Tesla Crush Sparks Heated Debate Among Car Fanatics Over its Autonomy

A Tesla involved in a head-collision yesterday //photo courtesy

A Tesla vehicle was reportedly involved in a head collision after swerving into oncoming traffic.

The Tesla owner who was a part of the casualty proudly shared how their vehicle’s avoidance system helped prevent a serious accident and saved his family.

“I never appreciated the system until this happened.” The user expressed newfound appreciation for Tesla’s safety features.

The footage circulating online, shared from the scene shows the car detecting forthcoming danger and taking automatic action, an incident that has once again highlighted the real-world impact of Tesla’s advanced driver assistance systems.

However, netizens, mostly car fanatics analyzed the circulating footage and came to different conclusions.

“You can tell Tesla is sleek because it literally starts to turn left right before the other car did. Tesla made the maneuvre first before the Acura did the same like 5 seconds after.” Painbuiltt said

” Dude! the literally steered into the other lane. Are your cars programmed to kill the occupants.” Maned Dumber disagreed.

” ‘Tesla saved them.’ Then drives directly into oncoming traffic.” LeviBetz sacarstically said.

This comes after Tesla took several safety measures to protect its users during cases of head-collisions. They claim that their cars are among the safest, because they have a combination of steel-aluminium frame and advanced battery pack design.

Generally, Tesla incorporated the following safety measures from September 2014. Collision Advance; a feature that uses camera and sensor data to help avoid or reduce the severity of crashes. Another feature is Automatic Emergency Braking; a feature that is able to detect potential collision and help apply automatic break in cases where the driver is not able to do so.

Another feature is Lane Departure Warning and Prevention; a feature that notifies drivers if they go off the lane. Autosteer helps with steering on well-marked roads, lastly, Traffic-Aware Cruise Control; mantains a safe following distance on highways.

A significant upgrade was the FSD system which builds on Autopilot and has extra capacities like navigating city streets, recognizing traffic signals , making turns and handling lane changes. However, it still needs the driver’s keen supervision to operate perfectly

Apart from the safety measures, Tesla also voluntarily releases safety data and crash rates with the involvement of Autopilot. The data released shows that the company recorded only one crash per 7.08 million miles with Autopilot, compared to one per 702,000 miles nationally based on NHTSA data.

Despite all the safety upgrades done by Tesla, the company still faces criticism, especially about the FSD system. There has been thorough investigation on the FSD and Autopilot systems. In 2024, NHTSA opened a probe into 2.4 million Tesla vehicles that were equipped with FSD software following four collisions.

NHTSA also raised its concerns about Tesla’s social media posts, which they say are tailored in a way that can mislead drivers into thinking that FSD can operate as a fully autonomous robotaxi without being supervised, which is not the case.

A good example of FSD underperformance is a reported incident in Reno Nevada on February 14, 2025 where a Tesla Cybertruck which was in FSD mode failed to merge from an ending lane and hit a pole. The driver of that cybertruck ‘a Jonathan challinger’ warned other users using his X platform, telling them not to over-rely on the system because it was ready for a driverless operation yet.

Also, Tesla recalled more than 376,000 vehicles on February 21, 2025 due to the risk of potential power, which allegedly made the vehicles susceptible to a crash. Even though this action did not directly involve the FSD system, it has raised concerns over the vehicle’s safety measures.

The concerns have heightened after the re-election of Trump who has been seen working closely with Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, which has led to more speculations of NHTSA being compelled to scrap crash-reporting requirements that Tesla is against, which will render futile efforts to determine if Tesla’s safety measures are effective.