time of the crash, but electronic data showed βthe driver manually overrode FSD (Supervised) by pressing the accelerator pedal to 100 percent.β


Β© via Jennifer Barbour's complaint