Tesla Owner Allows Car to Drive Him Home When He Was Too Drunk To Drive!
I have all sorts of misgivings about his story. Apparently, the owner of a Tesla 3 is bragging in the Twitter-verse about allowing his Tesla Full Self-Driving feature to get him home when he was incapacitated by the evening’s drinking session. In the Tweet, he started by saying he was “a little bit tipsy” after a Christmas celebration but then added, “I was probably drunk but turned on the FSD and it drove me home flawlessly”.
No no no no no no no pic.twitter.com/NUTlyrrIdQ
— Taylor Ogan (@TaylorOgan) January 1, 2023
Tesla’s Full Self-Driving mode, also known as FSD, is still at the testing stage and not currently sanctioned by any transport authority. A company communique describes the software as designed to “provide more active guidance and assisted driving under your active supervision”, according to the Tesla website, that is. Currently, it is this very software that is the focus of a federal criminal investigation in the US of A, which concentrates on whether the claim of “full self-driving capabilities” defrauds customers.
There seems to be a growing problem with the FSD. The American road safety people (NHTSA) are investigating 758 cases whereby owners said their vehicle on the autopilot system braked violently and unexpectedly while travelling at high speeds on a highway. One of these incidents was caught on camera in the San Francisco area when a phantom braking incident occurred, causing an eight-car pile-up that injured nine people.
There is also the case of a vehicular manslaughter charge trial about to begin in Los Angeles whereby the owner of a Tesla is claiming that the fatal crash was caused by the autopilot, which was turned on, and not by him, even though he was behind the wheel in a classic case of “who’s at fault, man or machine?” Currently, no Federal regulations govern the testing or partial roll-out of FSD on the roads of the US of A, and in a recent survey, 42% of Tesla owners routinely use their FSD as a fully self-driving feature when it is not.
It would seem that Tesla owners massively overestimate their vehicle’s capabilities, which may be of course why the NHTSA is investigating them. What I do know is that trusting Joe Public to behave responsibly is generally a bad idea.
