A Tesla ended up inside a California family’s home early Friday morning after the driver lost control, hitting an embankment and causing the vehicle to soar through a nearby yard, driveway, and over a swimming pool before colliding into the kitchen of another home.
San Mateo police were called to a quiet residential area just after 7 a.m. Friday after a 70-year-old woman’s Tesla Model X crashed into a home, Jerami Surratt, a public information officer for the department, told SFGate.
“Obviously a big collision like that doesn’t happen every day, so multiple officers responded to make sure everyone was OK and no one was hurt,” he said.
The driver and her daughter, 40, who was in the passenger seat, remained at the scene following the chaotic crash.
Neither were injured, and the home was unoccupied at the time of the accident, police said.
Meredith Donato, whose family has lived in the home for 25 years, was relieved her mother wasn’t home at the time of the wreck.
“Honestly just amazed that no one was hurt… if my mother was in the house, she would absolutely have been drinking her tea at 7 a.m. in the kitchen,” Donato told KTVU. “There’s obviously property damage, but at the end of the day it’s just stuff.”
According to police, the Tesla flew 40 to 50 feet through the air, soaring over a yard, and driveway and crashing into two parked cars before smashing into a home.
The Tesla was moving downhill and was not in self-driving mode at the time of the incident, Surratt added.
“There were witnesses in the neighborhood that saw the Tesla slow down to a stop and accelerate very quickly, but exactly what happened is still under investigation,” he said.
The collision took out “a good section of the wall,” Surratt said, causing firefighters to have to tow the vehicle out of the residence.
The home was then red-tagged so it could be inspected for structural damage.
The cause of the crash has yet to be determined, Surratt said.
