See Autonomous Tesla Deliberately Crash Into A Gigantic Jet
Watch in utter bewilderment as an autonomous Tesla deliberately drives itself head-on into a luxury airliner.
This article is more than 2 years old
Tesla’s full self-driving feature that it outfits all of its cars with has gotten a lot of backlash in recent months over a multitude of safety concerns. A particularly damning incident occurred when a Tesla operating in full self-driving mode crashed head-on into the back of a parked police cruiser. However, the incident with the police car looks like a drop in the bucket compared to the latest in a string of alarming occurrences involving Teslas. Although, this time full-self driving is off the hook and another Tesla feature, Smart Summon, is in the hot seat. In a video that went viral, a Tesla driving autonomously by means of the Smart Summon functionality can be seen crashing into a $3.5 million jet. See the whole jaw-dropping accident transpire below.
In a sight certainly worth describing, you can clearly see a Tesla Model Y careen right into the tail end of a jet parked in the center of a tarmac. The jet that endured the blow was a Cirrus Vision which weighs in at an immense 1.5 tons. The Tesla, sans driver, in perhaps what amounts to the car’s determination to stay its course, effectively spins the aircraft nearly 180-degrees.
The accident occurred at an airplane expo hosted by aircraft manufacturer Cirrus. The Vice reported that an attendee at the event inadvertently caused the accidents after employing the Smart Summon feature. Essentially, Smart Summon serves the function of allowing a Tesla owner to call their vehicle to them. When activated the feature allows the Tesla to move from the place it’s at to its owner without needing a driver to be behind the wheel. It was developed for use in places like parking lots and long driveways. Tesla specifically highlights on its website that the feature should only be engaged in places where the “…surrounding area is familiar and predictable.” It seems like the owner of that Model Y may not have gotten that memo since they seemingly thought it a good idea to use the Smart Summon functionality around multi-million dollar transportation vessels.
The whole incident involving the Tesla colliding with an airplane is a good indication that the Smart Summon feature has a lot of kinks that need to be fully addressed before someone can likely feel confident enough to employ it on a regular basis. In fact, the latest demonstration of Smart Summon’s innate fallacies is one in a long line of accidents caused by the feature. YouTube personality Chris Majestic documented just how nerve-wracking using Smart Summon can be. Take a look at his car’s near-miss in his video below.
Thankfully the Tesla airplane collision and most other Smart Summon-related incidents have turned out to be mostly comical and costly than overtly dangerous. Hopefully, the owner of the Tesla that crashed into the jet has an insurance package comprehensive enough to cover all the damage done to the luxurious airliner. All in all, if nothing else, the whole event can serve as a sobering reminder that most machines still benefit from having an actual person calling the operational shots. It seems like machines still need man, at least for now.
