Tech CEO ‘ran a red light to save my life’ after self-driving Tesla put him in path of oncoming train
A Silicon Valley tech executive is thankful to be alive after his self-driving Tesla led him onto the tracks of a light rail service — forcing him to run a red light to avoid getting rammed by an oncoming train, he said.
Jesse Lyu, the founder and CEO of artificial intelligence startup Rabbit Inc, posted dashcam footage on social media on Thursday showing how the self-driving software steered his Tesla onto the tracks of the Metro E Line, which connects Santa Monica to downtown Los Angeles.
The clip begins with Lyu’s Tesla standing at a red light. Once the light turns green, Lyu’s Tesla, which is being operated by the company’s Full Self-Driving semi-autonomous software system, turns left onto Colorado Avenue at the intersection.
Instead of merging into the proper lane, however, the car is led onto the street-grade light rail tracks that divide the roadway.
The tracks are walled off from the roadway by a low concrete barrier, so Lyu wasn’t able to simply move over into the next lane.
To make matters worse, there was a train which was stopped about a block behind his car.
“It’s just f–king crazy,” he said in the video. “I’ve got nowhere to go. And, you can tell from behind…the train’s right here.”
Lyu told SFGATE that he was “literally shaking.” That’s when he turned off the Autopilot feature and ran the red light at the next intersection in order to get out of the train’s path.
Lyu posted the dashcam footage to his X account, where it has generated more than 747,000 views as of Monday.
In the X post, he tagged Tesla CEO Elon Musk and urged the comkpany to “fix it and make improvements.”
“I was shaking and had to ran (sic) a red light to save my life,” he added.
In October, the federal agency responsible for regulating auto safety launched an investigation into 2.4 million Tesla’s equipped with FSD software after four reported collisions, including a 2023 fatal crash.
The new scrutiny of the advanced driver assistance system comes as Musk looks to shift Tesla’s focus to self-driving technology and robotaxis as it faces growing competition and weak demand in its auto business.
Tesla’s main competition in the self-driving category includes Alphabet-owned Waymo, Amazon’s Zoox and General Motors’ Cruise.
While Tesla relies on the use of cameras and artificial intelligence technology to translate the images into driving decisions, the other firms incorporate systems and sensors such as radar, lidar and sophisticated mapping to ensure safety and win regulatory approval for their driverless vehicles.
Industry experts and engineers have said that Tesla’s systems are cheaper but more flawed since they struggle with “edge cases” — or rare driving scenarios that self-driving systems and their human handlers have difficulty anticipating.
The Post has sought comment from Tesla.
