A Tesla driver watched in horror as another Tesla burst into flames after hitting a barrier

• A Tesla driver watched in horror as another Tesla hit a barrier and burst into flames.
• Josh Kaplan was driving on the 405 freeway in Los Angeles when he encountered the crash.

Josh Kaplan was driving his Tesla Model X on the 405 freeway in Los Angeles last month when he saw a vehicle ahead of him had suddenly stopped.

"I noticed a car facing left against the barrier despite the road veering to the right," he told Insider.

He realised that vehicle was also a Tesla, and had smoke coming from it. "In the time it took me to call 911, it caught fire. Kind of looked like sparklers going off," Kaplan said.

He got out and spoke to the driver of the crashed Tesla, who was not injured in the incident. The driver told Kaplan he had his 2018 Model X in Autopilot but "it suddenly veered hard to the left and stopped against the wall."

Kaplan bought his Tesla about four months ago with 6,000 miles on the clock but said: "It has been a complete disappointment – software notwithstanding, the fit and finish are miserable."

He said he's also experienced many frightening miscalculations by Autopilot in his Model X.

"Just last week it completely ignored a traffic cone on the highway and ran over it," he told Insider. "That was just before, the car turned from an inside of a double-turn lane into the outside lane despite there being other vehicles already occupying that space."

Commenting on the latest version of the system, Kaplan said: "The user interface would often display a blank screen when the software crashes or the system doesn't update that some basic functions, including navigation voice being turned off instead of the previous setting.

"This means that if you're driving, and the computer crashes, which it has done multiple times, you are left with a blank screen – and no way to know what your car is doing."

Kaplan quipped that Tesla should advertise Autopilot as "the scariest ride you'll ever take."

Vehicles using Tesla's Autopilot software were involved in 273 crashes over roughly the last year, according to a report released earlier this year by the US road-safety regulator.

Tesla didn't immediately respond to a request for comment by Insider.

Has your Tesla been involved in an Autopilot mishap? Contact this reporter at stabahriti@insider.com