CALIFORNIA BRIEFS
Authorities say a Tesla driver, who said he thought his car was in Autopilot mode, crashed into the back of a firetruck in San Jose.
The California Highway Patrol says the Tesla rear-ended a fire engine that was stopped with its emergency lights activated along US-101 around 1 a.m. Saturday.
The 37-year-old driver, Michael Tran, told
“I think I had auto-pilot on.”
Tran was later arrested on suspicion of drunken driving. It wasn’t immediately clear if he had an attorney.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the two firefighters in the firetruck were not injured. The newspaper says Tran and a female passenger in the Tesla were taken to San Jose Regional Medical Center with minor injuries.
Tesla’s semi-autonomous Autopilot mode has come under scrutiny following other recent crashes. The carmaker says the function is not designed to avoid a collision and warns drivers not to rely on it officers, entirely.
It was unclear whether Autopilot was activated. Tesla says in a statement that it “has not yet received any data from the car, but we are working to establish the facts of the incident.”
THERMAL Talk about driving a lemon!
Authorities say a man has been arrested in Southern California after deputies found about 800 pounds of stolen lemons inside his car.
Riverside County sheriff’s officials say 69-year-old Dionicio Fierros was arrested Friday and booked on a charge of theft of agricultural products.
Deputies were investigating recent farm thefts when they stopped Fierros’ car in Thermal on Friday morning.
Inside his car, deputies say they found several large bags of freshly picked lemons they say were stolen from a nearby farm.
A telephone number for Fierros could not be located in public records and it wasn’t immediately clear he had an attorney who could comment on the allegations.
LOS ANGELES if
The average U.S. price of regular-grade gasoline has dropped two cents a gallon over the past two weeks, to $2.91.
Industry analyst Trilby Lundberg of the Lundberg Survey says that’s more than 50 cents a gallon higher than at this time last year.
Lundberg said Sunday it is likely that gas prices will continue to drop slightly. She says that’s because refiners have increased capacity and current demand is weak.
In California, the average price was $3.61 per gallon, down a penny from two weeks earlier.
The highest average price in the contiguous 48 states and Hawaii is $3.69 in the San Francisco Bay area. The lowest average is $2.51 in Jackson, Mississippi.
— The Associated Press