What happens when an alleged drunk driver in an SUV hits your car in the rear at 75 mph while you’re stopped at a light? While there’s no clear answer to this question, you’d better bet that in many cases, the driver of the impacted vehicle may be in pretty bad shape. However, in this particular case, the Tesla Model 3 driver stepped out of the vehicle and recorded a video of the aftermath.
Check out the short video below before reading on:
Tesla maintains that its vehicles are the safest on the road, and by a notable margin. In fact, it has gone back and forth with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) after CEO Elon Musk shared that Tesla’s cars earn the lowest probability of injury figures ever recorded by the organization. The NHTSA doesn’t rank cars against one another or share each vehicle’s probability of injury data, but Musk shared it anyhow.
That said, it really doesn’t matter what the NHTSA, IIHS, Euro NCAP, Tesla, or any other automaker says about a car’s safety. While crash tests do a solid job of predicting how a car might fare in various collisions, the only real proof of a car’s safety is a real-world incident, and this is one of the most compelling examples we’ve seen of a car’s ability to keep a driver safe in the worst of circumstances.
After tweeting several times about the incident, Hiero put together the tweet thread below, which contains multiple images and videos related to the Tesla Model 3 crash. As you can see, there’s not much left of the rear half of the car, but the front seat appears almost untouched. Thankfully, no one was riding in the rear seats, since there’s literally a tire in the second row behind the front passenger’s seat.
According to Tesmanian:
“On the evening of December 8, Hiero was driving home from Boulder on Diagonal Hwy in his 10-day old Tesla Model 3 after celebrating his birthday. At the intersection with 63rd Street, he noticed that the traffic light changed from red to yellow, so he decided to slow down and stop, instead of accelerating and taking risks at the last second. In the right lane, at high speed, a van rushed past the red light, and Hiero stared after it, unaware of the approaching danger. After a few moments, he felt a hit of immense force.”
As the story goes, it was an alleged drunk driver piloting a 2015 Jeep Patriot. It hit the rear of the Model 3 at 75 mph, and reportedly, there was no attempt to brake. The Model 3 was clearly totaled, but it didn’t roll over, and the driver was able to exit the car, though he was later diagnosed with a concussion. First responders were shocked that Hiero didn’t have any visible injuries, as they told him that similar collisions often cause fatalities.
The driver of the Jeep had to be removed from the vehicle and transported to the hospital. Hiero is unaware of his current condition.
This is a developing story. If more information becomes available, we’ll update this article or publish a follow-up.
