- A distracted Tesla Cybertruck owner allowed his truck to crash into a light pole.
- He admitted his fault for the accident and warned how easy it is to be complacent.
- This incident casts doubts about Tesla’s plan to launch autonomous taxis this year.
A Tesla Cybertruck driver says he lost focus and let his truck hop over a curb before slamming into a light pole. According to the owner, the vehicle was running Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) V13 software at the time. While he takes full responsibility for the crash, the incident raises an ongoing question: just how close are we to truly self-driving cars?
Tesla’s FSD (Supervised) is supposedly on the verge of achieving full autonomy—at least, that’s what Elon Musk recently claimed it will be capable of later this year in limited taxi-only use. This crash in Florida, however, doesn’t exactly support that optimism. According to the truck’s owner, Jonathan Challinger, who shared the incident on X, the wreck occurred when FSD failed to recognize the need to merge into another lane.
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Instead of merging, it drove up onto a curb and then smashed into a light pole. The damage was significant and likely will mark the last mile this Cybertruck ever travels. Thankfully, Challinger was unharmed apart from perhaps a blight to his ego.
“Big fail on my part, obviously. Don’t make the same mistake I did. Pay attention. It can happen. I follow Tesla and FSD pretty closely and haven’t heard of any accident on V13 at all before this happened. It is easy to get complacent now – don’t,” he said in part on X.
The reality of this whole situation is that it certainly casts (additional) doubt on Elon Musk’s claims that Tesla will launch fully autonomous taxis in just a few months. If the Cybertruck, a vehicle with countless miles of data racked up in the real world, can completely miss a curb and light pole, then things could be worse for a new vehicle using almost identical technology.
Kudos to the Tesla owner in this case at least admitting fault for not paying attention. At the same time, he becomes just one more excellent example that Level 2 semi-autonomous driving systems from any brand can lure drivers into a false sense of security.