“Neighbors are brought to tears” according to local news that reports a Tesla was driving northbound directly at two 16-year old kids southbound on a scooter, brutally crashing.
Two teenage boys on an electric scooter were critically injured Tuesday when they were struck by a Tesla car in the city of Orange. The collision happened just after 2 p.m. on Hewes Street at Via Lardo Avenue, Orange police Lt. Phil McMullin said.
A witness in the ABC7 report says he watched the scooter in plain view of everyone from far away, and yet the Tesla continued driving towards them at a high rate of speed until impact, throwing them high into the air.
What’s particularly unsettling from initial reports is an apparent disconnect between what multiple witnesses plainly observed—kids visibly approaching southbound on a scooter—and the northbound Tesla failure to slow down or take any evasive action. While teenagers traveling the wrong direction on a scooter creates an initial hazard, the witness accounts indicate a complete absence of any defensive driving by the Tesla driver approaching them.

The violent nature of the impact—throwing the teenagers high into the air and leaving them critically injured—suggests minimal or no braking occurred. This incident raises serious questions about driver attention and the potential role of driver assistance technologies. Tesla’s Autopilot system has previously demonstrated detection difficulties with cross-traffic and smaller road users, including children, which warrants thorough investigation in this case.

The disturbing contrast between what was clearly visible to bystanders and the Tesla’s failure to respond demands both immediate police investigation and broader examination of how driver assistance systems perform in similar scenarios. This disconnect is precisely what has left neighborhood witnesses distressed and demanding answers.
This comes just days after an eerily similar crash in Northern California, as a Tesla critically injured a teen on a scooter.

And both of these bring to mind high-profile recent tests by an ex-NASA engineer who demonstrated why and how Tesla technology has serious blindness issues that put children in harms way.
