A red Tesla plowed through road flares at a freeway crash scene in Simi Valley early Sunday, striking a Ventura County fire engine and a firefighter who was assisting at the scene. The firefighter suffered serious injuries and was taken to a trauma center, according to the California Highway Patrol.
The Tesla driver, identified as a 30-year-old Saratoga man, was arrested on suspicion of felony driving under the influence of alcohol causing injury, according to Firehouse. The Mercury News reported that his Tesla drove directly into the freeway emergency zone before hitting the firefighter and fire truck, per its reporting. The crash series began around 2:25 a.m. on westbound Highway 118.
A Chaotic Chain of Crashes on Highway 118
The Tesla crash was the second in a chain of incidents that snarled traffic on Highway 118 near Tapo Canyon Road overnight. Firehouse reported that a Ford Bronco Sport traveling the wrong way on westbound Highway 118 crashed head-on into a Honda CR-V, an incident that first brought emergency crews to the roadway. The Bronco driver complained of injuries and was taken to a hospital, though the Honda driver was not reported injured in that collision.
As California Highway Patrol officers and Ventura County firefighters worked that initial wreck, another vehicle drove through the flare pattern set up to warn approaching traffic, according to CHP. Moments later, the red Tesla Model 3 also drove through the flares and struck both the firefighter and the fire engine, per the same account from Firehouse.
Multiple DUI Arrests, One Firefighter Hospitalized
The overnight chaos led to several arrests beyond the Tesla driver. A 64-year-old Simi Valley man was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol, and a 24-year-old man from Shakopee, Minnesota, was also arrested on suspicion of DUI, according to the seed reporting. Westbound Highway 118 had three lanes closed for about four hours as crews cleared the scene and continued the investigation, Firehouse reported.
Whether the Tesla was operating in Autopilot mode at the time of the crash was not determined, according to the available CHP report cited by Firehouse. That unresolved detail places the Simi Valley crash squarely within a broader pattern federal regulators have been tracking for years.
Echoes of a Deadly 2023 Fire Truck Crash
The scene recalls a February 2023 crash in Walnut Creek, where a Tesla Model S struck a parked fire truck on Interstate 680, killing the Tesla's driver, according to SFGATE. Four firefighters seated in that fire truck sustained minor injuries, while a passenger in the Tesla suffered major injuries, the outlet reported. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened a special crash investigation into that collision at the time.
Tesla settled a wrongful-death lawsuit tied to the Walnut Creek crash earlier this month, with the terms of the settlement undisclosed, according to Electrek. The settlement came as NHTSA has continued studying incidents in which Teslas crashed into stationary emergency vehicles on highways, a pattern the agency has been examining for years.
Federal Scrutiny of Autopilot Continues
NHTSA identified more than a dozen crashes in which Tesla vehicles struck stationary emergency vehicles while investigating the performance of the company's driver-assistance systems, according to Reuters. In June 2022, the agency upgraded an earlier probe of 830,000 Tesla vehicles into a formal engineering analysis, the outlet reported. All the Teslas in those cases were confirmed to have been using Autopilot or Traffic Aware Cruise Control, and most of the crashes occurred at night near flashing lights, flares or cones deployed around stopped vehicles, according to Firehouse's account of the study.
Tesla has said its Autopilot, Enhanced Autopilot and Full Self-Driving systems require active driver supervision and do not make its vehicles autonomous, per Reuters. California Vehicle Code Section 23153 addresses driving under the influence causing injury. It remains unclear whether the Simi Valley crash will factor into the ongoing federal review of Autopilot-related incidents near emergency scenes.
