On April 7, a terrifying event unfolded at a railway crossing on 18th Street AOL in Plano, Texas. Driver Joshua Brown was approaching the tracks with Tesla's Full Self-Driving mode engaged. Even though the safety gates were already lowered and warning lights were flashing to signal a DART train's arrival, Brown initially expected the car to stop and wait for the customary minute required for the train to pass.
However, the vehicle's autonomous system had a different plan. Without any warning, the Tesla suddenly began to accelerate toward the tracks on its own. Brown later described being in a state of total shock, noting that it took a full second to process the unexpected movement before his defensive driving instincts took over.
With a background in professional racing, Brown decided against slamming the brakes, fearing he would end up directly in the path of the locomotive. Adhering to the racing mantra of "when in doubt, gas it," he pressed the accelerator to the floor to clear the crossing. The car smashed through the barrier, with the gate hitting the center of the driver-side window and knocking items off the dashboard.
The car managed to cross the tracks just as the train arrived, with the blinding lights and deafening horn highlighting just how close the encounter was. It was only after reaching the safety of the other side that Brown finally applied the brakes. The Tesla then displayed a prompt asking what had happened after the system disengaged, leaving the driver shaken but unharmed.
Brown, who has logged over 40,000 miles using the FSD feature, noted that this was the very first time the technology had failed him so drastically. The incident has raised significant questions regarding the "vision-only" approach favored by Tesla, which uses eight cameras instead of radar to navigate the world through end-to-end neural networks.
Railroad crossings appear to be a specific weakness for the FSD system. While it performs reliably on highways, its behavior at crossings is inconsistent; sometimes it stops correctly, and other times it seemingly ignores barriers and lights. This risk is compounded by the fact that many crossings lack physical gates, making software detection errors even more dangerous.
This close call in Plano is part of a growing trend of safety concerns. In March 2026, a Model 3 in West Covina, California, was captured on video driving through a crossing gate at 37 km/h. Furthermore, records from 2025 detail an incident where a Tesla on FSD was actually struck by a train in Pennsylvania, illustrating the lethal potential of these system failures.
Additional evidence of system blindness was provided by Tesla enthusiast Joe Tegtmeyer during a robotaxi test in Austin. He observed that as the crossing lights activated and the gates began to descend, the vehicle failed to recognize the hazard. A Tesla employee riding in the passenger seat was forced to manually intervene to bring the car to a halt before a collision could occur.
The string of failures has prompted federal intervention. U.S. Senators Ed Markey and Richard Blumenthal have reached out to the NHTSA to demand a formal investigation into FSD's reliability at railway crossings. The agency's existing probe has already linked the system to roughly 80 documented incidents, ranging from running red lights to crossing into oncoming lanes.
The senators stressed that while typical traffic errors are dangerous, a failure at a train crossing is uniquely catastrophic. Such an error puts not only the car's occupants at risk but also the passengers and workers on the train, potentially leading to a disaster with a high number of casualties.
In what many see as a reactive measure, Tesla began deploying FSD version 14.3 the very next day. This version features a new compiler that claims to offer a 20% improvement in reaction times. The release notes specifically mentioned better handling of "rare and unusual objects" that might overhang the vehicle's path, a description many experts linked to the crossing gate issue.
Despite its ambitious name, Full Self-Driving remains a Level 2 driver-assist system. Elon Musk has acknowledged that while the software shows impressive results in standard scenarios, it will take several more years before the technology is demonstrably safer than a human driver across all possible edge cases.
According to the Federal Railroad Administration, 267 fatalities occurred at crossings in 2024. Joshua Brown's experience serves as a clear warning that FSD is still software in development. Until the system can consistently handle basic safety scenarios like a lowered gate, drivers must remain fully engaged and ready to take control at a moment's notice.
