Last Wednesday, around 12:30 p.m., a Tesla Model 3 barreled through an intersection in Columbus, Ohio, and hit a convention centre there before coming to a stop inside the building, which was in the middle of hosting several events. Somehow, no one was seriously injured. New, somewhat startling video of the crash was released this week.
The Tesla, in fact, did a little jump after it hit the curb and went into the building:
And here’s what the Columbus Dispatch said happened last week:
A Columbus police crash report states that the driver of the Tesla, 63-year-old Frantz Jules, told police that he was unable to slow the vehicle as it hit speeds of 113 km/h on a Downtown highway, so he exited and smashed into the centre.
Jules told police he was driving on Ohio Route 315 when he “lost control of his brakes and was unable to stop,” according to the police report. He exited Route 315 at the Neil Avenue exit, which leads directly onto Vine Street toward a T-intersection and traffic light at North High Street — with the convention centre directly in its path.
Three witnesses to the crash, one of whom was stopped at the red light at North High Street, told police that the driver of the Tesla appeared to speed up in order to beat a red light. They also said it did not appear he applied brakes before the building was hit.
The Dispatch also says that the police report does not mention Autopilot, and that there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that the police even asked about it. The driver, meanwhile, was cited for failure to control, possibly because I’m not sure brake failure totally explains why his Tesla was going that fast.
A spokesman for Columbus police said that an investigation of the crash is ongoing. If your brakes do fail, remember, the first step is not to engage the accelerator.