Montreal-area Tesla owner frustrated after accident using driving app

A Montreal-area man’s Tesla Model 3 collided with another vehicle in a parking lot at the Fairview Pointe-Claire shopping mall west of Montreal on April 10 after he tried to retrieve his car while outside of his vehicle using an autonomous driving feature called Smart Summon. This function allows users to have their car drive to them using the Tesla application on their smartphone.

“I put the pin on the map on the app and was requesting the car to come to me. Now when I pressed the ‘go to target’ button and held it, I noticed that the car immediately turned right instead of going straight before turning right, which put it at a sharp angle leading to hitting another vehicle,” explained George Ghazzoul, a Montreal-area Tesla Model 3 owner, adding, “now as soon as I noticed that, I took my finger off as it was starting to move forward, but unfortunately it didn’t respond in time. It continued to creep forward and it caused damage to both my vehicle and the vehicle that was parked next to it.”

Ghazzoul is frustrated because he says he was given access to an application that did not perform as anticipated. He adds that he expected it would have detected the parked car and would have stopped his car in time when he commanded it to with the smartphone application before hitting the vehicle. 

“The part that frustrated me the most was, I mainly got in touch with Tesla to try to investigate why the issue happened, try to find a potential resolution to how can they fix this. But they were actually completely uninterested in talking to me,” said Ghazzoul.

After being notified by Ghazzoul about his vehicle colliding with a parked car after using the Smart Summon feature, CityNews Montreal reached out to Quebec’s Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility and were told that this type of autonomous driving feature is not only illegal to use on public roads, but it is also prohibited to use in private areas where public vehicles can circulate such as in parking lots for shopping malls. 

“Many people who might buy a vehicle with this feature are not aware that it’s not legal to use it except on your own property,” said George Iny, director of the Automobile Protection Association. “So that definitely is something that the vendor or the dealer should be communicating and it probably should be in the manufacturer’s materials destined to end users as well. They should be told.”

CityNews Montreal also reached out to Tesla for a comment on their Smart Summon feature, but they did not respond before deadline. 

“I’d like to see a little bit more interest on Tesla’s side in public safety, being diligent with how these features are released, and showing some level of concern to public safety,” said Ghazzoul.