Texas Police will be serving Tesla search warrants to probe the car crash case that happened on Saturday. The accident occurred just north of Houston on Saturday night when a Tesla S Class vehicle driving at a high speed slammed into a tree and burst into flames.

Harris County Constable, Mark Herman says that according to the evidence and witness statements, there was nobody in the driver’s seat when it crashed. 

“We have witness statements from people who said they left to test drive the vehicle without a driver and to show a friend how it can drive itself,” Herman says. 

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The case is being investigated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)

Tesla’s Chief Elon Musk dismisses the idea that Tesla’s driving software is to be blamed. He tweets “Data logs recovered so far show Autopilot was not enabled & this car did not purchase FSD”(Full Self-Driving). 

Moreover, netizens from Twitterverse came out in support of the automobile tech giant, providing facts about the vehicle’s security system protocols.

A tweet in response to the Wall Street Journal’s report of the car crash aimed to rectify the accusations, pointing out that there are safety measures in place should an incident occur where the driver’s seat is unoccupied.

It further goes on to clarify certain assumptions about the semi-auto pilot system in the car, saying that the seats are weighted, the software has limitations that do not allow it to go beyond a specific speed limit, and an engaged autopilot requires that the driver place both their hands on the steering wheel every ten seconds, the lack of which would lead to disengagement of the autopilot. However, many Tesla drivers have reportedly been able to avoid putting their hands on the wheel for extended durations while using Autopilot.