On November 24, an 8-car pile-up happened in San Francisco, USA after a Tesla Model S abruptly changed lanes and then braked suddenly to a complete halt. Although the incident happened several months earlier, it trended recently after CCTV footages had emerged, showing that the Tesla really did brake for no reason.

The incident happened on a tunnel in San Francisco Bay Bridge, left 9 people injured, including a 2-year old. The driver of the Tesla claims that he had left the car to drive in Full Self Driving (FSD) mode, which meant that he had transferred control of steering, acceleration, and braking to the car’s computer.

A Subaru WRX narrowly avoided the carnage, thumbs up to the driver for the excellent defensive driving and early use of hazard lights to warn the cars behind. The Subaru drove away unscatched, with the hazards still flashing.

USA safety regulator NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Authority) is investigating the incident.

FSD is a controversial feature because it is marketed as a self-driving feature, but Tesla’s own legal fine print say it isn’t.

Not to be confused with Auto Pilot, which is no different from lane keeping assist and adaptive cruise control features available in many regular cars these days, FSD adds additional capability of changing lanes and exiting highways.

FSD is a USD 15,000 feature and has more than 285,000 paid users as of December 2022.

However, FSD is still in Beta testing stage, which means that Tesla makes it very clear that there are still bugs to be worked out, and drivers who sign up for the feature has agreed to not complain but help Tesla improve the feature. This also means that 285,000 Tesla fans paid the equivalent of a new Nissan Almera (Versa) in USA so they can use a flawed feature. Amazing brand loyalty.

Unfortunately for the cars that followed behind the buggy Tesla, the flawed Tesla messed up their Thanksgiving season holiday plans.

Tesla fans will insist that Tesla has the most advanced technology and is the closest to realizing a true self-driving car but to date, no government authority has recognized Auto Pilot or FSD to be anything more than a Level 2 system, which means that Auto Pilot / FSD is no different from a regular Honda Sensing or Subaru EyeSight or Toyota Safety Sense feature, at least not in the eyes of the law.

Globally, there are only 2 car companies with road-legal Level 3 semi-autonomous driving technology – Mercedes-Benz and Honda.

Mercedes-Benz’s Drive Pilot is the world’s only internationally recognized Level 3 semi-autonomous driving feature. The feature is available in S-Class and EQS models sold in Europe and USA.

The Japanese market’s Honda Legend with Sensing Elite is the other road, but this feature is only available in Japan.

Audi too had presented a working Level 3 semi-autonomous driving prototype, an A8 with Traffic Jam Pilot but the feature never received regulatory approval and has since been abandoned by the company.