Testing Tesla on the Deadliest Road in America 🐉

This is my dad's Tesla and I'm going to take it driving on... the Deadliest Road in America. But! I'm not going to be driving because I've just installed the full self-driving, pre-release BETA software. It's only allowed right now on a tiny number of cars for testing in urban environments so, of course I wanted to try it out on a famously dangerous mountain road to see what it can really do. Will I survive? Will I crash my dad's car and be in BIG trouble? Right now I don't know but, either way, [sunglasses snap] it's road trip time.

You deserve a real name, Winter. Welcome to the world! So, where are we? In the Great Smoky Mountains, on the border of North Carolina and Tennessee where lies a mountain pass of some of the most twisty and dangerous driving in the country. Just hours after we arrived, this happened. Parts from accidents like these are salvaged to build the Tree of Shame at the entrance to serve as a warning to others of what can go wrong.

But here's the thing: driving hundreds of curves faster than you should on a mountain's edge—it's a lot of fun. Name it the Tail of the Dragon and the drivers will come. I don't have any idea what this is,... but it's adorable. I did not understand just how dangerous this was until now. The nearest hospital is an hour away so, on busy days like this, an ambulance waits for the inevitable at the exit to save time. But ambulances are not immune from accidents.

Off hours is when drivers push the limits when, they hope, no one is around. Going over the speed limit to break records. Crossing yellow lines and rounding blind turns with sheer drops. Trucks are banned from the road for being too great a risk, but signs don't stop everyone. [truck horn blast]

[Driver] Got a little lost! [Grey] The police were waiting for him down the road. The Dragon has killed multiple people along every one of its eleven miles. It's a challenge for even the best human drivers but, I'm putting my life in the hands of a non-human driver. Ugh! I'm having some serious doubts about this. On the drive up, I had to disengage the BETA auto-pilot several times, and last night while doom-scrolling Dragon accident videos, I found the last guy who tried the old Tesla Auto-Pilot on this road, and he had to disengage minutes in because it was, "waaay too dangerous."

I'm not confident she's going to make this run without me having to disengage and take over, but I guess that's the whole point, right? BETA testing the robot. With. My life. Okay, here we go! I'm going to put her in full self-driving BETA mode, and I'm going to have my hands on the wheel but let the wheel slide through them so that you can see that it's really the Tesla doing it herself. Alright, motorcycle, high-crash area and.... this is the official start. Here we go.

Oh, boy! Also, I'm not doing any of the speed adjusting around these turns, so she's deciding entirely how slow to take the corners. Making left-hand turns, the Tesla is just too close to the line. I wish there was a way I could tell her, "Stay as close to the white line as possible." Which she's doing now, just fine, on the right-hand turn, but on the left-hand turns, ahh, it, it's a little dicer.

The one thing is very helpful though is I can really look much further down the road than I could if I had to also be keeping my eyes fully on the turn ahead, so I am very alert for traffic coming the other way. Oh my god, haha, oh my god, it's over! She did the whole road all by herself. Ahhh. Ha ha ha. Ah-mazing. Ooph. Wooh! She made it! Allll the way by herself. Zero disengagements the entire time. Ahh, I'm so pumped.

Alright. Now it's time to turn around and go back. That's hilarious. She's stopping for the photographer. Winter, I didn't know you were a bit of a vain girl. [photo shutter click click click click....click] Okay, this is it. This is the start, the official start of the Dragon's Tail. Auto-pilot has brought us to our destination. Gonna pop into the General Store. Well I've got to get one for Winter. She totally deserves it. I've got something for you. She did the whole route all by herself. It's still a very beta BETA but this self-driving test made it up and down the Dragon with zero human intervention.