Tesla In Full Self Driving Hits A Deer Without Stopping

A Tesla owner took to social media to share his story of hitting a deer while in Full Self Driving mode and footage of the crash. He said the all-electric car didn’t even slow down before the crash, with the video backing that up. However, the man says he still trusts the “awesome” technology and will keep driving Teslas.

Car catches fire and drives itself into a crowd.

In the footage, you can see the four-lane highway, two lanes in each direction, is pretty much bare and it’s obviously at night. Only one car is ahead of the Tesla, which is in the right lane, and that vehicle is in the left lane. Suddenly, the rear end of a deer appears as the animal is just standing in the lane of traffic.

If you watch the video closely, you can see from the time the deer is visible at all to the point of impact one second passes. To avoid that collision, a driver would need razor-sharp reflexes, something most lack.

Of course, plenty of people have their own interpretation of the crash. But the guy who was in the crash claims the deer wasn’t truly visible to the naked human eye, saying it “looked like another uneven patch of road.”

The Tesla owner thinks it’s just a matter of “teach(ing) FSD what a deer’s butt looks like” to avoid future accidents like this. To be entirely fair, we think most humans also would’ve hit the animal. Even worse would’ve been swerving hard and rolling the car or running off the shoulder and launching the vehicle into the air at speed.

While this was obviously a young and therefore smaller deer, it’s still impressive that the Tesla suffered only minimal damage. We’ve seen plenty of deer strikes which have demolished vehicles, although those are usually with big bucks.

Others offered their theories about why FSD didn’t detect the deer. A few shared videos of their Tesla avoiding or hitting deer while in FSD. We’re sure this wreck will be debated until the next crash involving Tesla’s FSD is revealed.

Images via TheSeekerOf42/X