Redazione RHC : 31 August 2025 15:42
An independent hacker has uncovered hidden data related to a fatal accident involving a Tesla in Florida in 2019, reigniting the debate over the automaker’s transparency and setting an unprecedented legal precedent.
The incident dates back to April 25 of that year, when a Tesla car struck two pedestrians in Key Largo, killing one person and injuring another. As per internal procedure, the data recorded by the vehicle was transferred to Tesla’s servers, while local copies were deleted, making it impossible for investigators and the victims’ lawyers to immediately access crucial information about how Autopilot worked.
For months, Florida authorities tried in vain to reconstruct the data, relying on technical support from Tesla service centers. However, their efforts proved insufficient: the files were corrupted, and attention focused more on the navigation system than on the assisted driving logs, raising suspicions that a software update had erased crucial evidence. On the eve of the trial, the legal team representing the families involved decided to refer to an external expert, known online as “greentheonly,” known for his reverse engineering of the car manufacturer’s systems.
The hacker, who was provided with the hardware, managed to recover the data thought to be lost within a few hours. In a Miami bar, working on a simple laptop, he managed to uncover recordings relating to the impact, including the precise position of pedestrians and the behavior of the vehicle at the time of the collision. This information also allowed him to reconstruct a detailed video of the scene, with distance measurements and dynamics that would otherwise be impossible to prove.
In court, the data regained a central role. Tesla’s lawyer called the internal management of the information “clumsy” but denied any intention to conceal evidence. The manufacturer’s defense insisted on the responsibility of the driver, accused of distraction, and that any delays or failures to provide the data were involuntary. The victims’ families argued the opposite, citing a systemic lack of transparency and a strategy aimed at downplaying the role of Autopilot.
The jury ultimately found Tesla 33% responsible for the accident, ordering it to pay $243 million in damages and requiring the company to also cover the costs of data recovery. The ruling, while not finding any intent, represented a key step in affirming the importance of preserving and making digital records accessible in legal cases involving driver-assisted vehicles.
The case has raised concerns about what may happen in the future. The hacker himself warned that a similar intervention today would be much more complex, as Tesla has since tightened controls and made unauthorized data extraction more difficult. The episode, in addition to setting an important legal precedent, fuels the global debate on the relationship between technological innovation, road safety, and corporate transparency in the face of accidents involving advanced driving systems.
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