Texas police to demand Tesla crash data as Elon Musk says autopilot was off

Police said evidence clearly suggested there was nobody in the driver’s seat of the Model S when it crashed into a tree, killing two people

Tesla chief Elon Musk said in a tweet that data logs retrieved so far indicated the car’s autopilot was not engaged

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The crash in Texas occurred amid increased scrutiny of Tesla’s semi-automated Autopilot driving system. Photo: Reuters

Published: 9:27am, 20 Apr 2021Updated: 9:27am, 20 Apr 2021

Texas police will serve search warrants on Tesla on Tuesday to secure data from a vehicle that crashed on the weekend, killing two people, a senior officer said on Monday.

Mark Herman, Harris County Constable Precinct 4, said evidence including witness statements clearly suggested there was nobody in the driver’s seat of the Model S when it crashed into a tree on Saturday night.

Herman said a tweet by Tesla chief Elon Musk on Monday afternoon saying that data logs retrieved so far indicated the car’s autopilot was not engaged was the first officials had heard from the company.

“If he is tweeting that out, if he has already pulled the data, he hasn’t told us that,” Herman said. “We will eagerly wait for that data.”

“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 added.

The crash is being investigated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which regulates vehicle safety, and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).