A hacker found Tesla's "lost" accident recording

Tesla was found partially liable in a wrongful death lawsuit related to a crash that killed a pedestrian in Florida in 2019.

In that lawsuit, the company claimed it didn't have critical data related to the incident. However, according to The Washington Post, a hacker recovered the data from the vehicle involved in the accident.

Crash record deleted

The lawsuit sought a "crash recording" containing data from the vehicle's cameras and sensors immediately before and after the crash. However, the company alleges that this recording was marked for deletion from the vehicle's local storage immediately after it was uploaded to Tesla's servers after the crash.

According to the report, someone at Tesla took a deliberate step to delete the copy from the company's central database.

When police took the car's damaged multimedia system and autopilot control unit to a Tesla technician for examination, they were told the local copy was unsalvageable.

However, a hacker on social media discovered that the data was still in the vehicle and recovered the crash recording.

"WE DID NOT HIDE IT, WE LOST IT"

Speaking in court, Tesla claimed it didn't store the data, but rather lost it. The company's lawyer called Tesla's data management practices "inept."

"We didn't think we had it, but then we found out we did. We're glad we did, because it's a really useful piece of information," said attorney Joel Smith.