A Silicon Valley tech executive is alive after being guided by a self-driving Tesla onto light rail tracks and forced to run a red light to avoid colliding with an oncoming train. He said he is grateful to the
Jesse Liu, founder and CEO of artificial intelligence startup Rabbit Inc., posted on social media on Thursday how self-driving software will steer Teslas through the metro connecting Santa Monica and downtown Los Angeles. He posted footage from an on-board camera showing how the train entered the E Line tracks.
The clip begins with Liu's Tesla standing at a red light. When the light turns green, Liu's Tesla, driven by the company's fully self-driving semi-autonomous software system, turns left onto Colorado Avenue at the intersection.
But instead of merging into the proper lane, cars are directed onto the urban light rail tracks that split the roadway.
The tracks were separated from the road by a low concrete barrier, so Liu couldn't easily move to the next lane.
To make matters worse, a train was parked about a block behind his car.
“It's really crazy,” he said in the video. “There's nowhere to go. And I can see from behind…the train is right there.”
Ryu he told SFGATE. “I'm literally shaking.'' That's when he turned off the autopilot function to get out of the train's path and ran a red light at the next intersection.
Liu posted the dashcam footage to his X account, where it had been viewed more than 747,000 times as of Monday.
In X's post, he tagged Tesla CEO Elon Musk and urged the company to “fix things and get better.”
“I was shaking and had to cross a red light to save my life,” he added.
In October, the federal agency responsible for regulating auto safety began investigating 2.4 million Tesla cars equipped with FSD software after four crashes, including one fatal, were reported in 2023.
The new scrutiny of advanced driver-assistance systems comes as Mr. Musk seeks to shift Tesla's focus to self-driving technology and robotaxis in the face of increased competition and weak demand in the auto business.
Tesla's main competitors in the self-driving space include Alphabet's Waymo, Amazon's Zoox and General Motors' Cruise.
While Tesla relies on the use of cameras and artificial intelligence technology to transform images into driving decisions, other companies are incorporating systems and sensors such as radar, lidar, and advanced mapping to ensure safety. and has received regulatory approval for self-driving cars.
Industry experts and engineers say: Tesla's system is cheap but flawed That's because they suffer from “edge cases,” or rare driving scenarios that are difficult for autonomous driving systems and their human handlers to predict.
The Post has reached out to Tesla for comment.
