After cops intervene, underage teens in back seat blame Tesla for driving itself

When a Flagler County Sheriff’s deputy recently pulled over a Tesla Model Y driving on the wrong side of the road near Daytona Beach, Florida, he found two teenagers in the back seat of the electric sedan while there was no one in the driver's seat.

One of the underage teen girls who was reportedly driving the vehicle without a driver's license had jumped to the back seat of the car when cops intervened and blamed the Tesla's Autopilot for driving the car around, Electrek reported. The other girl was sitting in the front passenger seat of the vehicle.

The deputy, however, figured out that the teens were lying about not driving the car all the way from Charleston, South Carolina, for more than 300 miles. They had started from one of the teen's grandmother's house while their parents were not aware of them leaving the state in a car.

Later, the driver of the vehicle ended up receiving a citation for driving without a licence while the teens were left in the Florida Department of Children and Family’s custody for the night as the parents couldn’t get there immediately.

When the police pulled the car over, the Tesla had stopped but then it rolled backward into the police car. While the police car did not sustain any damage, the Model Y sustained $300 in damage. A sheriff was was quoted as saying by local media, "These kids are very lucky that no one was hurt and their actions didn’t have more serious consequences. It doesn’t matter if you are driving a ‘smart car’, driving without a license is still against the law."

Though Tesla offers a Full Self-Driving package, the feature-complete version of the package is currently being tested in Beta version with a few thousand cars subscribed to it. However, it requires someone in the driver’s seat.