The rollout of the Tesla Cybercab has, perhaps unsurprisingly, had people worried. Many of us are already jumpy at the sight of an autonomous vehicle mixing it in with regular traffic. Mainly because of the potential for an accident to occur.
These vehicles do, of course, have to comply with a lot of rules and regulations. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be allowed out onto the public roads. But just as with humans at the wheel, accidents can happen no matter how good a driver we are, or how good the regulations are.
That appears to be what has happened recently. Two accidents appear to have taken place involving the Tesla Cybercab. One of these has taken place in Philadelphia and was shared on Reddit. The social media site also showed a second accident that appeared to have taken place in Memphis, Tennessee.
The two accidents look to have taken place within just a few days of each other. Any accident involving an autonomous vehicle or taxi is going to draw attention. But seeing two of them take place within such a short time period will draw even more eyes to it.
What We Know About the Tesla Cybercab Accidents
There is annoyingly not a massive amount of detail shared about the two accidents, so it isn’t 100 percent clear what actually took place. The second crash that took place shows a severely bent hood on the front of the Tesla, and it looks to have rammed into the back of a pickup truck. Hopefully not a truck made by Ram either.
Some information on this particular accident has come to light on Reddit. The image was also shared in a Memphis Tesla Facebook group, and a Reddit user said that someone hit the truck head-on. That then pushed the pickup truck, quite hard, into the front of the Tesla Cybercab and that is where the damage came from. So in this instance, it could be that the autonomous vehicle actually wasn’t to blame for the accident.
Another image of the incident was shared online, and, quite frankly, it made the whole situation look like a mess, with more cars damaged in front of the pickup and Cybercab.
There is debris all over the ground, so whatever took place here was quite substantial. An SUV in front of the Tesla and pickup truck has had a significant impact on a car in front of it.
But seeing one of its cars involved in an accident is not what Tesla will want to witness.
What Happened in the Philadelphia Accident?
A pair of images were shared on Reddit showing the other damaged Tesla Cybercab, with this accident taking place in Philadelphia. Here, we can see that a door panel has been ripped right off the side of the car, and, according to the post, the accident occurred at quite a slow speed. The rest of the car does look to be intact, but there is clearly some distortion in the bodywork below where the door panel would be.
There was no explanation given as to how this particular Cybercab was involved in the accident. What is strange, though, is how the car’s door panel appears to have fallen off so easily, leaving much of the wiring and electrical systems inside the car exposed. Neither of these crashes can definitely be put down to the fault of the Cybercab.
But those who are already wary of autonomous vehicles won’t have had their mind changed after seeing these accidents.