Tesla’s Autopilot software might have logged more than 130 million miles before its first fatal accident, but the crash that broke that streak started a new trend. No, there thankfully haven’t been any fatal Autopilot crashes since that incident earlier this year. But now, it seems like every time a Tesla driver gets into an accident, he or she takes to the internet and blames Tesla’s Autopilot software.
The software in the Model S and Model X is constantly recording data so Tesla is typically pretty quick to come out and confirm whether or not Autopilot was active when widely publicized accidents take place. So far, the company has done much more denying than confirming. Now, yet another serious accident has been blamed on Tesla’s Autopilot.
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Tesla has yet to comment on this latest accident, which supposedly involved a Model X that hit an object in a road somewhere in Whitehall, Montana, and was sent off the street and sustaining serious damage. The driver survived the accident without sustaining any serious injuries.
In a thread titled “My friend model X crash bad on AP yesterday,” a user on the Tesla Motors Club forum claims to be a friend of the Model X driver.
“Both 2 people on car survived. It was late at night, Autopilot did not detect a wood stake on the road, hit more than 20 wood stakes, tire on front passenger side and lights flyed [sic] away,” the user wrote in the thread. “The speed limit is 55, he was driving 60 on autopilot. His car is completely destroyed. The place he had accident does not have cellphone signal, it is 100 miles from the hotel. We are on a 50 people Wechat messenger group. I woke up today saw he managed to get internet to ask people in the Wechat group to call tesla for assistant.”
Following a few questions, the poster continued, “it happen yesterday around 2am. Address is in one of the photo. I’m also not quite sure about what wood stake is. He said he has a video but wasn’t able to upload to the the [sic] chat group we are in. The said part of the wood stake was buried deep in the group got hit a way. I do not have any more information. It’s all I know ATM.”
The user posted several images of the aftermath, and you’ll find some of them below.