Tesla driver using autopilot crashes into home, killing grandmother

A driver in a Tesla vehicle that was engaged in automated driver-assistance mode crashed into a house in Texas on Friday night and killed a grandmother inside, authorities said.

The driver, Michael Butler, was in a Tesla Model 3 about 8 p.m. local time and operating the car “with an automated driving assistance system,” the Harris County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement on Saturday.

The crash happened in Katy, Texas, about 30 miles west of Houston in Harris County.

Butler “failed to drive in a single lane, left the roadway and struck the residence” at 1907 Blooming Park Lane, authorities said.

His Tesla “entered through the brick residence at a high rate of speed,” and struck Martha Avila, who was inside, according to the sheriff’s office.

The office said Avila was taken by a medical helicopter to a hospital, where she was later pronounced dead.

Investigators said Butler showed no signs of intoxication and was cooperative during the investigation, which is in progress.

A front-door video camera that captured the crash showed the Tesla plowing into the house through its driveway. It was not clear how fast the Tesla was traveling.

“We’re still evaluating what caused that car to fail to control its speed just before this crash,” Sgt. Alex Turman of the Harris County Sheriff’s Office told ABC13 Houston.

He said Avila, 76, was standing in the front room of the house at the time.

The Harris County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to inquiries on Sunday about the crash.

Efforts to find Butler for comment were not immediately successful on Sunday. It was not immediately clear whether he sustained any injuries in the crash. Tesla did not respond to an inquiry about the crash and its software.

The Autopilot function, Tesla’s driver-assistance technology, is a popular feature among drivers, but it has had issues over the years.

Tesla’s owners’ manuals tell drivers that they should keep their hands on the wheel and take over if anything goes wrong.

In 2023, Tesla recalled more than 2 million vehicles after federal regulators said the automaker had not done enough to ensure that drivers remained attentive when using the software that can steer, accelerate and brake cars automatically.

That recall came after an investigation into the driver-assistance system that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began in August 2021 after a series of crashes, some fatal, involving the technology.

In 2024, Tesla settled a lawsuit that blamed the automaker’s driver-assistance software for the death of a California man in 2018.