If you can’t drive a car on a perfectly straight stretch of road, maybe you shouldn’t have a driver’s license. That includes the driver of the Tesla Model 3 in the video below.
We stumbled across this clip on Reddit and the title really says it all: “Tesla hits center divider, keeps on going.”
The incident was filmed on the dashcam of a nearby driver and shows a grey Tesla Model 3 cruising down the motorway in the left lane. As the electric sedan appears to accelerate, it slowly drifts towards the concrete center divider and smashes into it. The car’s brakes rapidly flick on and off before the driver continues on their merry way.
The crash raises a number of questions. Was Autopilot engaged? Was the driver distracted? Was he/she driver falling asleep at the wheel?
It’s impossible to know if Autopilot was engaged from the video alone, but we would be surprised if it was. After all, the motorway had clear markings and while Autopilot is far from perfect, it does do a good job of keeping vehicles in the appropriate lane on motorways like this.
What’s more likely is that the driver was distracted. Who knows if they were talking on their phone, looking at the infotainment screen or doing something else, but the way in which the car was brought back under control suggests the driver felt the thump against the divider and quickly regained control of the Model 3.
Something also worth pondering is why the driver didn’t immediately try and make their way across traffic and into an emergency lane to assess the damage, which we presume is what almost anyone would do.
https://youtu.be/3kRkuLduVR4