NTSB: Tesla Driver Pressed Accelerator 100% in Fatal Crash

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released preliminary findings on Wednesday, confirming that a driver involved in a fatal Texas crash fully engaged the accelerator pedal to 100 percent, overriding Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD) system. This finding supports claims made by Tesla and its CEO, Elon Musk, who had disputed the driver's initial statement that the autopilot feature was engaged at the time of the crash. The crash resulted in the death of a grandmother.

Michael Butler, 44, had initially told police that the autopilot feature was active during the incident. However, Elon Musk publicly countered this on X, suggesting that the driver must have overridden the system due to the high-speed nature of the crash, which he stated FSD would not typically engage in on residential streets. Tesla's vice president of AI software, Ashok Elluswamy, further backed Musk's assertion by stating that internal data indicated the driver had manually overridden self-driving by pressing the accelerator to its maximum.

The NTSB's preliminary report, while not yet determining the definitive cause of the crash, has corroborated Tesla's account. Electronic data analyzed by the NTSB showed that FSD was indeed engaged at the moment of impact. However, the data clearly indicated that the driver manually overrode the supervised FSD system by applying 100 percent of the accelerator pedal input in a residential area.