Hacker Recovers Crash Data Tesla Said Was Lost in Fatal Pedestrian Case
Tesla was found partially liable in a 2019 wrongful death case involving an Autopilot-equipped vehicle in Florida and claimed it had lost critical crash data. A hacker subsequently recovered the collision snapshot from the vehicle's memory, contradicting Tesla's assertion that the data was permanently lost.
What happened
In a 2019 fatal pedestrian accident in Florida, Tesla claimed it had lost critical collision data from the vehicle. Tesla stated that the collision snapshot, which captured camera and sensor data from moments before and after the crash, was automatically deleted from the vehicle's memory after being uploaded to Tesla's servers, and the copy in the company's central database was intentionally deleted.
A hacker using the username 'greentheonly' recovered the collision snapshot data from a chip in the crashed vehicle. The data had been marked for deletion by Tesla but remained accessible on the vehicle's local storage system.
Reported impact
In court proceedings for the wrongful death lawsuit, Tesla told the court it had not hidden the data but had lost it. Tesla's attorney later acknowledged the company's data handling practices were 'inept' and admitted the data was recovered from the vehicle's local storage in another search.
Classification
Sources and evidence
Sources not yet published
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