Do not Hearken to Tesla Followers on Social Media. FSD Did Not Simply Stop a Airplane Crash

Look how proud Elon Musk’s mother is of her son’s automotive firm:

Undoubtedly wow 😮 @Tesla 👏👏👏 https://t.co/ZTbkZq2wSu

— Maye Musk (@mayemusk) October 25, 2025

There’s nothing incorrect with a mom praising her billionaire son—who amongst us wouldn’t do the identical?—however the publish she’s embedding is hogwash. The occasion deserving of reward right here is Matthew Topchian, a quick-thinking human motorist who took evasive motion utilizing his palms and ft, that are manufactured from flesh and blood.

On Thursday, a navy prop airplane had a shaky emergency landing, followed by a crash on a dusty back road on the outskirts of Oklahoma City. Two folks had been on board, however neither was injured. There was, nonetheless, a hearth, sparked when the airplane collided with two utility poles. It additionally buzzed a Tesla ambling alongside minding its personal enterprise, narrowly avoiding disaster. (By the way, this sort of airplane is used to destroy coca leaf crops in South America).

Now Maye Musk is only one of numerous Tesla followers on Elon Musk’s X applauding the corporate’s assisted driver mode for deftly avoiding a tragic collision between automobiles with the potential to assert lives.

Downside is, in accordance with a publish by the man driving the automotive, he was driving the quaint means, and believes that if he hadn’t been, it will have crashed.

The problem X post is from somebody named David Bellow, and reads partially “WOW! Tesla full self driving dodges a freaking airplane falling out of the sky!”

Over on TikTok, the place the close to miss was initially posted by a man named Matthew Topchian (whose identity was confirmed by his local news station) a reply requested if the automotive was in handbook or self-driving mode, and Topchian’s reply is categorical: “Manually, the fsd is absolutely good however it woulda completely macked that airplane.” Translation from hastily-typing-on-a-smartphone-ese: I used to be driving manually. Whereas Tesla’s assisted driving mode is superb, if I had been utilizing it on the time, I’m assured that airplane would have been tragically destroyed.

The X publish has since obtained a group notice, correcting the file in regards to the driver not utilizing FSD, and Bellow is aware of this, however he’s not deleting, and he’s posted that he plans to do his personal analysis, thanks very a lot. “I’m gonna have to listen to it from Matthew himself that he wasn’t driving in full self driving as a result of that’s not the story I heard,” Bellow wrote. Additionally, he says, “the notice solely references one touch upon a TikTok and the one video on that TikTok account is that this video. Might be a bot account or possibly Matthew likes the concept of individuals pondering he’s a racecar driver and altered his preliminary story.” For positive, yeah, completely!

Bellow’s publish is totally being taken as truth. It’s obtained tens of millions of views, and quote tweet textual content consists of relatively terrifyingly misinformed statements like “The Tesla self driving automotive has reached a stage of security I didn’t assume was doable for an additional decade,” and “Autopilot dodged a airplane. That’s not self-driving — that’s situational consciousness on wheels…”