- Video has emerged of a Tesla Model 3 behaving erratically after suffering a no-fault collision with a Jeep Wrangler in Nevada.
- The crunched Tesla begins ramming the Jeep after the impact then drives up a grass bank, but it’s not clear if driver error is to blame.
- Wrangler owner fled the scene but the incident was recorded by the Tesla and police have since tracked her down.
Electrical demons or driver error? That’s the question more than 13 million people have been chewing over after watching footage of a Tesla going haywire following a head-on collision in Nevada.
Footage from the Model 3’s dashcam shows it slowly approach a junction on Mount Charleston north west of Las Vegas when a Jeep Wrangler Rubicon suddenly appears in the left of the frame, coming in way too hot. The Jeep is trying to make the turn to head back the way the Tesla has come from, but is going too fast and understeers across the road, and straight into the innocent Model 3.
Related: Wrong-Way Tesla Driver Hits Five Cars In Orange County
Both drivers must have received a big shock from the impact, but what happens next is even more surprising. The Dual-Motor Long Range Tesla begins charging forward, ramming the Jeep out of the way, like he’s trying to escape the cops in a four-star GTA chase, then drives up a bank on the opposite side of the road, and back onto the asphalt facing the wrong way.
The footage ends there, but we know from a News 3 report that the Tesla driver, identified as 67-year-old Radu Stefan, was able to reverse back to the intersection. By the time he got there through, the Wrangler – which appears in the footage to have been almost totally unharmed by the collision – is nowhere to be found.
“We lost control of the car, the car went towards the mountain, and I was barely able to stop it at one point,” Stefan, now back home with his mangled EV, told News 3 reporters. “Because of the impact, something happened with the electric system or something, so we just suddenly accelerated.”
A Las Vegas couple needs help finding the driver of a white Jeep Rubicon that crashed into their Tesla head on at the Lee Canyon Rd and Deer Creek Rd intersection on Mount Charleston on Sunday, July 7.
— Cristen Drummond (@CristenDrummond) July 13, 2024
Their dash camera recorded the impact and aftermath. pic.twitter.com/9PpbPSLyqq
While some commenters on X believe his claim that the Tesla malfunctioned as a result of the impact and began accelerating forward by itself, most people who have seen the footage think that the Model 3 driver stomped on the gas pedal, probably mistaking it for the brake due to shock.
One simple way to find that out would be to have the Tesla’s black box interrogated to see which, if any, pedal the driver was pressing. But Stefan told News 3 that he had no plans to retrieve the data to find out what happened in the footwell. He also explained to reporters that his car doesn’t have Tesla‘s Full Self-Driving system.
There’s even some sympathy for the Jeep driver, despite her reckless driving being responsible for the initial accident, a few commenters saying she might have been scared that the Tesla was out of control and trying to ram her, so she fled for her own safety.
That line doesn’t seem to have washed with Nevada State Police, who have announced that they tracked down the Jeep owner, telling News 3’s Christine Drummond that “appropriate enforcement action has been taken regarding the driver.”
What do you think happened here? Was it a simple case of driver error?
