A dashcam clip out of San Diego is making the rounds this week, and it’s a good reminder of why you should always glance both ways even when your light turns green. The video, posted to the r/sandiego subreddit, shows a white Tesla Model 3 blowing straight through a red light and T-boning a white C7 Corvette as it crossed the intersection on a legal green.
The crash happened Monday on Genesee Avenue near the northbound Interstate 5 exit, and the footage is honestly tough to watch if you’re a Corvette guy. The impact sends the C7 into a full 180-degree spin, and somewhere in the middle of that spin the driver-side wheels just give up and separate from the car entirely. That’s not a fender bender. That’s a “call the tow truck and maybe say a few words over it” situation.
What makes the video so striking is how avoidable it looks. Traffic is stopped, the Corvette gets the green, and it just goes, the way you’re supposed to. Then out of nowhere the Tesla rolls through like the red light was more of a suggestion. No brake lights, no swerve, nothing. It’s the kind of clip that makes you want to install a dashcam in every car you own, if only to prove you did everything right when someone else clearly didn’t.
Naturally, the internet had opinions within minutes. The clip has racked up plenty of attention online, with commenters zeroing in on the fact that the Tesla never appeared to slow down at all. Whether that was distraction, a mechanical issue, or something else entirely, nobody outside the car knows yet, and neither do we.
What The Video Actually Shows
The dashcam footage is straightforward enough that you don’t need to squint to understand what happened. Traffic is stopped at the light, the Corvette gets a green signal and proceeds through the intersection like normal, and the Tesla enters from the cross street without stopping. It catches the Corvette on the driver-side rear quarter panel, which is about the worst place to get hit if you want to keep your car in one piece.
The user who posted the clip said they witnessed the crash firsthand near the Genesee exit off I-5 North, and the video lines up with that account. As of now, authorities haven’t released details on injuries or whether any citations were issued, so this is still very much a developing story.
Was Autopilot Involved? Nobody Knows Yet
Whenever a Tesla is involved in a crash like this, the question of self-driving tech comes up almost immediately, and this case is no exception. Plenty of commenters speculated about whether Autopilot or Full Self-Driving was active at the time, but there’s no confirmation either way.
The video alone doesn’t show what was happening inside the cabin, so it’s guesswork for now. We’d rather wait for actual facts than pile onto a theory, and honestly, human error runs a red light just as easily as a computer glitch does.
The Corvette’s Damage Looks Rough, But Could’ve Been Worse
For Corvette owners, this video is a gut punch, but there’s a silver lining buried in there. Despite the violent spin and the wheels departing the car mid-crash, the passenger compartment appears to have stayed intact, which matters a lot more than sheet metal.
That said, between the missing wheels and the extensive body damage, this C7 is looking at a serious repair bill, if it’s even repairable at all. Sometimes a car walks away from a hit looking rough but structurally sound. This one’s going to need a real inspection before anyone knows which category it falls into.
We’ll update this story if San Diego police release more information on the cause of the crash or the condition of those involved.