A Silicon Valley tech executive is thankful to be alive after his self-driving Tesla drove him onto the tracks of a light rail service – forcing him to run a red light to avoid being hit by an oncoming train approaching, he said.
Jesse Lyu, founder and CEO of artificial intelligence startup Rabbit Inc, posted camera footage on social media Thursday showing how the self-driving software steered his Tesla onto the tracks of the Metro E line, which connects Santa Monica with downtown Los Angeles.
The clip begins with Lyu’s Tesla stopped at a red light. After the light turns green, Lyu’s Tesla, which is operated by the company’s semi-autonomous software system Full Self-Driving, turns left onto Colorado Avenue at the intersection.
However, instead of merging into the right lane, the car steers onto the road-type light rails that divide the road.
The tracks are surrounded from the road by a low concrete barrier, so Lyu was unable to simply cross into the next lane.
To make matters worse, there was a train that had stopped about a block behind his car.
“It’s just the madness of the king,” he said in the video. “I have nowhere to go. And, you can tell from the back…the train is right here.”
Lyu told SFGATE that he was “literally shaking.” That’s when he turned off the Autopilot function and ran the red light at the next intersection to get out of the way of the train.
Lyu posted the camera footage to his X account, where it has generated more than 747,000 views as of Monday.
In X’s post, he tagged Tesla CEO Elon Musk and asked the company to “fix it and make improvements.”
“I was shaking and had to run a red light to save my life,” he added.
In October, the federal agency responsible for regulating vehicle safety launched an investigation into 2.4 million Teslas equipped with FSD software after four reported crashes, including a fatal crash in 2023.
The new review of the advanced driver assistance system comes as Musk looks to shift Tesla’s focus to self-driving technology and robotics as it faces growing competition and weak demand in its auto business.
Tesla’s main competition in the self-driving category includes Alphabet-owned Waymo, Amazon’s Zoox and General Motors’ Cruise.
While Tesla relies on the use of cameras and artificial intelligence technology to translate images into driving decisions, other firms include systems and sensors such as radar, lidar and sophisticated maps to ensure safety and gain regulatory approval for vehicles. theirs without a driver.
Industry experts and engineers have said Tesla’s systems are cheaper but more flawed as they struggle with “edge cases” — or rare driving scenarios that self-driving systems and their human operators have to deal with. hard to predict.
The Post has sought comment from Tesla.
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