Enlarge / Interior of a Tesla Model 3. (credit: Tesla )

The California Highway Patrol said it arrested a man seen riding in the back seat of a Tesla Model 3 that had no one in the driver's seat. Param Sharma, 25, was arrested "and booked into Santa Rita Jail" on counts of reckless driving and disobeying an officer, the department said in a statement Tuesday. Sharma was arrested after multiple 911 calls on Monday around 6:30 pm reported a driverless vehicle "traveling eastbound on I-80 across the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge toward the city of Oakland," police said.

Sharma spent a night locked up, and he "committed the same crime shortly after being released from jail," according to a story yesterday by KTVU Fox 2 :

Param Sharma met KTVU's Jesse Gary in San Francisco Wednesday afternoon, not far from his mother's high-rise apartment. After getting out of jail on two counts of reckless driving, he pulled up sitting in the back seat of a Tesla with no one in the driver's seat.

When asked if he purchased a new Tesla after the previous one was impounded he said, "Yeah, I'm rich as (expletive). I'm very rich."

"I feel safer back here than I do up there," Sharma also told KTVU from the right-rear passenger seat.

Enlarge (credit: Andrei Stanescu / Getty Images )

On Monday afternoon, the National Transportation Safety Board released a preliminary report for its investigation into a crash of a Tesla Model S that killed the driver and passenger in Texas earlier in April. The crash made headlines because no one was found in the driver's seat , raising suspicions that Tesla's Autopilot driver-assistance system was involved in the deaths. This now seems unlikely—the NTSB says that video footage shows the occupants getting into the front seats of the car shortly before the crash. Additionally, the NTSB was unable to engage a component of Autopilot on the stretch of road where the crash happened.

The crash occurred on April 17 in Spring, located in Harris County, Texas. According to the NTSB report, footage from the owner's home security system shows that the driver and a passenger entered the car at the owner's house. They then traveled approximately 550 feet (167 m) "before departing the road on a curve, driving over the curb, and hitting a drainage culvert, a raised manhole, and a tree." At this point, the Tesla's lithium-ion traction battery was damaged and caught fire.

The fire also destroyed the on-board storage of the Tesla's infotainment system, but the NTSB says it recovered a fire-damaged restraint control module that can "record data associated with vehicle speed, belt status, acceleration, and airbag deployment." This module has been taken to the NTSB's recorder laboratory for further testing.

Enlarge / Joel Johnson with a driverless Waymo vehicle. (credit: Joel Johnson)

Waymo has long kept details about its industry-leading self-driving technology under wraps. The company has done millions of miles of testing in Arizona and California—including thousands of driverless miles with no one behind the wheel. But until last month, almost everyone who experienced those driverless rides was bound by a strict non-disclosure agreement.

In October, Waymo finally pulled back the curtain on its driverless technology. Today customers near the Phoenix suburb of Chandler can hail a fully driverless taxi. They can record rides, publish videos, and talk to reporters about their experiences.

One young Arizonan in particular has leapt at the chance to document the real-world performance of Waymo's driverless taxis. Joel Johnson is an Arizona State University student who is taking a break from college during the pandemic. He lives near Waymo's service territory and has been using some of his free time to put Waymo's driverless taxis through their paces. He says he has taken more than 60 driverless rides in the two months since Waymo opened driverless service up to the public. He has posted more than a dozen videos .

Enlarge / A law enforcement vehicle damaged in Wednesday's crash. (credit: North Carolina State Highway Patrol)

Police in North Carolina have filed charges against a driver whose Tesla crashed into a police car early Wednesday morning, Raleigh's CBS 17 television reports . The driver admitted to officers that he had activated the Autopilot technology on his Model S and was watching a movie on his phone at the time of the crash.

"A Nash County deputy and a trooper with the Highway Patrol were on the side of the road while responding to a previous crash when the Tesla slammed into the deputy’s cruiser," CBS 17 reports. "The impact sent the deputy’s cruiser into the trooper’s vehicle—which pushed the trooper and deputy to the ground."

Thankfully, no one was seriously injured by the crash.