Sketchy incidents involving Tesla’s autonomous driving mode have been a recurring occurrence and this one is yet another prime example.
A video posted to Reddit shows a user driving his 2023 Tesla Model 3 in Full Self-Driving (FSD) mode when suddenly he sees a train crossing through the heavy fog. This is where he takes control and swerves to the right, crashing through the crossing and managing to narrowly miss the speeding train, but not without the car suffering major damage. The driver mentioned in a post that he escaped with only minor injuries.
Railroad crossings typically demand high awareness and attention from drivers for fairly obvious reasons. This is especially true when the weather conditions are not ideal such as in this particular case, where there is heavy fog. It’s never advisable for any driver to use their cruise control or adaptive cruise control systems in poor weather conditions, but this proves even further how important it is for drivers to maintain control and full attention to the surroundings even while using these systems.
What is most surprising is that the user claims this is the second time in the past six months this has happened while his Tesla was in FSD mode. Incidents like these call into question the efficacy of Tesla’s system because, in this case, if the user had acted even a second later, it would certainly have ended poorly.