Driverless Tesla gets pulled over by police on ‘Smart Summon’ — staged or not?

A Tesla owner posted a video of his driverless Model 3 getting pulled over by police after running a stop on “Smart Summon.”

Is staged or is it real?

Smart Summon builds on Tesla’s previous “Summon” feature, which was used by owners to move their cars autonomously for a few feet in their driveway or in tight parking situations.

With the new version, owners are able to Summon their Tesla vehicles from further away, and the cars will navigate more complex parking environments.

Tesla started pushing the feature to the wider fleet last month, and owners have been extensively testing it.

CEO Elon Musk says that it has already been used over 550,000 times and its “Tesla’s most viral feature.”

However, the testing by owners has also resulted in some issues. Several Tesla owners posted videos of their vehicles being involved in crashes and near misses while using the new Smart Summon feature.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration even said that it was looking into those incidents.

Now Brooks from DragTimes, a YouTuber and longtime Tesla owner, posted a video of a test of the new Smart Summon feature on his Model 3. During one of those tests, the Model 3 (with no one in the car) ran a stop sign in a private parking lot, and the vehicle got pulled over by a police officer.

Heres’s the video:

Electrek’s Take

Several commenters claim that the video could have been staged, but it’s hard to tell for sure.

Personally, I really don’t know. It could be fake or it could be real, but either way, the question raised by Brooks is still interesting, and the answer is clear.

In the release notes of the V10 update, Tesla states that the feature is still in “beta,” and that, like Autopilot, drivers are still responsible for the vehicle:

Smart Summon is designed to allow your car to drive to you (using your phone’s GPS as a target destination) or a location of your choosing, maneuvering around and stopping for objects as necessary. Like Summon, Smart Summon is only intended for use in private parking lots and driveways. You are still responsible for your car and must monitor it and its surroundings at all times within your line of sight because it may not detect all obstacles. Be especially careful around quick-moving people, bicycles, and cars.

Therefore, if this was a real situation, he should have gotten a ticket for running the stop sign.

However, in some jurisdictions, police don’t always enforce traffic laws in private parking lots, which seems to be where this test was performed.

What do you think? Let us know in the comment section below.