A video of a driverless car malfunctioning and crashing straight into a police vehicle has gone viral, with the vision showing a man in the passenger seat desperately trying to avoid the collision by pulling on the handbrake just before impact.

Footage that appears to be from LHR Now, a digital magazine in Lahore, shows the vehicle pull out onto a road before veering towards the kerb on the left. While the passenger talks in what seems to be a piece to camera, the vehicle’s driverless tech fails to react when it becomes clear it’s going to hit the parked police car.

Inside a car, a man wearing glasses sits in the driver’s seat with the steering wheel in front of him and a smartphone mounted on the dashboard, visible through the windshield.
2

Instead of correcting by turning to the right and staying away from the danger, the tech keeps turning to the left, almost as if it’s aiming straight for the cop car. There’s a short beep from the horn as the passenger – who had taken his eyes off the road while talking – realises what’s going on and jams on the handbrake.

That has no effect and the driverless car hits the police vehicle – a pickup truck that’s been converted into a type of paddy wagon with a cover over the tray – just behind the driver’s door, prompting the officer inside to exit and investigate. 

The impact isn’t especially heavy, occurring at around 20km/h. Unfortunately, the clip is not in English, so it’s hard to be sure of how the passenger reacted to the accident, although several viewers left comments insisting he was talking about how much technological talent there is in Pakistan just before the shunt.

Car aficionados had a field day as they made remarks about the clip, which has been viewed more than 10 million times on X and liked almost 50,000 times on Instagram. Comments included, “The car knew exactly what it was doing”, “Car saw the cops and decided to turn itself in,” and, “I bet he said, ‘I swear I wasn’t driving, sir.’”

Man wearing glasses sits in the driver’s seat, speaking with animated hand gestures as he drives, road ahead visible through the windshield.
2

The video surfaced just after it was revealed that Tesla owners in Australia could soon be able to use a version of the marque’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) system. Aussies with older Model 3s and Model Ys can’t run FSD at the moment because they don’t support the Hardware 4 system, but Tesla is working on a fix.

An email sent to an Australian Tesla owner and shared on X recently reads: “We’re currently rolling out FSD (Supervised) v14 Lite to users in North America and South Korea, with active development underway for Australia and New Zealand.

“This represents meaningful progress toward bringing the FSD (Supervised) feature to Hardware 3 vehicles; something we remain committed and dedicated to doing.”