Tesla Owner Who "Drives" from Back Seat Got Arrested, Then Did It Again
martyb writes:
Tesla owner who "drives" from back seat got arrested, then did it again:
The California Highway Patrol said it arrested a man seen riding in the back seat of a Tesla Model 3 that had no one in the driver's seat. Param Sharma, 25, was arrested "and booked into Santa Rita Jail" on counts of reckless driving and disobeying an officer, the department said in a statement Tuesday. Sharma was arrested after multiple 911 calls on Monday around 6:30 pm reported a driverless vehicle "traveling eastbound on I-80 across the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge toward the city of Oakland," police said.
Sharma spent a night locked up, and he "committed the same crime shortly after being released from jail," according to a story yesterday by KTVU Fox 2:
Param Sharma met KTVU's Jesse Gary in San Francisco Wednesday afternoon, not far from his mother's high-rise apartment. After getting out of jail on two counts of reckless driving, he pulled up sitting in the back seat of a Tesla with no one in the driver's seat.
When asked if he purchased a new Tesla after the previous one was impounded he said, "Yeah, I'm rich as [expletive]. I'm very rich."
"I feel safer back here than I do up there," Sharma also told KTVU from the right-rear passenger seat.
Sharma expressed confidence in Tesla's self-driving capabilities in another interview with KTVU. "I've been brake-checked before really hard, and the car stopped. The car came to a complete stop. [Tesla CEO] Elon Musk really knows what he's doing, and I think people are tripping and they're scared," Sharma said.
The officer who pulled over Sharma "observed the individual move into the driver's seat" and then bring the car to a stop, police said. Police said they had already "cited Sharma on April 27 for similar behavior."
I watched the video in the linked KUTV story in utter disbelief.
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