“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.
This incident highlights our problematic car-centric infrastructure and mindset. While the teens were being teens and doing the wrong things they do, our streets are designed primarily for cars, with other users treated as criminals who must bear full responsibility for any interactions. Mistakes at 16 years old don’t have to be capitol punishment. The violence of this collision – teens thrown 15 feet in the air – reflects a whole system failure more than individual errors. Should Tesla be allowed to operate on Autopilot at all? In countries with “STOP THE CHILD MURDER” principles, infrastructure separates vulnerable users from the inherent danger of vehicles, speeds are lower in mixed-use areas, and drivers are trained and expected to anticipate and avoid collisions with more vulnerable road users regardless of right-of-way. And let’s not forget Tesla promised it was the safest car on the road and would stop all crashes five years ago. The criminalization of children playing diverts attention from the fundamental issues: dangerous street design, excessive vehicle speeds, and a legal framework that doesn’t adequately protect vulnerable users who actually need the protections not the Tesla owners. Rather than asking why kids were on the road, why aren’t kids covered in armor when they play, we should ask why our roads remain so deadly for anyone not in a bulletproof car, and why basic and obvious defensive driving isn’t more rigorously enforced when lives – especially children’s lives – are at stake. Let’s seize the recorders on that Tesla and see just how fast and how close it was heading into the path of kids guilty of doing wrong things.