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A Tesla running one of its self-driving modes was rear-ended after stopping in the middle of a Arizona highway, Electrek reports, with the driver found dead at the scene. Grimly, it’s not the first accident of its kind.
The crash occurred on October 31, 2025. According to local reports at the time, the 2020 Tesla Model 3 was struck by an F-350 pickup around 3 AM on the eastbound Loop 202 in Mesa, Arizona. None of the contemporaneous reports made note of whether the Tesla had one of its driver-assist systems engaged.
Electrek, however, managed to match the collision to a redacted crash report that Tesla provided in its filings to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. These were shared under a Standing General Order that requires automakers to report crashes involving a driver-assist system that’s considered to have an SAE Level 2 of automation or higher, meaning that it can partially drive itself under the right conditions and with constant supervision.
The report states that an automated driving system — either Autopilot or Full Self-Driving — was “verified engaged” during the accident. The vehicle’s “pre-crash movement” is listed as “stopped – 0 mph,” indicating it stopped in the middle of the road. None of these details were shared publicly at the time of the accident.
Electrek says that this is the second time that a Tesla Model 3 with a driver-assist system engaged apparently stopped in a highway before a crash that killed its driver; it also happened in Florida, just weeks before the second one.
What happened is unclear. Tesla’s self-driving software has a well-known “phantom braking” problem that causes the cars to brake unexpectedly, but this is typically to slow the vehicle down, not stop it completely. Going from highway speeds to a grinding halt would be an extraordinary, if not unprecedented, example. It’s also possible that the driver fell asleep behind the wheel or experienced some kind of medical episode that rendered them unable to respond.
The upshot is that we’re more or less being kept in the dark. These details, and whether the car was running the now-obsolete Autopilot or its more advanced successor FSD is impossible to know, because Tesla censored that section of the crash report. It has long redacted crucial information in these reports reports under the guise of protecting “confidential business information,” a practice that is legal but rarely used to the extent that Tesla does. It has gotten in trouble with regulators for how it reports crashes, though. Last year, the NHTSA launched an investigation into Tesla for repeatedly failing to report crashes in time.
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