On June 19, a Tesla vehicle crashed through a house in a suburban residential area of Houston, Texas, killing 76-year-old Martha Avila, who was inside. The driver, Michael Butler, was making deliveries as a driver for the food delivery app DoorDash. Butler told rescue workers that the vehicle was in "Autopilot" mode. When reports emerged that the accident occurred while using Autopilot—a driver-assist feature that maintains distance between vehicles and keeps the car in its lane—the crash made headlines not only in the United States but also in South Korea. Doubts erupted over whether Tesla's driver-assist system had caused a death and whether the technology was truly safe. The fallout grew even larger when the investigation revealed that the vehicle was not using Autopilot, but rather Full Self-Driving (FSD), a feature that reads traffic lights, handles turns at intersections, and navigates to a destination. Although named "Full Self-Driving," legally it is a Level 2 driver-assist feature that requires constant driver supervision.

1. "I Blacked Out"... The Truth Revealed by the Black Box
However, two weeks later, the case was completely turned on its head. Butler, the driver, was indicted on manslaughter charges, a felony carrying a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison—a charge more severe than involuntary manslaughter. Butler had claimed that while driving in FSD mode, he only remembered changing the music on the touchscreen before losing consciousness, waking up to find the accident had occurred. However, when investigators searched the vehicle's black box, cameras, and his mobile phone, a completely different picture emerged. It was true that FSD was active. However, Butler had manually pressed the accelerator pedal, overriding the FSD's speed control. For the six seconds leading up to the crash, he pressed the pedal all the way to the floor, accelerating to 117 km/h—more than double the speed limit for the residential area. He did not step on the brakes even once during the final minute. His claim of "losing consciousness" also fell apart. Medical tests showed no trace of alcohol or drugs, and there were no signs of a seizure or heart issues. The deciding blow came from his mobile phone. A search history on Google dating back weeks before the accident revealed queries such as "Tesla FSD is too timid" and "FSD is not aggressive enough for city driving." Prosecutors are using this search history as evidence that Butler intentionally accelerated.

2. Human Controlled the Speed, Machine Held the Wheel
What was thought to be an accident caused by autonomous driving turned out to be a case of a human pressing the pedal to accelerate, leading to a fatality. Tesla is arguing along these lines. Musk stated that "FSD drives slowly in residential areas," while Tesla's head of AI noted that "the driver overrode the system by pressing the pedal 100%." However, there is one point that warrants closer examination. In Tesla's FSD, when the accelerator pedal is pressed, only control over "speed" is handed over to the driver, while steering, lane-keeping, and navigation continue to be managed by the system. In other words, up until the moment of collision, the human controlled the speed, but the machine was holding the steering wheel. It is also worth considering why drivers end up keeping their feet on the pedal in the first place. Many complain that FSD is frustrating because it comes to a complete stop at every stop sign, yet in its "Mad Max" driving mode, it drives well over the speed limit. Because it crawls at times and rushes at others, drivers develop a habit of "correcting" it with the pedal. Consequently, the family of the deceased, Martha Avila, filed a lawsuit not only against Butler but also against Tesla. They are seeking damages of over $1 million, claiming that the FSD design was defective and lacked adequate hazard warnings. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) have also launched simultaneous investigations into how much the autonomous driving system influenced the crash.

3. Driver 67 : Tesla 33... The Reason Behind the 300 Billion Won Verdict
What kind of ruling will Butler and Tesla face going forward? There is a case that might offer a clue. In 2019, in Florida, a man driving with Autopilot engaged struck a parked vehicle and a couple standing next to it while he was picking up a phone he had dropped on the floor. A woman in her 20s was killed, and her boyfriend was severely injured. After a trial spanning several years, a federal jury in Miami concluded in August last year that the driver was 67% responsible and Tesla was 33% responsible. This was the first federal jury verdict to hold Tesla liable in a fatal crash involving Autopilot. The jury found that "driver inattention" was highly foreseeable, yet the vehicle lacked sufficient safeguards, and executives aggressively marketed the system as safer than it actually was, instilling excessive trust. Tesla was ordered to pay over $240 million, which included about $43 million—one-third of the total compensatory damages—plus $200 million in punitive damages. This amounts to more than 300 billion won. Tesla, of course, is appealing this verdict. However, the two cases are not identical. While the Miami crash involved a driver who was distracted, this latest incident involved "active intervention," where the driver pressed the pedal all the way down for six seconds. Whether the logic that Tesla should have prepared for driver distraction also applies to a driver intentionally stepping on the accelerator is the key point to watch in this trial.

