Two Tesla Model 3s sat stopped in live freeway lanes and were destroyed from behind by trucks. Both drivers died. In both cases, Tesla's own crash filing to the American regulator marks the car's driver-assist system as verified engaged and its pre-crash speed as zero.
Neither fact appeared in any public account of either crash. Electrek published both on 31 August 2026, having matched redacted federal reports to named incidents.
The two crashes
On 6 October 2025 at about 9.25 pm, a 2020 Model 3 was stopped in the centre eastbound lane of Interstate 4 near Lake Mary Boulevard in Seminole County, Florida. A semi tried to avoid it, clipped its rear, hit a guardrail and overturned; the Model 3 was pushed into a second semi. The driver, a 43-year-old man from Deltona, died at the scene, and both truck drivers were unhurt. Florida Highway Patrol said it did not know why the Tesla was stopped in the middle of I-4. Electrek reports that Tesla's filing answers the question the troopers could not.
Twenty-five days later, just after 3 am on 31 October 2025, a 2020 Model 3 was stopped in a lane of the eastbound Loop 202 near Dobson Road in Mesa, Arizona, in clear weather. A Ford F-350 struck it across the whole of its rear. That driver also died at the scene. Arizona's Department of Public Safety and local coverage described a two-vehicle collision without naming the Tesla or mentioning driver assistance. Electrek found the same pair of values in that car's filing: verified engaged, 0 mph.
| Florida | Arizona | |
|---|---|---|
| Date | 6 Oct 2025 | 31 Oct 2025 |
| Road | I-4, Seminole County | Loop 202, Mesa |
| Car | 2020 Model 3 | 2020 Model 3 |
| Struck by | Semi, then a second | Ford F-350 |
| Automation status | Verified Engaged | Verified Engaged |
| Pre-crash speed | 0 mph | 0 mph |
Why two is different from one
TeslAnt covered the mechanics of these filings earlier today, when the same Electrek series produced a 104 mph fatal crash in Clute, Texas that police had attributed to a medical episode. What the Florida and Arizona reports add is a repeat: same model year, same month, same posture — a car at a standstill in moving traffic with the system on.
One stopped car is an anomaly. Two of them three and a half weeks apart is a shape. It does not follow that the system stopped either car; a medical emergency, a deliberate stop or a fault could each leave the same entry on the form. But a stationary vehicle in a live lane is the scenario Level 2 assistance is least able to resolve, because the outcome is decided by the driver behind.
The field that would separate those explanations is the one Tesla removes. The crash narrative and the software version are redacted as confidential business information, so whether Autopilot or Full Self-Driving was running cannot be established from the public file. Electrek puts that redaction rate at 99.9% of Tesla's reports, across a database holding nearly 4,000 Tesla driver-assist crashes.
The European reading
Europe has no Standing General Order and no crash register of its own, so this American record is also part of the evidence base European regulators work from. Tesla says European FSD is 5.2 times safer than manual driving on figures only Tesla holds, France has withheld approval pending an EU-wide decision, and Tesla has asked the Dutch regulator to keep its FSD safety review confidential.
A stopped car in a live lane is not an exotic edge case on a European motorway. Two of them in one month, documented only because a journalist matched timestamps against a redacted database, is a thin basis for anyone — owner or regulator — to judge how often it happens.