Tesla’s fraudulent practices are evident through a tragic incident involving a drunk driver in a Tesla who rammed into a motorcyclist at almost 100 mph while running a red light, resulting in the motorcyclist’s death. This event highlights several dangerous aspects of Tesla’s approach to safety on public roads, illustrating the extent of their predatory fraud.

As Noon, on her motorcycle, approached the intersection of Boca Rio Road the light began to change from green to yellow. She began to slow her motorcycle for the upcoming red light.

Within the report, deputies state Dorfman, in his Tesla, was traveling at 95 mph and accelerating 104 mph prior to the collision. Way above the speed limit of Boca Rio Road which is 45 mph.

Ignoring rules of the road

Running red lights at high speed has become a common occurrence among Tesla drivers, who seem to possess a disregard for traffic rules and safety signs. The car’s engineers have programmed it to treat safety signs as optional, and “test” drivers have further ingrained this behavior into the software. As a result, police have commented on a significant increase in intersection crashes caused by Tesla vehicles. Even recent tests in 2023 show the Tesla software consistently running red lights and ignoring stop signs.

Ignoring cyclists

Another concerning issue is Tesla’s repeated involvement in fatal collisions with motorcyclists. Safety experts have been investigating this problem for years. Ironically, or perhaps knowingly fraudulent, Tesla’s CEO initially introduced the “Autopilot” feature in response to a cyclist’s death caused by a Tesla. The entire promise of “Autopilot” since introduction in 2013 was to eliminate accidents because of a cyclist killed by Tesla. Even recent tests in 2023 show the Tesla software consistently ignoring cyclists.

Ignoring the inability to operate safely

Tesla has also attempted to suggest that their cars can drive themselves to address the issue of drunk driving, similar to Uber’s claims. This has led drunk drivers to believe they can exploit this feature as a safety loophole, leading to incidents where they attempt to evade responsibility by relying on Tesla’s CEO’s statements about the safety of drunk driving in their vehicles. Multiple crash reports in 2023 show the Tesla software consistently being engaged by drivers who are completely unable to safely operate the vehicle.

Ultimately, the recent crash highlights three dramatic failures and that the concept of “Autopilot” has always been a profit-driven fraud rather than a genuine safety effort.

Tesla’s blatant disregard for safety in order to juice profits has caused numerous tragedies, drawing parallels to Bernie Madoff’s balloon approach to fraudulent schemes. The only remaining question is when Tesla’s façade will crumble and how the CEO will be held accountable for the growing unnecessary suffering caused by obviously deceptive practices.

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai has a scoop at TechCrunch on the German kids breaking Tesla because it’s so unfortunately easy.

Christian Werling, one of the three students at Technische Universität Berlin who conducted the research along with another independent researcher, said that their attack requires physical access to the car, but that’s exactly the scenario where their jailbreak would be useful.

“We are not the evil outsider, but we’re actually the insider, we own the car,” Werling told TechCrunch in an interview ahead of the conference. “And we don’t want to pay these $300 for the rear heated seats.”

Ironically, maybe, the thing people like about the car (sloppy and fast, easily changed) is the thing they should hate about the car (compromised safety).

The problem with Tesla is their opaqueness. If they handed out instructions and encouraged right-to-repair and modding (let alone admitted software isn’t “eating” anything — hardware upgrades remain necessary and essential to safety), that would be an entirely different world.

The researchers said they were also able to extract personal information from the car such as contacts, recent calendar appointments, call logs, locations the car visited, Wi-Fi passwords and session tokens from email accounts, among others. This is data that could be attractive to people who don’t own that particular car, but still have physical access to it.

Mitigating the hardware-based attack that the researchers achieved is not simple. In fact, the researchers said, Tesla would have to replace the hardware in question.

The researchers here are actually underselling their findings with a distracting dramatic flair on the conference circuit, in order to make a big splash yet low personal risk.

Extract personal information? Enable heated seats?

They remind me how wolves prefer fishing to hunting.

Tesla hardware security is provably compromised, requiring an expensive update for safety. The “self-driving” and navigation features, or even worse, now have been seriously exposed in ways Tesla is likely in no position to manage properly.

Although junkyards reportedly have been filling up fast with new Tesla that fail under 10,000 miles, they may soon no longer accept the unique fire risks of such a poorly engineered vehicle.

When crews arrived, they found the black Tesla Model S, which had been lifted on a rack, in flames. The vehicle had been involved in a collision several months ago and had been sitting idle when it “spontaneously caught fire.” […] Firefighters were “unable to move it to a safe location to burn out,” and firefighters were hampered by the vehicle being blocked in by “millions of dollars in salvaged vehicles including Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Bentleys.” The fire, which took more than an hour to put out, remains under investigation. Similar “spontaneous” fires have been reported across the capital region in the past year, including a Tesla that caught fire on Highway 99 in May, a Tesla that burst into flames on Highway 50 in January and a Tesla that reignited multiple times in a wrecking yard last year.

Similar fires in a yard full of every vehicle make?

Tesla, Tesla, and… wait for it… Tesla.