CNN — Two adults and two children somehow escaped serious injuries after their Tesla plunged off a cliff along California’s Pacific Coast Highway and crashed on a rocky beach some 250 feet below.
The incident occurred Monday morning at an area called Devil’s Slide, some 20 miles south of San Francisco.
“We were very shocked” to discover that people in the car had survived the crash, said Brian Pottenger, battalion chief with Cal Fire’s Coastside Fire Protection District.
“Accidents on that cliff are not rare. We do respond to a lot vehicles on that cliff,” he told CNN. “What’s rare is that we do not get a lot of survivors – surviving this type of accident is very rare.”
Pottenger said the car contained an adult male, an adult female, a 9-year-old boy and a 4-year-old girl. The children were both secured in car seats, which remained intact and in place, he said.
Officials said the four-door, white Tesla sedan was traveling southbound on Highway 1, just south of the Tom Lantos Tunnel between Pacifica and Montara, when it veered off the roadway. They did not cite a reason for the crash.
A spokesperson for the California Highway Patrol told CNN they do not believe any of the Tesla’s self-driving features were active at the time.
“The damage to the vehicle would indicate that it hit, and then flipped several times,” Pottenger said. The car came to rest on its wheels, he added.
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Article URL : https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/03/us/tesla-crash-cliff-california-cec/index.html