New York, May 30, 2021: A TikTok video clip that went viral over the weekend, with over 2million Likes and 105,000 shares, shows three young men shown dancing in the seats of a Tesla, beers nearby, with no one behind the wheel and a Justin Bieber soundtrack in the background.
The vehicle moves down the highway near other cars at 65 miles per hour, as shown on the speedometer. This is just one of many similar ones on social media. Such behavior is completely illegal and flouts the instructions of the automaker, which says on its website that Tesla’s driver-assistance system is “intended for use with a fully attentive driver, who has their hands on the wheel and is prepared to take over at any moment.”
Tesla, along with its “Autopilot” system, which matches a vehicle’s speed to that of surrounding traffic and assists in steering within a clearly marked lane, also offers what it calls “full self-driving capability.” That program’s capabilities include helping park a car, maneuver a vehicle in and out of a tight parking space and guide a car from a highway on-ramp to an off-ramp. Tesla will alert the driver and ultimately disengage the self-driving system if the driver’s seatbelt is not buckled, or if the hands of the driver are not detected on the steering wheel.
Apparently these protections are little match for motorists bent on misusing the vehicles though. Earlier in the year, the magazine Consumer Reports released a video in which an incredulous tester easily duped a Tesla into driving with no one at the wheel. “Idiots will be idiots, they will find a way to trick the system and that’s not Tesla’s fault, they can put a bunch of other things here people will just defeat it,” a poster calling himself “Dirty Tesla” said in a video on his YouTube page, which has 55,000 subscribers.
The company itself though, has been less than clear, directing users to follow the rules even as it employs confusing terminology for its driver-assistance programs, and as its leader, Elon Musk, makes sweeping statements about the technology. Musk early this year predicted the company’s vehicles would achieve Level 5 autonomy, or full self-driving, in 2021. Yet in 2015, the billionaire had said that goal would be reached within two years.
A series of fatal crashes have raised suspicions that Tesla’s technology may have been misused. On April 17, two people were killed near Houston after a Tesla smashed into a tree. A preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board did not weigh in on whether anyone was behind the wheel. Local police had said nobody was in the driver’s seat. In a fatal crash in May near Los Angeles also under investigation, the driver had posted images on social media of himself driving his Tesla without his hands on the wheel. In spite of billions of dollars spent thus far, automakers have yet to produce a vehicle with full autonomy.
In Tesla’s case, Level 2 autonomy has been reached under the scale of the Society of Automotive Engineers, far from full autonomy and requiring a person in the driver’s seat who can take control if necessary. California regulators have said they are reviewing whether Tesla’s marketing misleads consumers, since the law “prohibits a company from advertising vehicles for sale or lease as autonomous unless the vehicle meets the statutory and regulatory definition of an autonomous vehicle,” according to the Department of Motor Vehicles.
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