It's creepy that Tesla is immediately telling the world what this guy did in his car. It shows that they really are spying on all Tesla drivers all the time and they'll publish that information at the drop of a hat to save face.
this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2026
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while I agree with you, this guy had his foot on the accelerator 100% of the way. in this case, if true, I'd have to side with tesla here
The sensor said he had his foot on the pedal.
Tesla claims the sensor said he had his foot on the pedal.
Yes, that's what I said. There are two implications:
-
Sensors never fail which is known not to be true.
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Tesla doesn't lie about accident data which is also known to not be true.
There's a big difference between the "sensor said it was at 100%" and "Tesla claims the sensor said it was 100%."
Hundreds of drivers panic mash the wrong pedal every week.
ok what's your point
They’re not “spying”, they’re logging analytics in a black box essentially, for situations exactly like this.
They’ve accused the Tesla of malfunctioning essentially, publicly, so Tesla have told the public exactly what actually happened.
Maybe if there weren't so many scam artists and ambulance chasers, they wouldn't need black boxes.
Toyota avoided millions in lawsuits with black box data that showed the crying moms on TV were lying.
If Tesla is telling the truth about the driver's behavior then yeah, sure, they are almost certainly in the clear here. However, they have definitely not earned the trust required for me to just take them at their word that such is the case, so the facts can come out in litigation.
Sensible attitude. I would think certifying these vehicles for public roads requires a black-box type recording system, as on airliners, which local authorities would immediately collect for a crash investigation. If so, that data will show whether the car or the guy was driving. There's really no point in people taking sides based on feeling a certain way about Elon Musk.
If the driver is liable and has to take over when the system fucks up, I don’t know how you can call it “full” self driving.
According to Elektrek, Butler had previously told Harris County officials that his vehicle had been on Autopilot (the standard Tesla self-driving system, which is less advanced than FSD) when it collided with Avila's two-story home.
It wasn't even FSD apparently, according to the driver.
Having actually owned a Tesla with Enhanced Autopilot in the past... Autopilot doesn't work at all like this situation would require. Autopilot requires clearly visible lane lines, and is limited to 5 mph over the speed limit unless you are on a highway. A residential street certainly isn't going to allow the vehicle to do the claimed 73mph on Autopilot.
Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla's Head of AI, also commented on the post, supporting Musk's claims Butler was directly operating the car in the events that lead to the fatal crash. "Yup. 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," he said. "They reached a speed of 73 mph during the crash, and had the accelerator pressed even after the crash."
This reads to me as a guy who maybe had autopilot on, then hit the accelerator instead of the brakes when he came to the end of the street, because Autopilot won't stop and turn. Basically the same most of those Prius sudden acceleration crashes from years back. Drivers just hitting the wrong pedal. It's also the simplest explanation.
Autopilot also has chronically inaccurate speed limits.
It’s called “Full Self Driving (Supervised)”. It’s fully driving itself, but the driver has to supervise to make sure it doesn’t break the law. There’s nothing hard to understand about this.
A learner driver taking a drivers license test is still fully driving the car, even though they’re being supervised and the instructor can take over to prevent an accident.
I read, years ago, that Tesla will switch it back to driver control in the seconds before impact, so they can't be blamed with self driving. I've seen this accusation more than once.
Accusations are not truth. This has never been proven no matter how many times it has been claimed.
In a reply to a post on X, Elon Musk said the circumstances of the crash meant that FSD could not have been in use at the time. "Yes, this makes no sense. FSD drives slowly through neighborhood streets and this was a high speed crash!" he wrote.
I mean, in a world where FSD is infallible, that makes sense. But we know it's not. And he knows it's not.
Also "could not have been in use at the time" and "only drives slowly" are contradictory. Not sure if that's just an inaccurate paraphrasing of the post by the author.
Seems pretty simple. Tesla needs to produce the “collision snapshot,” captured by the car’s cameras and assorted sensors before and during the crash. Such data is automatically uploaded to Tesla's servers after a crash. At least that was the story the last time when a hacker managed to recover the data, which had somehow been deleted, from the car as well as Tesla's servers after a fatal collision in Miami last year .
It couldn't've been in use, because if it had been in use, the vehicle's speed would've been lower. Is what Elon Musk is claiming.
Not a fan of the not quite a trillionaire however it picking a photo of a Tesla charging station seems to be wrong. It’s almost like poking a stick at all EVs.