Elon, you did it again.
Or did you?
Tesla driver Scott Woods, a stan of the car manufacturer and personality behind the wildly popular Whole Mars Catalog on X, was enjoying a lovely (self) drive between San Francisco and Sausalito – until he wasn’t.
With Full-Self Driving (FSD) mode engaged, Woods encountered a construction site manned by a construction worker in a bright orange vest holding a stop sign.
Apparently this was too much for Tesla’s intricate software.
In a video posted to YouTube, Woods allows the vehicle to approach the worker, causing the steering to slouch left as if it were going to violate several traffic laws and simply go around the object (a human) in its path.
When the vehicle apparently realizes that won’t work, it stops in the middle of the road, straddling the yellow median line, in an apparent standoff between man and machine.
In this instance, man wins.
The construction worker continuously gestures for the Tesla to get off the road and into the diverted lane, while the car remains at a standstill.
Finally, after a long and awkward pause – and another approaching vehicle – Woods takes control of the situation and the steering wheel and maneuvers the Tesla out of the way.
The internet, as it is want to do, pounced.
Entrepreneur and Tesla critic Dan O’Dowd posted the video on X and was quick to call out Tesla CEO Elon Musk, saying “your defective software should be banned from public roads.”
He certainly wasn’t the only one to voice his concerns, but for now – after a fraud probe and several reported terrifying incidents, the self driving vehicles remain on the road.
The technology behind self driving is one of those things that is great until it isn’t; as long as everything on the road goes according to plan.
But when unusual situations come up – like, say, a construction site – come up, it often fails to deliver on its future-forward promise.
Take a look at the video to see the self-driving feature.
This once again proves that technology is great… until it isn’t.
If you enjoyed that story, check out what happened when a guy gave ChatGPT $100 to make as money as possible, and it turned out exactly how you would expect.