News from the IT community on October 17th: The California Highway Patrol ( CHP ) released a dashcam video on October 15th local time. The video shows a Tesla driving at high speed on Interstate 80 into a closed area due to an accident, hitting a patrol car that was parked there, resulting in injuries to two officers inside the car.
The 22-year-old male driver from Sacramento told investigators that he had just fallen asleep at the time of the incident, and the vehicle was in a Full Self - Driving ( FSD ) driving state.
Public reports indicate that the accident occurred on the late night of October 13th local time, on the eastbound lane of Interstate 80, near Fairfield in Solano County, California, west of the Air Base Parkway exit.
About an hour prior to this incident, a fatal traffic accident occurred on the same route: a 19-year-old man was driving a 2007 Honda Civic. For unknown reasons, he lost control of the vehicle and subsequently collided with a 2017 Chevrolet Tahoe (Tahoe). The man was taken to the hospital but later died.
Following that fatal accident, the California police dispatched four highway patrol officers in three patrol cars to conduct an investigation at the scene, and they closed four eastbound lanes of traffic.
It is alleged that two officers were sitting in a Dodge Challenger (Charger) patrol car at the time. The Tesla vehicle involved in the incident then drove through the cones marking the closed section of road and collided with the patrol car at high speed. The entire collision was captured by the patrol car's dashcam as well as the camera of another vehicle present at the scene.
After the collision, the patrol car was pushed towards a trailer that was involved in the cleanup of the accident scene. Two officers were sent to a local hospital in Fairfield due to serious injuries and have since been discharged; however, the Tesla driver suffered only minor injuries.
In a video and statement released on October 15th, the California Highway Patrol emphasized that although Tesla labels this feature as "full autonomous driving," it is not a true autonomous driving system. The agency stated that this technology falls under the category of driving assistance features that require the driver to remain vigilant, and it does not relieve the driver of the responsibility to drive safely. They also reminded drivers to stay alert on the road, to slow down, and to be cautious when approaching accident scenes to avoid collisions.
The issue of Tesla's driving assistance system colliding with parked emergency vehicles has previously been investigated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in the United States. In August 2021, NHTSA launched an investigation into multiple incidents where Tesla cars collided with parked police cars, fire trucks, and other emergency vehicles, many of which occurred at night despite the presence of warning lights, lighting signals, and traffic cones at the scenes. In December 2023, Tesla recalled over 2 million vehicles and updated the software through a firmware update to add driver attention alerts and related control measures.
Similar accidents have occurred since then. According to The Verge, in June 2024, a Tesla equipped with FSD collided with a parked Fullerton police car, while the officer was dealing with another fatal accident at the time. This Fairfield incident once again brought into focus the driver supervision mechanism, the system's ability to recognize road closure signs, and the boundaries of the use of driving assistance functions.
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