One unlucky driver has bizarrely twisted their misfortunes by thanking Tesla on social media, as they don’t seem too bothered that the company’s self-driving technology caused their Cybertruck to crash into a light pole.
Full self driving tech, otherwise known as FSD within the Tesla ecosystem, is the electric vehicle manufacturer’s pathway into the future.
It allows select users who have forked up cash for the add-on package to let their car do the work, as the hands-free system utilizes several cameras dotted around the vehicle alongside complex neural networks in order to drive without assistance.
It has had its fair share of controversies, including instances of running red lights, delayed promises, and dangerous crashes, but studies show that in all but three instances, self-driving vehicles are safer than their human-operated counterparts.
That wasn’t quite the case for Tesla enthusiast Jonathan Challinger though, as he shared his unfortunate experience with FSD on Elon Musk’s own social media platform X.
“Soooooo my Tesla Cybertruck crashed into a curb and then a light post on v13.2.4,” Challinger reveals. “It failed to merge out of a lane that was ending (there was no one on my left) and made no attempt to slow down to turn until it had already hit the curb.
“Big fail on my part, obviously. Don’t make the same mistake I did. Pay attention. It can happen. I follow Tesla and FSD pretty closely and haven’t heard of any accident on V13 at all before this happened. It is easy to get complacent now – don’t.”
While the story itself alongside the gnarly picture of the aftermath are understandably shocking, what’s perhaps most surprising though is Challinger’s response to the crash.
Instead of lashing out at Tesla for their tech leading to a brutal crash, he bizarrely thanks the company for the ‘safety’ of the Cybertruck.
“Thank you Tesla,” he pleaded, “for engineering the best passive safety in the world. I walked away without a scratch.”
It might seem like a strange response, but you can understand where Jonathan is coming from here. He must have been going at quite the speed to do the damage that we can see, yet emerging unscathed shows the potential protective power of Tesla’s vehicles – especially the Cybertruck which has been criticized for its unsafe features in the past.
This prompted a similar reaction following the Cybertruck explosion outside of Trump Tower late last year, as many remarked on the car’s ability to contain the large blast within its shell.
Challinger ‘thanked’ Tesla for building a passive safety system that left him unharmed following the crash (X/@MrChallinger)
He has had to deal with a fair amount of pushback for his strange reaction though, with one user joking: “Thank you Tesla… for making a car that crashed itself.”
Another pointed out: “I doubt if this ‘passive safety’ would have helped a pedestrian who that f****** monstrosity crashed into,” although Challinger argues that if a pedestrian had been there, the situation would have been averted due to FSD’s training on pedestrian interactions compared to those with a utility pole.
It does also challenge the argument that some other Tesla drivers have brought up, where they imagine a world of FSD-operated cars without a single crash.
One driver in particular has pointed out their own anxieties about manually driving after using FSD most of the time, but at least you aren’t likely to drive head first into a pole for no reason when you’re in control of the wheel yourself.
Featured Image Credit: @MrChallinger/X
