A trio of passengers narrowly avoided disaster after a Tesla in self-driving mode made a left turn down a set of railroad tracks in Sinking Spring, Pennsylvania, WFMZ reported.

He was referring to hardware 4 (HW4). However, shortly after he made the comment, Tesla’s head of self-driving, Ashok Elluswamy, admitted that Tesla hasn’t solved unsupervised self-driving on HW4.

Imagine this scenario while the car is driving itself. Tesla's Full Self-Driving (Supervised) feature was put to the test when a Tesla driver encountered a huge alligator strutting across lanes.

Tesla is now attempting to deliver its promise of unsupervised self-driving on HW4 cars, which have been in production since 2023-2024, depending on the model.

Waymo’s self-driving efforts date back to 2009, when Google started its self-driving car project. An egg-shaped prototype took its first ride on public streets in 2015 – also in Austin.

Waymo in May recalled 1,200 self-driving vehicles, and the probe remains open. Regulatory scrutiny increased after 2023 when a pedestrian was seriously injured by a GM (GM.N) Cruise self-driving car.