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A Washington driver’s Tesla literally made an entrance by swerving into someone’s garage door and smashing it completely open. Of course, because Tesla’s autonomous driving software has a reputation for making dumb errors and getting into accidents, they’re blaming it all on the car.
According to local reporting from King 5 News, the driver of the vehicle is claiming that Tesla’s self-driving mode “malfunctioned” before the crash on Monday, which police say they’re investigating.
A photo shows the red Tesla firmly lodged in the victimized garage, with the mangled remains of the garage door hanging around it. (A cop can be seen snapping a pic of the cartoonish spectacle, surely for official investigative purposes.)
Beyond the driver’s claims of deus ex machina, the details so far are mundane. Officers from the Redmond Police Department responded to the scene at around 11 AM, according to King 5. No injuries were reported, thankfully, and there were no indications that impairment was a factor.
The reporting states the driving mode in question was Tesla’s “autopilot system,” instead of the proper Autopilot, which is Tesla’s less advanced driving system. Full Self-Driving (Supervised) is Tesla’s more capable feature, although its name is a misnomer, since it’s not capable of fully driving itself and requires constant supervision. If Tesla’s driving software really was at fault, it’s easy to see how the driver may have been lulled into a false sense of security.
The software certainly has a track record of veering unexpectedly. Cars running Full Self-Driving have displayed such a proclivity for driving into the path of oncoming trains that federal regulators launched an entire investigation into this literal death-drive phenomenon. Earlier this year, a SpaceX engineer even shared footage showing how FSD suddenly turned and tried to drive straight into a lake, forcing them to intervene at the last moment.
More on self-driving: Waymo Pulled Its Cars From the Freeway After One Fled Police With Horrified Couple on Board
