A Tesla driver recently found themselves between a truck and a hard place when an 18-wheeler nearly drove them into a guardrail on two separate occasions.
They posted dashcam footage of the incident from April 18 on the r/TeslaCam subreddit with the caption, "Truck deliberately tries to ram me into the side of the freeway twice."
The Tesla was driving in Southern California when a semi-truck hugging the lane line abruptly veered into the Tesla's lane without signaling. The Tesla swerved into the shoulder to avoid a collision and narrowly avoided the guardrail on the other side.
Any doubts about the truck driver's intent were erased after they again tried to pin the Tesla against the railing, even crossing the solid lane line on the right-hand side. They then brake-checked the Tesla and stopped in the middle of a freeway exit, forcing the latter to maneuver around the larger vehicle before speeding off.
According to a follow-up thread from the original poster with a clip of what happened beforehand, the incident started after they and the truck driver tried to merge into the same lane.
"I sped up and got in front of him and he honked, then I flipped him off. Then he did the first attempt to ram me from the left and I got through the narrow opening. I flipped him off again and then he did the second more aggressive attempt," they wrote.
OP got a license plate number and said they would submit a police report, but they also expressed remorse for the "lapse in my judgment in that moment" for giving the bird and challenging a much larger vehicle.
While the Tesla driver is partially at fault for how they responded, it's clear that the truck driver was reckless and unnecessarily endangered the lives of the parties involved and everyone around them at the time.
And though the car type may not have factored into what occurred, it's not uncommon for other drivers to harass electric vehicle owners by parking in charging stations or rolling coal. It's unfortunate since it may discourage car owners from transitioning to an EV, which produces 10,000 fewer pounds of carbon dioxide than a gas-powered car every year.
"WTF! You gotta report him to the police, that's attempted vehicular assault," one commenter wrote on the original post.
"As a fellow truck driver and tesla owner, please report this driver. Regardless of what happened prior to this, the response from this owner operator is wild!" a second person said.
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