The demonstration was supposed to prove that a car could drive itself. Instead, it proved that sometimes even a car needs adult supervision.A video making the rounds on social media shows a Pakistani man confidently demonstrating what he describes as a self-driving car. He sits in the passenger seat, apparently with nobody behind the wheel, while the vehicle moves along the road.“As you can tell, there’s no shortage of talent in Pakistan,” he says proudly to the camera.For a few seconds, everything looks impressive. The car keeps moving, the steering wheel turns on its own and the man appears completely convinced that his technology is ready for its big moment.Then the car spots something it apparently likes.A parked police van.The steering wheel suddenly turns towards the side of the road, and the supposedly intelligent vehicle heads straight for the stationary police vehicle. There’s no dramatic recovery, no last-second save – just a crash that brings the demonstration to a rather awkward end.Actor Ranvir Shorey shared the clip on X with a joke of his own.“Presenting Pakistan’s answer to the self driving Tesla: The Masla.”And honestly, the timing couldn’t have been better. The man had just finished talking about Pakistani talent when his autonomous car decided to introduce itself to a police van.
From self-driving to self-crashing
Tesla has spent years developing advanced driver-assistance and autonomous-driving technology. This particular car, however, appeared to have a much simpler strategy: pick a direction and hope for the best.Social media users quickly joined in.One person joked about what the police might have thought when they discovered that the person involved wasn’t even sitting behind the wheel.Another user took a more sympathetic view, arguing that people experimenting with technology shouldn’t automatically be mocked because a prototype demonstration went wrong.But the internet, being the internet, couldn’t resist the punchline.One commenter joked that the car seemed determined to crash into another vehicle while even managing to honk along the way. Another called it, “Elon Musk’s nightmare.”Whether the technology actually qualifies as “self-driving” remains another question. But as demonstrations go, this one certainly succeeded at one thing: nobody watching it is likely to forget where the car decided to go.