I know a guy who puts on sunglasses and sleeps while his cybertruck is in self driving mode on the highway. I assume all Teslas are death machines and avoid them as much as possible.

Holy fucking shit that is terrifying report that guy to the police he is going to get people killed.

He drives a cybertruck in Texas, no one will do shit to him.

"The Tesla's facial scanner determined the victim was a registered Democrat."

Texas is a deathcult desperately trying to convince everyone it is just another shithole.

Tesla has the highest crash rate of any brand, 2023-2026.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevebanker/2025/02/11/tesla-again-has-the-highest-accident-rate-of-any-auto-brand/

17 NTHSA investigations went poof under DOGE.

Which is crazy that they beat out the Dodge Ram, the previous contender

Maximum overdrive ass headline

I fucking book it if I see one. Death knives on wheels.

The sad irony with the human specie is how we collectively believe and engage in systems that get proven times and again that never work the way they are advertised for. but we still believe in the fairness of the justice system and the illusions of the power in the hands of the people in representative democracies.

If anyone of us has made their own self-driving system. embedded it in our cars and run someone over. we sure would be spending the rest of our lives in jail. But if a multi billionaire gets a license from bureaucrats, they car sell their cars and run over many people without anyone spending one night in jail. Rich people are always exempt from punishment.

If anyone of us has made their own self-driving system. embedded it in our cars and run someone over. we sure would be spending the rest of our lives in jail. But if a multi billionaire gets a license from bureaucrats, they car sell their cars and run over many people without anyone spending one night in jail. Rich people are always exempt from punishment.

Hell, if you are starving to death and you rob a gas station just so you can literally eat and survive to the next day you will be punished more severely. We live in the theater of the absurd.

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”

“And, while it was regarded as pretty good evidence of criminality to be living in a slum, for some reason owning a whole street of them merely got you invited to the very best social occasions.”

and more to the point...

"Indeed, if a poor man will spend a year in prison for stealing out of hunger, how high would the gallows need to be to hang the rich man who breaks the law out of greed?"

~Discworld novels

"Police say the vehicle was being driven when a pedestrian tried to cross a highway at night and struck him." But that wouldn't be a story, would it?

I'm anything but a Tesla cheerleader, but this story is a picture perfect example of how the internet has ruined our ability to calculate risk and fucked our risk tolerance. "Man who was cold-stone sober ran over a pedestrian with a Kia in broad daylight.", would be a blurb on your local news station, if it was reported at all.

Tesla heavily leans into the idea that it is selling self driving cars, both parties are culpable.

That's the DUI truck of choice! Takes work to outcrash that demographic.

When it comes to DUIs, BMW drivers rank first by far, with 4.8 DUIs per 1,000 drivers. Notably, this is more than double the rate of the next highest brand, Ram, at 2.2 DUIs per 1,000 drivers. Buick (1.7) ranks third.

https://www.lendingtree.com/insurance/brand-incidents-study/

Ultimately from the same source, but more up to date. It also has Tesla third in incident rates, behind BMW and Ram.

I'm so jaded by the blinding headlights that I'll now go out of my way to fuck with them when they come up on my ass and follow too closely while refusing to pass. like get your fucking floodlights out of my cabin mf, or at least back off a second or two if you're just gonna follow me, being this close accomplishes nothing but stokes the fire of road rage

keeps me entertained and engaged on long drives, rather than zoning out.

Well, I mean, maybe their DUI crash rates would be lower if BMWs came with turn signals installed. /s

I've got no love for Tesla and even less for FSD. But a pedestrian crossing one of the widest spots on one of the largest freeway in the nation in the middle of the night…

...was not the person responsible for operating an immense metal box capable of killing with ease in a safe manner.

Could have been a deer and a very a similar situation, it is still on the driver even if you can also argue it is on the person the driver hits. The pedestrian didn't introduce a weapon threatening to go out of control, the driver did.

71 year old crossing I-80 at 2am sounds like a potential dementia case, sadly. Also still the driver’s responsibility, 100% skill issue

And yet… Hitting people with cars doesn’t become OK in certain times/places.

Point being, my car is driven by me. If I kill someone it wouldn't make news. Because a self-driving Tesla did it, AH! So which is truly more dangerous? I suspect there's not enough data yet to day, and I'll be fucked if I trust Tesla's self reporting.

Whether hitting people with cars is a news story or not is the whole point. The point you skipped right over.

I won't even use cruise control. I can't imagine giving this kind of control to an ai.

Agree with you. I don't care how good a person's reflexes are. If your car is traveling at 70 mph, you are not going to be able to avoid hitting someone who chooses to cross an interstate highway in the dead of night. A human driver would have hit the person too. This is just bad journalism with a sensationalized headline.

No, it doesn't become okay, but the situation is quite different depending on the context surrounding the hit.

A pedestrian crossing a dark highway at night, is a completely different situation than someone being hit in a well lit downtown area or even a neighborhood.

Context does matter, even if it doesn't make a difference for the outcome.

Deer are regularly killed by drivers, we call it roadkill.

Is it really legal to cross an interstate on foot? You're not even allowed to drive slow vehicles on big highways in some countries, let alone walk on them. It's dangerous, that's why there are usually barriers to discourage you from doing so.

This is very different from an accident on roads meant to be shared between cars and pedestrians and cyclists

Do we know if the person ran onto the road or if the driver actually had time to react?

You’re absolutely right, it’s still 100% the responsibility of the driver, FSD or not. I’m no fan of FSD, in part because of situations like this.

