Tesla Model 3

The Tesla Model 3 driver was not paying attention to driving, crashed, and now wants to take the automaker and the city to court. However, it appropriately placed a portable traffic sign in front of the flood, which was the cause of the accident.

It is called “Autopilot” or “Full Self Driving” (orig. “Full Self Driving”), but it is “only” an advanced semi-autonomous driving system which, despite its misleading name, cannot be fully autonomous, cannot completely replace the driver. Another American was convinced of this the hard way when he ended up with his Tesla Model 3 in a giant puddle off the road.

The man, identified only as Ryan by the YouTube channel Wham Baam Teslacam, was driving at nearly 100 km/h on a road near Mono City, California. He passed a clearly visible “Flooded” sign indicating a flooded road.

Perhaps he counted on the fact that his car could read and did not react to the situation. But since cars can’t read that well – they can only handle some road signs and Teslas are no exception – the car didn’t respond to the sign either. So he entered the flooded section at an unchanged speed.

Aquaplaning probably followed, as the car swerved to the right shoulder in the water. The “autopilot” tried to correct it with the steering wheel – he made a mistake that human drivers are warned against by absolutely every mention of what aquaplaning is and what to do and not to do.

The wheels turned to the left after contact with the asphalt meant a sudden swerve of the car, but after a few meters another deep water awaited, due to which the car could not stay on the asphalt and went off the road into a puddle tens of centimeters deep. The Model 3 is not an all-terrain vehicle, and of course it could not drive out of a puddle so deep that the vehicle’s wheels cannot be seen.

According to Ryan, signs warning of a flooded road are a common sight, even if there is no flood behind them. So he wants to sue the city that placed the sign, as well as the Tesla car company, for not slowing down the car properly before the flood.

What are his chances of success is the question. The city has appropriately marked the dangers on the road, while Tesla, despite misleading marketing, states that Autopilot and Full Self Driving are only assistance systems, that they can make mistakes and that the driver must be ready to take control of the car at any time.

However, lawsuits related to these systems are quite frequent and often end badly for Tesla. Last year, a German court ruled in the Model 3 case that the automaker must return the purchase price of the car to the customer 67 thousand euros (approx. 1.6 million crowns at the exchange rate at the time) due to fundamental errors in the behavior of Autopilot.

But in another case, also in Germany, a court ruled that Tesla can use the names “Autopilot” and “Full Self Driving” despite the fact that its cars do not actually offer Autopilot or fully self-driving. According to the verdict, the target group of customers will understand that Teslas cannot drive completely autonomously.

However, criticism of Tesla’s driving assistants is not limited to Germany. In California, the State Department of Motor Vehicles called the name deceptive advertising. The American automotive organization AAA also stated in the past that many drivers do not even understand the functioning of adaptive cruise control, let alone more complex systems or their combinations, such as (but not only) Tesla offers.

Who do you think is to blame for the accident?

The driver because he didn’t pay attention to the signs

93,4%

The car company, because the self-driving car did not slow down

4,7%

The city because they don’t clean up the other flood warning signs

1,9%

Thank you for your vote.

A total of 107 readers voted.

2023-08-22 16:58:00
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