A Tesla crashed into The Mellow SF plant store at the corner of 21st and San Carlos streets in the Mission early Sunday afternoon.
No one was injured.
The collision occurred at 12:15 p.m., according to Lorena Velasco, who owns the store with her husband, David.
“Police were called and arrived quickly, but no report was filed, since the car that ran into our corner was our property manager,” Valesco wrote in an email.
“We’ll have to redo the brick and fix our metal gates,” she added.
Employees were upset enough that they closed the store at 2 p.m., Valesco wrote.
Elizabeth Creely, a Mission resident, was riding her bike west on 21st Street when she came upon the crash.
Creely spoke to the driver of the Tesla, who said she had her car on autopilot to make a right turn onto San Carlos and into her garage. The car, however, wasn’t executing the turn. When the driver went to disengage autopilot, she told Creely, she hit the accelerator by mistake.
The driver and her husband, who was at the scene, declined to give their names. Those on the scene asked if she needed help, but she declined assistance and appeared unhurt, but shaken, Creely said.
Several employees inside the shop at the time of the crash told Creely that they felt it, but no one was hurt, and it appears all of the plants survived.
The store’s camera shows the car crashing into the corner, followed by shoppers and others running out as the horn sounds.
The accident is the latest in a string of incidents in which cars have crashed into buildings situated on Mission District corners, including last week’s incident at the Dovre Club, and another last year at a now-closed Chase branch. In both of those instances, there was considerable structural damage.
Although there was a lot of debris from the Tesla, Creely said, there did not seem to be much damage to The Mellow SF.
Editor-folk, don’t use the word “accident” to describe a sequence of decisions and circumstances that only needed to combine with random chance or human error to cause a bad outcome. That is not an accident. “Accident” is a word applied to preemptively exonerate or deflect from an exploration of why bad things happen.
The word you’re looking for is “crash.”
OK, so I take it the lady operating the Tesla did this on purpose then. /s
Bicycle virtue-signalers always want to play the victim.
No, “accident” is the correct term unless the impact was deliberate.
The word denotes (a lack of) intent, and has nothing to do with fault.
People shouldn’t use the auto pilot in the City. It seems more appropriate for the freeway. I recently saw a Tesla with the driver eating, holding her food with both hands as the car was speeding along. Craziness. Lucky no one was hurt or worse at the Plant Store.
In reading the article it appears the driver tried to take the car out of full Self-driving mode which can be done a few ways, one of which is to tap the brake. the driver admits they accidentally hit the ‘gas’ not the brake. So in actuality this has nothing to do with self driving cars and has only to do with one of the common causes of accidents, drivers hitting the wrong pedal. There were lawsuits years back where Toyota was being sued because its cars were just “taking off” and accelerating no matter how hard people claimed they were slamming on the brakes. In the end it was found that people hit the gas not the brake and the more the car would go the harder they would press they pedal. This is run of the mill, seen it all before, human error.
“this has nothing to do with self driving cars”. It’s not that simple. Modes like “self driving” that aren’t properly implemented add complexity and potential confusion. That’s what happened here.
It’s all about the self driving here. The studies are much more solid for planes, but the problem is the same. If the operator isn’t engaged in controlling the vehicle, they can make bad decisions in the seconds after taking it over from auto pilot. Had she been actually driving her car, her foot would have been in the right place already.
If she did not use the auto in the first place she would not have to had disengage it. So this car is definitely part of the problem here in that it promises it can do things it cannot. Thanks to the liar Musk
“Autopilot” doesn’t work on freeways either. It’s a couple years back when a Tesla caused a massive pileup on I-80 at Yuerba Buena Island when it executed a random full-on emergency stop to 0 mph, in the fast lane. Across the country, Teslas are also known to have significant problems when they drive towards the sun sitting low over the horizon. Hitting semis, fire trucks, what ever’s in the way that “Autopilot” (or “FSD”) fails to pick up.
Exactly. I can see a use case for driverless cars if you are going to tahoe. But if you are driving around town, you are sitting in the car anyways. Be an adult and do something for yourselves. And if you are pro-driverless car don’t bitch about how boomers destroyed the environment because AI is going to change the world by devastating the environment. Maybe limit it to things that are worthwhile.
Well, that’s nice. It’s been a whole, what, two days since a careless driver crashed into a Mission storefront now?
What responsible, considerate (and law abiding) person in their right mind would employ auto pilot in a dense urban setting like the streets and sidewalks of San Francisco? Can you say lawsuit? I can.
Actually no, two vehicles had an accident at an intersection due to one blowing through and one hit the building as a result. But details don’t matter when you’re throwing bicycle-shaped bombs online.
No one even mentioned bicycles until you did, and it’s pretty hilarious that your brain’s clearly so cooked you’re just blindly defending random terrible drivers now.
We can read the history of playing the victim as a bicycle virtue-signaling comedian, actually. Yes, it’s an accident. No, they didn’t do it on purpose. Sorry, future victims of society, you can’t wish away the reality of motorized transportation with virtue signaling.
Bicyclists celebrating vehicle accidents, such quality human beings.
“no report was filed since the car that ran into our corner was our property manager”
Fourth paragraph in. That’s a textbook definition of a buried lede!
If there’s one thing Elon loves, it’s when drivers disengage autopilot a second before a crash.
So their property manager had a dodgy auto-driving feature engaged in the middle of the city?
That is impressively irresponsible.
Kind of like prejudging the car accidents of others without knowing the facts, irresponsible. Or making jokes every time there’s a car crash, because you’re that heavily into the bicycle narrative that pretends the world runs on Huffy. It doesn’t.
I think this is now seven buildings in the Mission damaged by drivers since June 2023? Former Lucca at 22nd was the first, El Buen Sabor at 18th in April, Chase Bank at Mission and 22nd sometime in 2024, Walgreens at Potrero and 24th in Novmeber, and Gourmet Market at 26th and Guerrero at the end of December. And that’s just in the Mission!
The real story here is why hasn’t the city done more to prevent people and businesses from being destroyed by cars and why there are no consequences for the driver from the city. It is entirely clear, based on all the businesses destroyed in the last year that this is going to continue to happen unless more is done. Cars should not be able to plow into buildings. When is enough, enough? Mission local should report on that story.
cue the fanboys:
“see, it wasn’t autopilot! it was the human who couldn’t stop autopilot from doing what it was programmed to do but couldn’t do, because it’s really just a gimmick that can sometimes follow directions, but actually has no conceptual comprehension of what it is actually doing!”
“no police report was filed”. This could have killed someone (it was at fairly high speed, since the airbags engaged). I’d love to see ML report on when/why/under what circumstances SFPD will undertake on their own to create a report on potentially deadly crashes, especially if/when involving Tesla FSD. (Waymo and Zoox have to report these to the state; Tesla doesn’t for… unclear reasons.)
Airbags can deploy at around 10mph crashes depending. No one was hurt.
Mountains are also not molehills.
Tesla’s auto-pilot is useless, this woman is lucky she did not kill someone
Well, just a few things in case the individual who caused the damage to the building has not thought of them.
1. DO NOT USE AUTOPILOT
2. RECONSIDER YOUR USE OF A CAR TO GET AROUND. Your mix up of the pedals will probably kill someone next time, maybe you. Think of a short dock or high cliff.
3. SUE TESLA. This incident is clearly their fault, not yours.
Cheers,
“clearly”. Good luck with that. Plus, I’d wager that “Autopilot” T&C’s sends everything to arbitration instead.
If instead the car had been a Ford, I suspect that the make of the vehicle would not have been in the title of the article.