But your hatred of cars is clouding your judgment here. Calling all cars “weapons” has some merit where cars and pedestrians/cyclists have to co-exist, but on freeways such as this where pedestrians are legally prohibited it falls a little hollow. That someone was crossing 12+ lanes of protected freeway (meaning is separated by fences or walls) at 2:35am is very very unexpected, making it more of an outlier than indicative of anything. It also points to mental health or some other impairment of this 71 year old person, which like you said could’ve been a deer or something.

Like it or not (I’m guessing you do not, and I don’t blame you) this happened in a car-centric area; I only bring that up because I think it’s reasonable to not expect pedestrians where they are legally prohibited. Of course, that does NOT resolve the driver of any responsibly, but it does explain it a bit.

No question.

I’m just saying there’s a lot of reasons to hate Musk/Tesla/FSD (and I do), but this particular incident isn’t at the top of my list.

We have to both acknowledge that this isn’t the smoking gun against FSD, but that FSD could (and does) lead to inattention and that could’ve played a part.

Calling all cars “weapons” has some merit *anywhere they are moving fast enough to hurt and kill.

I am not saying it should or shouldn't be legal to be a pedestrian in that environment I am saying that doesn't make the driver not responsible for controlling their vehicle.

I see that you cannot accept nuance.

Cars will never not exist. They should exist less and not interfere with other human friendly modes of transportation. That is a reasonable goal.

That goal requires specific places cars go, and for other people’s safety, people on foot do not.

A highway where (in my state) it is illegal to be walking, is not where the people go.

Thats a bad decision on the person walking and a bad decision by the driver, but fundamentally if you assign cars go quickly from point A to B on highways designed for cars… don’t walk there.

the few times i was able to see drivers of CT, are usually the type you describe, right wing maga douche looking people. the only other group to drive these are ignorant asian people who loves teslas(they dont care about MUsk drama)_

they have a barely functioning power grid, but i heard AUSTIN is pretty much up to par, because its a blue area.

A child actually.

havnt you learn anything in driving tests, maybe you should retake it, pedestrians always get the right of way.

matter of time he gets into a car crass causing death or is killed, and then the family will blame tesla.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/09/aftermarket-driver-assist-under-federal-probe-following-fatal-crashes/

Austin is cool in the way a cool spaceship landed on the surface of a hostile landscape is cool, like yes definitely but...

funny how NHTSA's multiple investigations for Tesla went poof after DOGE but these are fine

I'm glad you brought up the driving tests. Maybe you should reread it.

Vehicle Code § 21954
(a) Every pedestrian upon a roadway at any point other than within a marked crosswalk or within an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection shall yield the right-of-way to all vehicles upon the roadway so near as to constitute an immediate hazard.

Of course, importantly subsection (b) goes on to say:

The provisions of this section shall not relieve the driver of a vehicle from the duty to exercise due care for the safety of any pedestrian upon a roadway.

So we're in full agreement the driver (or vehicle operator, in this case) is 100% responsible for avoiding the pedestrian. But I wouldn't say the pedestrian "had the [legal] right of way." Certainly not on the freeway.

To wit,

Vehicle Code § 21960
(a) … prohibit or restrict the use of the freeways, expressways, or any portion thereof by pedestrians …

I wanna know what an 80 year old man was trying to cross an interstate. Was this suicide or a Darwin Award. As much as I want to shit in Tesla this is an instance where I don’t think I can. Old dude was playing frogger and did not make it to the log part of the game

It seems the driver OR autopilot tried swerving but was too late. We have no idea which one it was.

If I straight up jump in front of you, are you immediately at fault when you don't have time to make an evasive maneuver? Perhaps let's not pass judgement without seeing the video.

The thing is. If musk didnt insist on using vision only systems and used lidar or radar like evey other driving assist system... that person would have been seen by the system.

The thing is. If musk didnt insist on using vision only systems and used lidar or radar like evey other driving assist system… that person would have been seen by the system.

Are you sure about that?

The CHP said it reviewed dashcam footage of the crash showing the Tesla traveling around 70 miles per hour when the pedestrian walked onto the freeway from the right shoulder.

It also showed the “Tesla’s brakes being applied as the vehicle steered to the left in an effort to avoid the pedestrian,” it said in a statement on social media, as quoted by ABC 7. “Despite these evasive actions, the right front portion of the Tesla struck the individual.”

That certainly seems to me that the person was noticed and action was taken to avoid them. LIDAR isn't going to make a difference for a person on the side of the road suddenly entering the roadway in front of the vehicle. Waymo vehicles use LIDAR, and a man was hit in Dallas by one just a couple months ago, despite the Waymo system both seeing them and slowing down.

Waymo has indicated that their vehicle was moving at 24mph and detected the pedestrian had entered the roadway on the other side, when it was about 150 feet away, and anticipated he might attempt to cross the street into the Waymo’s lane. It immediately slowed in anticipation of that crossing. According to security camera video, the man and a companion had just left a store, and the victim stepped into the street, and was struck from behind shortly after.

That person wasn't even directly next to the Waymo entering the highway lanes like with this Tesla, it saw them when they were on the opposite side of the roadway and yet it still struck them.

LIDAR is not a magical solution to not hit people stepping into traffic to cross a road nowhere near a crosswalk.

Thats a lot of words attempting to put words in my mouth. I never said compelete avoidance could be made. But what reason can be made to be purposely limiting a system by removing information. The point of self driving vehicle is to be better than humans. So if they cant spot a person before a human, whats the point.