One June evening, Italo Frigoli was operating his Tesla on the Full Self-Driving software when he came upon a railroad crossing where the arms were already lowering and the lights were flashing, as a train was speeding toward the intersection, according to a report by NBC News. While these are clear signals for any human driver to stop, Frigoli's Tesla, which was in a semiautonomous mode, did not appear to register the potentially fatal situation. "It felt like it was going to run through the arms," Frigoli told the outlet. "So obviously I just slammed on the brakes." He stopped just a few feet away from the crossing near his North Texas home, averting a potential disaster.
Footage from the car's cameras, which NBC News reviewed, seems to confirm his account. This month, when NBC News accompanied Frigoli to the same crossing, his Tesla's software experienced the same problem. With cameras recording, the Tesla's software failed to detect a train coming, forcing Frigoli to manually apply the brakes.
While Italo Frigoli successfully avoided collisions, his experiences illustrate a common complaint among some Tesla drivers about the company's FSD technology, as highlighted by NBC News. The software is said to sometimes mishandle railroad crossings, including by not stopping for them.
Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD) software is a driver-assistance package that the company advertises as "the future of transport," capable of navigating "almost anywhere with your active supervision."
In interviews, six Tesla drivers who use FSD informed NBC News that they had issues with the technology at rail crossings, and four of them supplied videos. NBC News also discovered seven additional Tesla driving videos posted online with similar issues, dating from June 2023 to August. Those drivers declined to be interviewed.
On Tesla internet forums, the complaints are even more widespread, with drivers describing similar issues, though not always posting videos. NBC News found 40 such examples on Reddit, X, and YouTube from 2023 onward, with some posts as recent as August.
Regulators from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) told NBC News in a statement that the agency had brought the issue up with Tesla. "We are aware of the incidents and have been in communication with the manufacturer," the agency said.
"NHTSA discusses issues frequently with manufacturers and prioritizes the safety of all road users," the statement continued. "The agency continuously analyzes consumer complaints to determine whether a potential vehicle safety defect trend exists. We will continue to enforce the law on all manufacturers of motor vehicles and equipment, in accordance with the Vehicle Safety Act and our data-driven, risk-based investigative process."
Elon Musk has repeatedly stated that autonomous technology is crucial to Tesla's future, having bet the company's trajectory on the success of automated vehicles and artificial intelligence-powered robots. Tesla robotaxis are now in service in Austin, Texas, and are scheduled for other cities. In July, Musk stated that an unsupervised FSD version – one that does not require a human driver – could be available this year "in certain geographies" and that his objective is to have Tesla robotaxis accessible to 50% of the US population by the end of the year.
Nevertheless, questions regarding the guiding technology used by the company's vehicles persist. Experts told NBC News that Tesla's FSD software is a black-box AI model where errors are not easily explained even by its creators and that Tesla engineers likely did not include enough railroad crossing examples in the training videos for the FSD software.
Neither Tesla nor Elon Musk responded to requests for comment regarding the railroad crossing complaints. While Musk has not publicly commented on the complaints, he has stated that Tesla is preparing a major update to the FSD software to be released as soon as late September. Drivers described a range of system malfunctions. Frigoli and other drivers said that their vehicles did not recognize flashing lights or lowering gate arms. Some reported that their Teslas have not slowed down even with trains directly in front of them. Other drivers said their cars have stopped on top of the tracks when traffic lights were ahead, which could be dangerous if the gates lower before the lights change. In an online video, one Tesla first stops at a crossing but then, after the gates start to come down, a set of traffic lights down the road turns green, and the car attempts to proceed through the gates just seconds before a train arrives. Other drivers reported that their cars turned onto the tracks themselves.
Experts warned that Tesla and Elon Musk are risking a disaster. "If it's having trouble stopping at rail crossings, it's an accident waiting to happen," said Phil Koopman, an associate professor emeritus of engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. "It's just a matter of which driver gets caught at the wrong time," he added.
