The semi driver kept rolling but cameras caught his license plate and police are looking into it
October 3, 2024 at 21:08
- A Tesla Model 3 driver was pitted by a semi-truck driver who abruptly changed lanes.
- The truck driver fled the scene without stopping, and authorities are still searching for them.
- Dashcam footage captured the incident, providing crucial evidence for authorities to pursue.
When police go to use the PIT maneuver against a suspect, it works almost all of the time. Even suspects who might expect it struggle to escape its effectiveness. Imagine how much more difficult it must be then to avoid a crash when you don’t see it coming and when the vehicle initiating the pit technique is a semi-truck. That’s exactly what happened to Tesla Model 3 owner Jonas.
To the truck driver’s credit, it’s highly unlikely that what you’re about to see was intentional. Nevertheless, on Monday morning at around 8:20 a.m., the driver of an 18-wheeler Peterbilt truck came into Jonas’ lane, hit the rear quarter panel of his Tesla Model 3, caused him to spin out, and then kept going. A camera on the Tesla managed to catch an image of his license plate though.
Read: Tesla Semi Fire Closes Road For 15 Hours, Drains 50,000 Gallons Of Water
More importantly for Jonasand the rest of the motorists on the road, nobody was hurt. The Tesla even managed to drive up onto the tow truck when it arrived. Despite the hatred some Tesla owners report from time to time, Jonas doesn’t believe that the semi-driver intended to do this. He says that he had just pulled onto the highway and was speeding up to pass the trucker when the crash happened.
Video shows exactly that as the two vehicles traveled north on Interstate 35. Jonas keeps a consistent speed according to GPS data recorded by a dashcam and yet the truck simply speeds up, moves over, and hits him. What’s perhaps the most surprising is that the truck driver kept going despite the Tesla’s route to the ditch. It rolled across the front of the semi which would make it seem as though the driver would’ve seen the carnage.
At this stage, Jonas hopes that the police will find the driver. “No way he didn’t see me,” he says. “The highway patrol said they will look up the truck and company info tomo [sic] and find the driver,” he told others on a Facebook post. Wrecks like this are a great reminder of how some modern technology can prove to be a real benefit. Without the integrated cameras, there is almost no way the Tesla owner or anyone else would have the data needed to track down this driver.