Police stopped a man in California riding in the rear seat of his Tesla Model 3 with no one in the driver's seat.
The California Highway Patrol said they arrested the man after they received several emergency calls of an autonomous vehicle traveling across the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
According to police, 25-year-old Param Sharma had been arrested for the same offence earlier in the week, police said. He was jailed for the night but then proceeded to commit the same crime shortly after his release.
The Tesla he was in charge of for the first offence had been impounded. So, he purchased another upon release.
Sharma has been charged with two counts of reckless driving and one count of disobeying an officer. He is now detained at the Santa Rita Jail.
Sharma said he felt safer in the rear of the vehicle. Sharma said he was confident of Tesla's self-driving capabilities and saw no reason why he should be prohibited from using the feature.
"I've been brake-checked before really hard - and the car stopped. The car came to a complete stop. (Tesla chief executive) Elon Musk really knows what he's doing - and I think people are tripping and they're scared," Sharma said.
Sharma has posted videos of him "driving his Tesla from the rear seat. In one video on Instagram, Sharma is sitting in the rear of his moving Tesla while reading an article about himself being arrested for traveling in the car with no driver. On Thursday, he posted another stating he had been released and had purchased another Tesla.
