Tag Archives: crash

The Tesla Cybertruck is almost more of a meme than an actual vehicle at this point, which makes any incident involving the angular chunk of stainless steel a real treat for the company’s critics. A Reddit user posted pictures of the most recent incident – a crash in California – and while it’s still likely to generate chuckles, we’re glad that nobody got seriously hurt. Now, with this incident out there for the general public to see, we have our first real-world look at that steel wedge’s ability to protect occupants from damage (and deal some damage itself).

The Verge found the post by u/boddhya and confirmed the story with the California Highway Patrol, which could be the first in-the-wild crash for the truck. Officials said a 17-year-old in a Toyota Corolla veered off the road and hit an embankment before over-correcting, re-entering the road, and striking the Cybertruck. 

Though the Corolla looks particularly gnarly in the Reddit images, the only injury was to the Cybertruck driver and did not require medical care. Tesla’s “bulletproof” pickup appears to have come out of the crash in much better shape than the Toyota, though we don’t have much information to go on.

With all due respect (sort of), Tesla’s owners are among the most zealous of any brand’s drivers for better or worse, but this is one time where the other person appears to be at fault. The Cybertruck driver was allegedly not using an autonomous driving mode at the time of the crash, and the roads in the Palo Alto area where the collision occurred are notoriously curvy, with poor visibility being a significant issue. 

The Cybertruck’s brutal shape and sharp angles raised many safety questions over the damage it could cause to other vehicles and people. Early critics call out the truck’s thick stainless steel “exoskeleton” as being too rigid and more dangerous in a crash than traditional materials. At the same time, trucks are more dangerous than cars in general, and the Tesla is still far too new to draw any solid conclusions about its overall safety. 

Remember Daihatsu? Parent company Toyota likely wishes it didn’t. The Japanese automaker, whose vehicles were briefly sold here in the U.S., was found to have altered crash-test data on four of its models since 2022, but an internal investigation revealed falsified test results going back more than 30 years. 

Daihatsu suspended production at its last Japanese factory this week, with company executives appearing to be ready to fall on their swords. CEO Soichiro Okudaira said the company “Betrayed the trust of our customers. All the blame is on the management.” The first issues date back to 1989, but the company’s actions accelerated in 2014.

Among other issues, the automaker found that the doors of some models could become harder to open from the outside after a crash, though no injuries related to the problem have been reported. The automaker had previously admitted to falsifying data for crash tests of two hybrid vehicles and said it had stopped selling them. 

This has been an ongoing saga for Daihatsu and Toyota, and it just keeps getting worse. Even before the shutdown, the company admitted to fiddling with crash tests on almost 90,000 cars sold under the Toyota brand in Malaysia and Thailand. For its part, Toyota said it would step in and conduct a sweeping investigation of the management and company operations. 

Whatever the outcome here, it’s a complete shock that Toyota would let this go on for so long without very publicly stepping in. Yeah, shutting down production is an excellent first step, but it’s at least three whole decades too late. That said, executives taking responsibility is the right thing, and they noted that the company’s culture made it unacceptable to delay a product launch for safety fixes.