Could You Lose Your Car Over A Crime You Did Not Commit?

Tesla Vehicle Impound Due to Unrelated Crimes
So you may have seen this news going around. I want to hear what you all as car enthusiasts think about this. Tesla owners have been losing their vehicles to police impounds due to crimes they had nothing to do with. How this is playing out is Tesla’s, like some other vehicles (Tesla’s not the only car that has this), have exterior vehicle monitoring that watches around the car using cameras even when the car’s turned off. Some manufacturers call it 360-degree visibility, some call it monitoring mode, and some call it Sentry mode. But what happens is there’s cameras outside the vehicles—in mirrors, door handles, and certain parts of the car—that watch what’s going on around the car. That way, if somebody bumps into your car in a parking lot and you’re not there, you know who it is. Somebody tries to break into your car, you know who it is. Somebody scratches your car with a key, you know who it is. These monitoring systems are very convenient, so you know what’s going on. In some vehicles, you can watch it from your phone. But what’s happening is just like a ring doorbell camera.

Car Cameras as Evidence
If there’s a crime committed in view of one of these cameras, now that becomes evidence. So what’s happening? If there’s a major crime, someone gets robbed or assaulted or murdered, or something really bad happens in a parking lot or in a street, the police, as part of their investigation, are going to look to see if there were any Teslas around. And if there were, they’re going to contact the owner and say, “We need your car because your car has evidence. It’s got a recording of a crime, it’s got a record of a perpetrator or a criminal, and we need to get it.”

Police Impound for Evidence
As of right now, the police need to have the whole car. They can’t just plug in something and download the video; they don’t have that technology at this point. So they tow your car, and because it’s a criminal case, they may need to keep the car for evidence. The lawyers can inspect it, validate it, and also, as you know, the Fifth Amendment of an accused person gives them the right to cross-examine their witness. That doesn’t mean just asking the witness questions. It means if the witness is technology, you have to be able to evaluate it, inspect it, and have a forensic scientist go through it.

Length of Car Seizure and No Compensation
So they may need to keep the car so the defense can verify that this was a correct recording. How long is your car gone for? Who knows. And they don’t give you a rental car. It’s not like when you bring your car to a dealership for an oil change and they give you another car to drive. This is a car out of your hands. It’s not just Tesla—Tesla is the most prominent—but many cars, even some minivans, have 360° cameras that look around the car for parking.

Challenges and Risks for Car Owners
What are your thoughts on this as an automotive enthusiast? Is this a good thing to have in cars? And what’s the solution, what’s the answer? If you have one of these, how do you keep this from happening to you? You don’t have any control over it. You don’t know that there’s not going to be a major crime or some event happening near your car that you had nothing to do with, and now your car’s gone.

Comparing Vehicle to Ring Doorbell Camera
Ring doorbell cameras—this has been happening for years, but not having your ring doorbell camera doesn’t change your life. You can go get another one and put it on your wall. But Tesla as a vehicle is your way of getting back and forth to work or to the store or wherever you need to go, and that could be a serious problem for you.

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