4. Eliminate the Pedals vs. Cameras Failing to See
When an accident occurs due to human intervention while using autonomous driving features, who should bear the responsibility, and to what extent? In response to this question, the U.S. government is currently moving in a surprising direction. On June 25, the NHTSA announced plans to eliminate the requirement to install brake pedals in "vehicles designed never to be driven by a human." The logic is that if a system is driving the car anyway, a human stepping on the pedal—whether by mistake or intentionally—could interfere with the system and actually be more dangerous. This logic fits eerily well when considering Butler's accident, as human intervention was indeed what caused the crash. While this is not yet finalized and is in the public comment phase until the end of this month, it is a clear signal that in the era of autonomous driving, "human intervention" is beginning to be viewed as a risk factor rather than a safety net. Yet, within the very same NHTSA, moves in the exact opposite direction are also underway. The Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) is conducting an intensive probe into Tesla's FSD. The core issue is that when cameras are blinded by glare or fog, FSD fails to even recognize that it cannot see and does not warn the driver. Nine crashes, including one fatal accident involving a pedestrian, have been identified, prompting the investigation office to place approximately 3.2 million Tesla vehicles under an investigation that is just one step away from a recall decision. Of course, one could argue that the rule to eliminate pedals applies to driverless vehicles with no driver's seat at all, while the investigation targets consumer vehicles, making them two entirely different matters. However, the brain of those driverless vehicles is an evolved version of the very FSD currently under investigation, and they rely on the exact same cameras to see the world. In essence, while one side is trying to eliminate pedals, saying "trust the machine, human intervention is dangerous," the other side is gathering evidence that "the machine does not even know when it is blind."

5. Model Y Ranks No. 1 in Sales: South Korea's Timeline
While Tesla has claimed that FSD is 10 times safer than human drivers, controversy continues over how these statistics are calculated.

[Elon Musk / CEO of Tesla (Source: YouTube Tesla): "In fact, I think it's worth emphasizing that Tesla's FSD is not just 'on par' with humans in terms of safety. Ultimately, it will be 10 times safer than a human."]

Tesla compared statistics where it only counted severe crashes in its own vehicles where airbags deployed against statistics for other cars that included minor accidents requiring a tow truck. A Reuters fact-check report revealed that when recalculated using the same standards, the claimed tenfold safety gap shrank to about threefold. Even more painful are the voices from within. Out of nine former Tesla employees who trained the AI by reviewing FSD driving footage daily, seven answered, "I would not trust this system with my life." What is certain is that before that verification is complete, autonomous driving is entering our lives, whether we want it to or not. In South Korea, FSD became available on some Tesla models starting late last year, and in May, the Tesla Model Y ranked first in domestic sales among all domestic and imported cars. It was the first time in history that an imported car or an electric vehicle took the top spot in sales. Starting in the second half of this year, 200 autonomous vehicles are scheduled to be deployed on the roads of Gwangju. As cars on the road gradually transition to autonomous driving, unexpected accidents are bound to happen. Who will be held responsible if autonomous vehicles crash into each other? What if one was self-driving and the other was driven by a human? This is why the Sentencing Commission of the Supreme Court of Korea brought this issue to the discussion table for the first time last month. At the current Level 3 stage, where the driver must intervene immediately when requested by the system, the core responsibility for an accident still lies with the driver. However, discussions have just begun on whether manufacturers and operators, rather than passengers, should bear responsibility starting from Level 4, where drivers do not even need to hold the steering wheel. There are numerous questions to address, such as whether a driver who still has a duty to keep their eyes on the road is truly free of all liability, and to what extent system operators should be held responsible if the network is disconnected or hacked. In announcing the plan to eliminate brake pedals, the NHTSA administrator said, "We are on the threshold of the greatest technological revolution since the Model T." More than a century after Ford's Model T introduced the assembly line and ushered in the "era of everyone driving," this revolution is heading in the opposite direction—toward an "era of no one driving." Before unexpected accidents catch society off guard, a deep discussion on human roles and responsibilities seems necessary.

Reported by Kim Tae-won | Written by Shin Hee-sook | Camera: Park Woo-jin, Kim Sang-yoon | Video Editing: Ryu Ji-soo | Graphics by Yang Hye-min | Assisted by Kim Hye-ju, Seo Byung-wook | Produced by SBS Digital News | Source: YouTube Tesla, CBS News