Once again, Tesla “robotics” proves itself to be little more than fraud and imminent threat to society. A man who turned on his robot watched it erratically crash into others, before getting told by Tesla and his insurance company that it’s all his fault for stupidly thinking he could use the “Smart Summon” product exactly how it was advertised to him.

He used the feature to summon his parked car to pick him up.

“I was within range when I activated it,” he said. “I saw it moving initially, but then it took a sharp turn right instead of pulling out of the spot first.” He tried to deactivate the feature, but the car didn’t stop in time, so he ended up sideswiping the car parked beside it.

The estimate for damage to both cars was several thousand dollars. Ghazzoul contacted Tesla about the accident.

He said since it was their feature that malfunctioned, they should take responsibility, but he said they told him to contact his insurance company instead and that it was not their problem since he activated the feature.

His insurance company, meanwhile, said he was fully at fault for the accident.

What’s worse for Ghazzoul is that he has since discovered that it wasn’t even legal for him to use this driverless feature in public spaces in Quebec.

The crash was in spec? It’s certainly not the first time. Owners regularly report “Smart Summon” crashing with absolutely no time to prevent it, like this example where the Tesla runs a stop sign by jumping a curb and crashing into it.

Perhaps it shouldn’t be legal to put things into cars that can’t do what was advertised in the first place?

Good on Quebec for clarifying usage to the owner as illegal, however they need to be more proactive and go further. This case shows Tesla has encouraged and enabled illegal use of its remotely, centrally controlled and monitored killer robots, far more potently than anyone has been able to warn against use.

The deadliest maritime disaster in recent US history has led five years later to a ship captain being sentenced to jail, for the deaths of 34 people in a fire at sea.

The Conception was anchored off Santa Cruz Island, 25 miles south of Santa Barbara, when it caught fire before dawn on the final day of a three-day excursion, sinking less than 30 metres from shore.

Thirty-three passengers and a crew member died, trapped in a bunkroom below deck.

…

“[Conception Captain Jerry] Boylan was the first to abandon ship and jump overboard. Four crew members who joined him also survived.

If that sounds familiar, it because Tesla has become notorious for creating a robot it calls “Full Self Driving” (FSD) that can’t actually drive itself and, even worse, abruptly abandons its passengers when in danger.

Back in 2016 I argued in a security conference keynote (just after Josh Brown tragically had been killed by his Tesla) that an algorithmic decision made by a software-based “pilot” was trying to save itself while sacrificing him instead.

The passenger died falsely believing his pilot would try to save him, when it instead literally threw him under a truck so it could drive away.

In 2019 I asked here on the blog if the Conception ship diaster in California should be compared to egregious safety failures in the tech industry.

Fast forward to 2024 and the www.tesla-fire.com site has recorded that at least 83 people have died in a fire while under the care of the Tesla robots that had promised safety from harm.

That’s nearly three times as many as this case sending the offender to jail.

Also by comparison, engineers at VW have been severely punished for less, as their algorithms simply polluted air when disengaging control.

The Tesla “pilot” arguably has been killing its passengers for years, and continues on killing, barely regulated while it buries fatality investigations by blaming victims and then paying their grieving families large settlements to hush.

Video has been posted already from local crews covering the West Covina news beat.

West Covina Police Department officers responded to a traffic collision in the 1100 block of south Orange Ave. around 1:50 a.m.

Upon arrival, they located a person trapped inside the vehicle. West Covina Fire Department paramedics pronounced the person deceased at the scene.

At the end of some extremely dark tire skids on the road, a large pole sits at an angle in the video indicating the Tesla slammed into it. The Tesla also seems to have had all its wheels destroyed.