A Texas man is facing manslaughter charges for flooring his Tesla into a grandmother’s home, exposing how quickly the establishment press blames Elon Musk’s technology for human recklessness.
When a Tesla crashes, the media’s anti-Musk reflex kicks in before the facts are in. But the arrest of 44-year-old Michael Butler proves what skeptics already suspected: the driver, not the software, made the lethal choice. For ordinary Americans, this is just the latest example of institutional media sacrificing truth to fit their anti-tech narrative.
On June 19, Butler’s Tesla Model 3 plowed through the front wall of a home in Katy, Texas, killing 76-year-old Martha Avila. The Guardian framed the crash around Butler’s claim that he was using self-driving mode, burying the critical override context deep in the story while instead highlighting the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s nearly 50 investigations into Tesla crashes. The press was eager to indict the algorithm.
But the Daily Caller reported the receipts. Harris County Deputy Jae Philippar reviewed the vehicle data and stated that "in about six seconds, the accelerator pedal was pressed all the way down to 100%, 'pedal to the metal' and the vehicle reached a speed of 73 miles per hour, more than double the speed limit on the residential street." The software didn't malfunction; the driver manually overrode it. Butler, who was making DoorDash deliveries at the time, had even searched for ways to make Tesla’s Full Self-Driving mode more "aggressive," showing "apparent frustration" with the system's built-in safety limits.
Tesla’s vice-president of artificial intelligence software, Ashok Elluswamy, confirmed the data on X, stating the driver "manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100% of the accel pedal in [the] residential area." Musk himself simply posted: "this was a high speed crash!"
The facts didn't stop Avila’s family from filing a $1 million wrongful death lawsuit against Tesla alleging gross negligence, dragging the manufacturer into a tragedy caused by a lead foot. Now, both the NTSB and NHTSA are investigating, adding bureaucratic scrutiny to an incident where the driver effectively disabled the very safety tech being blamed.
Texas law defines manslaughter as recklessly causing a death. Butler is currently jailed on a $150,000 bond. The tech isn't the driver; the driver is the driver. As long as the press treats every Tesla crash as an indictment of Musk rather than the person behind the wheel, the truth will always take a back seat to the narrative.
