Tesla denied having fatal crash data until a hacker found it

The data was key evidence in the death of a pedestrian in 2019.

Jonathan M. Gitlin – Aug 29, 2025 2:48 PM

At the beginning of the month, Tesla was found partly liable in a wrongful death lawsuit involving the death of a pedestrian in Florida in 2019. The automaker—which could have settled the case for far less—claimed that it did not have the fatal crash's data. That's until a hacker was able to recover it from the crashed car, according to a report in The Washington Post.

In the past, Tesla has been famously quick to offer up customer data stored on its servers to rebut claims made against the company. But in this case, the company said it had nothing. Specifically, the lawyers for the family wanted what's known as the "collision snapshot," data captured by the car's cameras and other sensors in the seconds leading up to and after the crash ...

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/08/how-a-hacker-helped-win-a-wrongful-death-lawsuit-against-tesla/