Overview
- A Tesla Model 3 left a residential street on Friday night and tore through the brick front of a Katy, Texas, home, fatally striking 76‑year‑old Martha Avila and rendering the house uninhabitable.
- The vehicle’s driver, Michael Butler, told deputies he had an automated driving‑assistance system engaged at the time of the crash, a claim that is central to the probes.
- Tesla executives publicly disputed that the software caused the crash, saying company logs show the driver fully depressed the accelerator and reached about 73 mph before impact.
- Harris County investigators and NHTSA plan to extract the car’s event data recorder and onboard logs to establish whether a driver‑assist mode was active and what pedal and steering inputs occurred in the seconds before the collision.
- Avila’s family has filed a wrongful‑death suit alleging design defects and failure to warn, and the case adds to ongoing federal reviews of Tesla’s Autopilot and Full Self‑Driving systems that could lead to enforcement or recall actions.