A lawsuit filed Tuesday alleges Tesla bears at least some responsibility for a crash in west Harris County, Texas, where one of its vehicles drove into a home and killed 76-year-old Martha Avila.
The legal complaint, brought by Avila’s daughter and son-in-law, lists both Tesla and the vehicle’s driver as defendants.
The driver, described by the Harris County Sheriff’s Office as a 44-year-old man, did not reply to a text message requesting comment late Tuesday. No one came to the door at his home in Fort Bend County.
According to investigators, the man said the Tesla was operating in autopilot mode when it crashed into the residence Friday.
By Tuesday, the sheriff’s office said investigators had not found evidence pointing to a “mechanical malfunction.”
However, attorneys for the family argue in the lawsuit that “the Vehicle … was defective in design and unreasonably dangerous,” asserting that the car may have accelerated without driver input.
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“We’re still in a fact-finding mode, but mainly we’re alleging a product defect and a failure to warn on Tesla’s part,” attorney Chris Adkins said.
Tesla has not responded to multiple requests for comment from Houston ABC affiliate KTRK.
But Monday, the company’s vice president of AI, wrote on X that “the driver manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100% of the accel pedal …and had the accelerator pressed even after the crash.”
“Tesla’s statement, in my opinion, is a little bit fishy given that they indicated the accelerator was pushed at 100 percent all the way through the collision until the vehicle stopped and beyond,” Adkins said. “If that were the case, he would have had his foot on the accelerator all the way through the crash until the vehicle came to a stop. If that’s the case, he should have a shattered leg.”
The lawsuit demands Tesla preserve its black box data, autopilot system data and camera footage.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is also investigating the crash.
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