Tesla Full Self-Driving Drives Through Railroad Crossing Gate Seconds Before Train in Texas Incident
Key Takeaways
- ▸A Tesla on Full Self-Driving suddenly accelerated through a lowered railroad crossing gate seconds before a train arrived, forcing the driver to use emergency acceleration to escape
- ▸The incident follows a documented pattern of 40+ reported FSD failures at railroad crossings, including a 2025 incident where a Tesla on FSD was struck by a train
- ▸NHTSA has an open investigation linking FSD to approximately 80 documented violations, 14 crashes, and 23 injuries, prompting calls from U.S. Senators for formal investigation into railroad crossing behavior
Summary
A Texas Tesla owner reported a harrowing incident where his vehicle operating on "Full Self-Driving" mode suddenly accelerated through a lowered railroad crossing gate as an oncoming train approached. Joshua Brown, who claims over 40,000 miles of FSD experience, described being stopped at an active level crossing when the Tesla unexpectedly accelerated without warning. Brown used racing techniques to floor the accelerator, crashing through the crossing arm and clearing the tracks just as the train arrived. The vehicle only disengaged autopilot after successfully crossing the rails.
This incident represents the latest in a documented pattern of FSD failures at railroad crossings. NBC News has identified more than 40 social-media reports of similar FSD malfunctions at rail crossings, and a Tesla on FSD was struck by a train in Pennsylvania in 2025. These incidents prompted Senators Ed Markey and Richard Blumenthal to request that NHTSA formally investigate FSD's behavior at railroad crossings. NHTSA currently has an open investigation into FSD, having already linked the system to approximately 80 documented violations including at least 58 incidents, 14 crashes, and 23 injuries.
Tesla released FSD v14.3 the day after Brown's incident, claiming a "20% faster reaction time" through a new compiler and runtime. Release notes mentioned improved handling for "rare and unusual objects extending, hanging, or leaning into the vehicle path"—language observers interpreted as addressing crossing-arm failures, though Tesla did not explicitly mention railroad gates. Despite marketing FSD as seven times safer than average U.S. drivers, Tesla does not disclose underlying datasets or break safety statistics by incident type.
- Tesla released FSD v14.3 the day after the incident with improvements for handling objects in the vehicle path, which observers interpreted as an attempt to address crossing-arm failures
