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Man Smoking Weed in a Tesla Model S on Autopilot Is Not What You Want to See

Back when Tesla rolled out the Autopilot feature, the Internet was swarmed with clips of people doing all kinds of crazy things while their electric sedans maintained a steady speed or safe distance from the car in front as well as steered themselves within the lane.
Lil Duval chilling in his Model S 1 photo
Photo: Instagram screen capture
The "achievements" ranged from the mild "look, ma', no hands" to people sleeping (well, at least faking it for the camera) or going over in the back seat just for the sake of it. Watching those clips gave anyone with their head screwed on the right way goosebumps.

You just knew an accident was bound to happen, and it would be a bad one. The only reason it took so long was that there aren't really that many Teslas out there compared to the total number of vehicles. But when it did, everybody finally saw just how not funny those jokes were.

A few days ago, a clip of a man lying way back in the seat of his Model S enjoying a puff of the illegal kind with the Autopilot engaged emerged on Instagram. The post belonged to somebody named Lil Duval and also had a line of text that said "What y’all fake caring about today (?)"

Well, the good news is this is just another joke, this time belonging to a professional. Lil Duval is a stand-up comedian, and depending on whether you heard his name or not before, the clip either infuriated you or made you laugh. Or at least smile.

Duval said in an older interview that he doesn't get high and he doesn't even drink alcohol, so that's probably ordinary tobacco in there. But that's not the point. The idea is that videos like these can send the wrong message, and without wanting to sound too overly dramatic, those ten seconds needed to make this clip would have been plenty for something bad to happen if Duval's karma wasn't exactly positive.

Since Joshua Brown's fatal accident, Tesla has made a few modifications to its Autopilot system, but it's still one of the most permissive in the market regarding the driver's attention. It's also arguably one of the better ones, especially on older cars that use the first version since the company is still struggling to bring the software for AP2 (or is it 2.5 now?) up to the same level.

We realize we sound like real buzz killers, like fun-blockers, but here is the thing: it's alright to live your life the way you want to and take all the risks you like, but just don't do it in traffic where you risk affecting others as well. Listen to your grumpy Uncle autoevolution, OK?

 

What y’all fake caring about today

A post shared by lilduval (@lilduval) on Nov 11, 2017 at 10:31am PST

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About the author: Vlad Mitrache
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"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie)
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