The company issued a cease-and-desist order to the group that released footage of Tesla knocking over a child crash test dummy.
Tesla was eager to make a viral video disappear from the internet and television screens after an advertisement showed one of the company’s cars running over a child-sized dummy.
Elon Musk’s electric car company earlier this month issued a cease-and-desist letter to project dawn, the anti-Tesla propaganda group that created and ran the ad. The powerful letter, first obtained by the Washington Post and shared with Gizmodo, called the video a defamatory distortion of Tesla’s “Fully autonomous driving” beta (FSD) technology, which is still under development.
“While you and Project Dawn claim to advocate security, these videos describe unsafe and incorrect use of FSD Beta and active security features. “Your actions actually put consumers at risk,” the company’s lawyers wrote. Tesla did not respond to requests for further comment.
Project Dawn ads show a Tesla Model 3 colliding with a Model dressed as a child at 20 miles per hour. The controversial advocacy group claims the car had an FSD beta when tested, although reports by Electrek suggest that may not be the case.
The video became fodder for a wave of criticism of Tesla, raising interest and concerns about the safety of the company’s fully autonomous driving technology, especially in the context of a federal investigation into the company’s autonomous driving capabilities.
In a rebuttal to the“Project Dawn” video, some Tesla fans have even started posting their own“Test” videos, some people put real children in front of moving vehicles (which is obviously a very dangerous thing to do) . The problem became so widespread that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued a statement warning people not to drive in the direction of their children.
The recent release of the cease-and-desist letter may be a sign that Tesla’s lawsuit is about to begin, the head of the advocacy group doesn’t seem worried, though. “The letter is so pathetic in terms of complaining,” Dan o’Dowd told the Washington Post. “Mr. Free speech absolutist, just a crybaby hiding behind his lawyer.
In addition to leading dawn, O<sup>′</sup>Dowd is a technology billionaire who runs Green Mountain Software, a company with a potentially competitive interest in undermining Tesla’s current position in the automotive software market, although O<sup>′</sup>Dowd told the Washington Post that he was targeting Tesla for security reasons.
But regardless of project Dawn’s intentions, it’s worth noting that other experiments with the Model 3 have also shown that cars don’t always stop when confronted with obstacles, including the AAA test, the car ran into a fake cyclist. In a 10-month period, Tesla reported more assisted-driving accidents earlier this year than any other automaker, with 392 accidents and six deaths.
Despite the feature’s name, but Tesla did not say that its fully autonomous driving assistance technology is designed to drive a car without human intervention. “Autopilot, enhanced autopilot and fully autonomous driving capabilities are designed to be used with attentive drivers, their hands on the steering wheel, ready to take over. While these features are intended to become more capable over time, the features currently enabled do not enable the vehicle to drive itself,” said a support post on the company’s website.
Musk claimed on Twitter that Tesla’s driving assistance technology made cars “Unequivocally safer”. However, at least NHTSA appears to be sceptical, as its FSD function has been recalled several times and regulators are investigating whether Autopilot should be recalled.
For now,O’Dowd is refusing to comply with Tesla’s demands for a stop and halt. On the contrary, he is redoubling his efforts. The software issued a long and pointed statement, bashing Musk,” O<sup>′</sup>Dowd wrote, “He was determined to prevent me from revealing that his fully self-driving car could run over a child wearing a safety vest on the school sidewalk, “I guess because it wouldn’t be good for the brand.”
