The government will close its investigation into the first Tesla Autopilot fatality

Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is expected to close a six-month investigation into the first Tesla Autopilot fatality without seeking a recall, according to a source briefed on the matter.

The auto safety agency did not find evidence of a defect that would have required a safety recall of the cars, the source said.

NHTSA will hold a press conference at 12 p.m. ET regarding the Tesla investigation.

Tesla’s Autopilot, introduced in October 2015, has been the focus of intense scrutiny since it was revealed in July that a Tesla Model S driver, Joshua Brown, was killed while using the technology in a May 7 collision with a truck in Florida.

The Tesla involved in the accident.National Transportation Safety Board

Brown was driving his 2015 Model S in Williston, Florida when a truck made a left turn in front of the car. The Model S then passed under the truck, with the bottom of the trailer striking the windshield. The Tesla then drove off the road and smashed through two fences before hitting a power pole.

Tesla wrote in a blog post at the time that the Autopilot system did not notice “the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky, so the brake was not applied.”

The accident is the first known fatality to occur while Tesla Autopilot was activated.

The driver of the truck, Frank Baressi, told the Associated Press in June that Brown was watching a “Harry Potter” movie at the time of the crash. Florida Highway Patrol spokeswoman Kim Montes told Business Insider that a DVD player was discovered at the scene, but could not confirm Baressi’s claims.

Tesla in September unveiled improvements to its Autopilot software, adding new limits on hands-off driving and other improvements that CEO Elon Musk has said likely would have prevented a fatality in May.

This story is developing.

Reporting by Reuters’ David Shepardson.