A TikTok star used Tesla Autopilot in an illegal way and posted video evidence of it – showing the damaging normalizing of abusing the feature.
To top it off, the young man’s mother was helping him film the entire thing.
Tesla Autopilot
Tesla Autopilot is a term to englobe several automated driver assist features inside Tesla vehicles, like traffic-aware cruise control and Autosteer (energetic auto steering).
It is usually confused with a self-driving system becomes of Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” package, but that’s a unique set of features.
Tesla makes it clear that drivers have to keep their hands on the steering wheel and be able to take control in any respect times with a notification when the feature is activated.
It’s also illegal to misuse the feature, like not being attentive when using it, and we’ve got seen Tesla drivers being charged with “dangerous driving” for sleeping on the wheel.
TikTok user misuses Tesla Autopilot and posts the evidence
Johnathon Cook, who has over 1 million hits on TikTok, posted a video of himself faking going to sleep in a Tesla Model 3 on Autopilot and even going into the backseat while driving at a big speed on the highway.
In most jurisdictions, this may amount to reckless or dangerous driving, which generally is a criminal offense.
If the police desired to charge him, it could be fairly easy since he filmed a “behind-the-scene” of his TikTok video for YouTube – showing intimately his dangerous use of Tesla Autopilot:
Within the video, he shows how he got around Tesla’s safeguards to try to stop people from doing just that, like putting a weight on the steering wheel to trick the torque sensor and keeping the seat belt locked behind his back so he could exit the seat while the vehicle is driving.
To top it off, the TikTok maker’s mother appears to be the one helping him film the damaging video.
Electrek’s Take
We now have all done dumb things after we were young, but that is crazy dangerous and endangering not only himself and his passenger, but everyone else on the road.
Tesla Autopilot is superb and protected to make use of, but it surely’s removed from perfect, and you could be able to take control in any respect times. I’ve put hundreds of miles on Tesla vehicles on Autopilot, and there have been dozens of times where I needed to take control.
On top of misusing Autopilot in an illegal way, he’s dumb enough to film the entire thing and post it on YouTube and TikTok.
There was a trend of doing these sort of stunts for publicity. A pornographic website posted a video of the misuse of Autopilot and it went viral.
Even within the early days of Autopilot, Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s then wife, Talulah Riley, posted a video of herself misusing the driver-assist system.
If you see something like that, I feel it’s essential to call it out, and the police have to act to implement use in a few of those cases.
As for Tesla, there are also things they might do to assist, like improve driver monitoring, however the automaker has unfortunately been slacking off on that front because it focuses on full self-driving.