It is time for indictments. Seven months ago, I showed Tesla that their Full Self-Driving car would blow past a school bus with its lights flashing and stop sign extended. I also showed them tests where Full Self-Driving would run over a child crossing the road. I offered them any assistance they needed to reproduce our tests. Their response was to brand @realDawnProject’s tests as fakes, Elon Musk attacked me publicly, claiming I was “bat shit crazy”, and most importantly Tesla did not fix the critical safety defects.
According to a June 10, 2023, Washington Post article, on March 15, 2023, a Tesla running FSD ran down a child getting off a school bus whose lights were flashing and whose stop sign was extended. The child was seriously injured, and may never fully recover. The exact scenario we depicted with the result we predicted. Proving the relevance of our tests.
Tesla knew that FSD could kill children exiting a school bus, but they shipped it anyway, and inevitably tragedy ensued. In my experience Tesla Full Self-Driving drives like a drunk teenager. Knowingly selling a Full Self-Driving car with such serious safety defects by telling customers that it is 5 times safer than the average driver, is reckless endangerment. Why isn’t it being prosecuted?
Any respectable company would immediately recall any product with such glaring safety defects. And they would work at the highest priority to fix the safety defect as soon as possible. But not Tesla. Tesla is either unwilling or unable to fix this and hundreds of other equally terrifying safety defects that we have documented:
Drivers Have Reported Thousands Of Critical Safety Defects In Tesla’s Full Self-Driving Software
Tesla’s response is unacceptable for a US corporation. Tesla has not withdrawn its dangerous product from the market, nor has Tesla even stated that its engineering team is trying to fix it.
Tesla knows that its Full Self-Driving product has many safety defects that have led to many fatalities (at least 17 according to NHTSA, and 33 according to others), as well as many serious injuries, yet they refuse to take this product off the market.
I have been shouting from the rooftops for seven months about this. I’m not sure what else I am supposed to do. I brought this issue to everyone’s attention by running a full-page ad in the New York Times in November 2022:
When Tesla did nothing to fix the issue, I ran a Super Bowl commercial in February 2023 which showed real life footage of a Full Self-Driving Tesla blowing straight passed a stopped school bus with its lights flashing and stop sign extended as children were getting on:
Elon Musk’s response was to crow on Twitter that my Super Bowl commercial would “greatly increase public awareness that a Tesla can drive itself”:
Exactly. This will greatly increase public awareness that a Tesla can drive itself (supervised for now).
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 12, 2023
Tesla still did nothing. In March 2023, a self-driving Tesla ran down a child as they got off a school bus, just as I had warned would happen.
And three months later, in June 2023, a Full Self-Driving Tesla will still mow down a child getting off a school bus. We will demonstrate this again on June 22 for the world to see. We reiterate our open invitation to Tesla, Elon Musk, NHTSA, politicians, and the media to attend and witness our safety tests and see for themselves whether any of the safety defects we reported have been fixed.
I have also informed Tesla about many other safety critical defects in Full Self-Driving Teslas:
Critical safety issues revealed by The Dawn Project’s testing of Tesla Full Self-Driving
To date, Tesla has failed to fix these problems.
It seems almost unbelievable that a company as successful as Tesla has an engineering team that is so incompetent or corrupt that it would release a Full Self-Driving car for ordinary consumers to use on public roads without teaching the car what a Do Not Enter sign is:
Tesla and Elon Musk know that FSD has many safety defects that they haven’t fixed, yet they continue to sell FSD and have shipped it to 400,000 ordinary consumers despite knowing that many people have perished because they believed Tesla’s safety claims. Tesla has earned billions of dollars foisting a defective and dangerous “Full Self-Driving” car on the American public.
Tesla Full Self-Driving is showing the hallmarks of a criminal organization. Full Self-Driving must be disbanded. At this point, it is clear that the decisions they made on these safety critical issues are so far from the norm that these people can’t be trusted with the lives of the public. Any engineering process or corporation that fails to address issues this severe is clearly beyond repair.
It is now time to prosecute this enterprise, remove this defective and useless product from American roads, and hold those responsible to account before any more children are run down by self-driving Teslas as they get on or off a school bus.
Dan O’Dowd, Founder, The Dawn Project.