Tesla Driver Issues Warning After His Cybertruck Totals Itself on "Full Self-Driving" Mode
The owner of a Tesla Cybertruck had a terrifying crash while using the carmaker's infamous "Full Self-Driving" (FSD) feature.
In a now-viral thread on X-formerly-Twitter, Florida-based owner Jonathan Challinger "crashed into a curb and then a light post" after failing to "merge out of a lane that was ending." His vehicle "made no attempt to slow down or turn until it had already hit the curb."
Challinger used the opportunity to issue a warning
"Big fail on my part, obviously," he tweeted. "Don't make the same mistake I did. Pay attention. It can happen."
"It is easy to get complacent now — don't," he added.
Puzzlingly, Challinger also took the opportunity to praise Tesla for "engineering the best passive safety in the world."
For years now, regulators have been investigating Tesla's driver assistance software, finding last year that owners like Challinger are often lulled into a false sense of security, in large part due to Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk's woefully misleading marketing.
Musk has promised that autonomous driving will be realized "next year" every single year for over a decade now.
But reality has struggled to catch up. Tesla currently still maintains that its FSD software requires drivers to be engaged and ready to take over at all times.
In practice, drivers like Challinger often zone out. Over the years, FSD and its overarching Autopilot suite have been linked to hundreds of crashes and dozens of deaths and have been implicated in countless lawsuits.
The timing of Challinger's easily avoided collision is especially noteworthy, considering Musk has promised that an "unsupervised" version of FSD will be made available later this year.
Challinger's comments also highlight a bizarre and difficult-to-reconcile loyalty to Tesla's brand and its mercurial CEO.
"I do have the dashcam footage," he wrote in his tweet. " I want to get it out there as a PSA that it can happen, even on v13, but I'm hesitant because I don't want the attention and I don't want to give the bears/haters any material."
"Spread my message and help save others from the same fate or far worse," he added.
Challinger's controversial account of the collision had other netizens shaking their heads.
"It's completely wild to me that the car's own built-in paid software totals an $80k vehicle and the owner's response is to say "thank you Tesla, the passive safety is so good," one Reddit user wrote in response. "Feels like satire, and yet here we are..."
"I don't understand how on current versions of FSD a person is able to look away from the road long enough to drive straight into a pole," another user wrote. "I can barely shoulder check a lane change without the eye tracking nagging at me. And it's at night too so it's not like they had sunglasses on."
The latest incident highlights some glaring shortcomings of the tech — and a baffling level of trust on the part of Tesla drivers.
More on FSD: Elon Musk Finally Admits That Teslas Don't Have What It Takes for Full Self-Driving
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