A Texas man who said his Tesla was driving itself when it plowed into a Houston-area home and killed a 76-year-old woman has been charged with manslaughter. Authorities say 44-year-old Michael David Butler was behind the wheel of a 2025 Tesla Model 3 in suburban Katy on June 19 when it slammed into the brick house, fatally injuring resident Martha Avila. Butler told officials he was working a DoorDash run, had the car in Full Self-Driving (Supervised) mode, changed the music, then blacked out, according to an arrest affidavit.
Tesla executives publicly challenged that account, Houston Public Media reports. "In this case, the driver manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100% of the accel pedal in this residential area," Ashok Elluswamy, vice president of AI software at Tesla, said on X. "They reached a speed of 73 mph during the crash, and had the accelerator pressed even after the crash." Investigators who pulled data and video from the car's "black box" confirmed that Butler repeatedly overrode the system, hitting speeds up to 73mph, double the area's speed limit, and never touching the brakes in the minute before the crash, reports the Wall Street Journal.
The affidavit also cites Google searches suggesting Butler was annoyed the software wasn't "aggressive" enough. No alcohol or drugs were found in his system. Butler is in jail in Harris County as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration probes the crash, one of dozens involving advanced driver-assistance systems under federal review. Avila's daughter and son-in-law are suing both Butler and Tesla. The lawsuit states that the son-in-law was injured in the crash and the family has been forced to leave the damaged home.
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