Texas police to demand data from Tesla after deadly Houston crash: report

Elon Musk claims Tesla’s controversial Autopilot feature isn’t to blame for a deadly crash in Texas over the weekend — and the police want proof.

Texas police will reportedly serve Tesla with search warrants demanding data related to the crash, in which a car plowed into a tree in a posh suburb north of Houston with no one in the driver’s seat.

One of the victims was a 59-year-old anaesthesiologist who was sitting in the back seat at the time. A 69-year-old companion was sitting in the front seat — but on the passenger side.

Early reports about the crash pegged the cause to a malfunctioning autopilot feature. But Tesla chief executive Elon Musk refuted the reports, tweeting on Monday that the company’s data logs show that “autopilot was not enabled.”

“If he is tweeting that out, if he has already pulled the data,” Mark Herman, Harris County Constable, told Reuters Monday night, “he hasn’t told us that. We will eagerly wait for that data.”

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Police said Dr. Will T. Varner was killed after his Model S crashed into a tree at around 11:25 p.m. Saturday only a few hundred yards from his $2 million mansion in Carlton Woods Creekside, an upscale, gated housing development. Shortly after leaving Varner’s driveway, the Tesla swerved off the road, plowed into trees and caught fire.

Police said it took four hours to extinguish the blaze as the Tesla’s battery repeatedly caught fire, and that firefighters were frantically calling Tesla asking for help on how to put out the battery for good.

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Musk wrote in his tweet, “Data logs recovered so far show Autopilot was not enabled & this car did not purchase FSD. Moreover, standard Autopilot would require lane lines to turn on, which this street did not have.” FSD refers to Full Self-Driving.

“We have witness statements from people that said they left to test drive the vehicle without a driver and to show the friend how it can drive itself,” Herman told Reuters.

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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration or NHTSA is also investigating the crash, which is the 28th such accident involving a Tesla. 

For Tesla’s Autopilot feature to be activated, the car must detect a driver’s hands on the steering wheel. If no hands are detected the Autopilot feature will turn itself off but can take up to half a minute to do so. Tesla said the Autopilot feature also requires road markings to be activated, which didn’t appear to be present on the road where the car crashed.

Police haven’t said exactly how fast the car was going at the time of the crash, although the car appeared to be moving quickly. Tesla said the Autopilot feature will never exceed the speed limit, which was 35 mph on that road.

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It is the third such crash involving a Tesla in just one month and the majority of the crashes involve the car’s auto-driving feature, according to reports.

The NHTSA has previously blasted Tesla over the autopilot feature’s lack of safeguards, which has been linked to at least three fatal crashes since 2016.