A 76-year-old woman was killed on the evening of 19 June when a Tesla Model 3 left the road and struck her home in Katy, Texas, near Houston. The victim, identified by family as Martha Avila Mantilla, was inside the residence at the time; the driver, a 44-year-old man, was taken to hospital and is cooperating with authorities, according to the Harris County Sheriff’s Office.\n\nThe National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced on Monday that it had opened a special crash investigation into the incident, its most in-depth form of inquiry. The driver told local police that an automated driving assistance system was engaged at the moment of the crash, a claim that places the case within a series of federal probes into Tesla’s Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (FSD) technologies. Police have stated the driver showed no signs of intoxication and that the vehicle was travelling at high speed when it failed to negotiate a right turn and ploughed into the brick house.\n\nConflicting accounts have emerged from Tesla. Ashok Elluswamy, the company’s vice-president of AI, wrote on X that the driver “manually overrode the self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100%” and reached 73 mph (117 km/h) in a residential area, with the pedal still depressed after impact. Chief executive Elon Musk separately dismissed the notion that FSD was responsible, arguing the system drives slowly through neighbourhood streets and that a high-speed crash “makes no sense.” Local investigators have not yet determined what caused the car to fail to control its speed, and the precise role of any driver-assistance software remains unconfirmed.\n\nThe Texas fatality adds to a growing regulatory focus on Tesla’s automated driving claims. The NHTSA has launched nearly 50 special crash investigations involving Teslas since 2016, with around two dozen deaths recorded, and has broader probes under way into FSD performance in poor visibility and alleged traffic-safety violations. In Europe, Swedish transport authorities have recommended voting against EU-wide approval of the system, citing concerns over speed-limit compliance, while several member states have already granted national authorisations. The US investigation is ongoing, and no conclusions have been reached.