AUSTIN, Texas — When self-driving cars make headlines, it’s usually because something went wrong — a glitch, a failure, an accident.
This story is different.
On a dark, isolated stretch of Highway 54 in New Mexico, Clifford Lee believes he’s alive today not because of his own reflexes — but because his Tesla Cybertruck, operating in Full Self-Driving mode, made a split-second decision for him.
“I almost got killed,” Lee said. “I was shaking uncontrollably for a while.”
A Close Call on a Two-Lane Highway
Lee was traveling northbound on a two-lane highway, cruising at about 75 miles per hour, using Tesla’s Full Self-Driving system — known as FSD — during a long road trip.
Ahead of him, a semi-truck approached in the opposite lane. Behind it, a pickup truck attempted a dangerous pass.
“All I saw were headlights,” Lee said.
With only seconds to react, Lee realized the pickup wasn’t going to make it back into its lane in time.
“I think it was like five seconds out,” he said. “Around three seconds, I realized he would not make it.”
Lee says he tried to steer away — but the Cybertruck was already moving.
The Cybertruck recorded the entire event. In the video you can clearly see there was no room for error. An overcorrection would’ve bounced Lee’s Cybertruck off the guardrail and possibly back into oncoming traffic.
Slowed down frame by frame, the video shows the Cybertruck making a precise maneuver — avoiding what could have been a deadly head-on collision.
“I’m so convinced it was FSD,” Lee said.
The only damage: a shattered side window and a broken mirror.
How Tesla’s System Works
Tesla’s Full Self-Driving system relies entirely on cameras — mounted in door pillars, fenders, and around the vehicle — to interpret the world in real time.
“I use it every day,” said Cybertruck owner Aaron George. “I feel so much safer with FSD.”
George demonstrated the system for CBS Austin, starting at the station’s parking lot and setting a destination to Mount Bonnell — a route filled with tricky merges, construction zones, narrow neighborhood streets, and blind intersections.
At one busy frontage road, the Cybertruck waited for the safest window of opportunity before merging smoothly into traffic.
At stoplights, the screen displayed every surrounding vehicle — cars, trucks, vans — even those behind the truck.
As the drive continued, the system navigated tight residential roads, avoided trash cans in the street, detected pedestrians, and cautiously inched forward at blind intersections before turning.
“It’s pretty blinded over there,” George noted at one intersection. “It inched up, saw there were no cars, and made the turn.”
When we arrived at Mount Bonnell, the Cybertruck located an open parking spot and backed in— without George ever touching the wheel.
“It’s amazing,” he said. “Every iteration is mind-blowing.”
Tesla is currently rolling out Full Self-Driving (Supervised) version 14.
More Than Convenience
For many drivers, Full Self-Driving is about convenience. For Clifford Lee, it’s something far more personal.
“I realized this is my second life already,” he said.
Lee believes a full-speed impact — closing at a combined speed of nearly 150 miles per hour — would have been unsurvivable.
“There’s no chance I would have survived that,” he said.
Tesla’s Full Self-Driving system still requires driver supervision, and federal regulators continue to scrutinize the technology. But for one driver on a lonely highway in New Mexico, a decision made in a fraction of a second may have made all the difference.