Tesla car crash: First victim named after two die when vehicle hits tree in Texas

One of the victims killed in last week's Tesla car crash in Texas, which police suspect to have involved the vehicle's autopilot mode, was William Varner, a 58-year-old anaesthesiologist, his employer said. In the incident on Saturday, two men were killed after their 2019 Tesla Model S, travelling at a high speed, failed to negotiate a curve and crashed into a tree, catching fire, police reports noted. According to the police, one of the victims was found in the passenger seat and the other in the back seat, while nobody was at the driving seat at the time of impact, raising doubts on the involvement of the car's autopilot mode. However, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted on Monday saying that data logs retrieved from the crashed car by the company ruled out the use of the autopilot system. "Data logs recovered so far show Autopilot was not enabled ... Moreover, standard Autopilot would require lane lines to turn on, which this street did not have," he tweeted.