A Driver Says He Braked Tesla FSD at a Railroad Crossing. NHTSA Already Asked for Crossing-Specific Logs.

Auto journalist Lei Xing said he manually braked his Tesla Model Y at a railroad crossing in Belchertown, Massachusetts, on Aug. 26 while using Full Self-Driving (Supervised) 14.3.7. Xing wrote that the crossing lights were flashing, a train horn was audible and the crossing had no gate or railing.¹

That account is not a technical finding about what the car perceived or why it behaved as Xing described. But the scenario is unusually relevant to an existing federal record: a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration information request in its Tesla FSD investigation already asks for railroad-crossing-specific incident data, including software versions, warnings, takeover timing, speeds and supporting logs.²

The research for this story did not locate a public Tesla confirmation of Xing's account. Tesla's current FSD support page says FSD (Supervised) requires active driver supervision, does not make the vehicle autonomous, and leaves the driver responsible for vehicle speed and control.³

NHTSA asked for more than a list of complaints

NHTSA opened Preliminary Evaluation PE25012 on Oct. 7, 2025 to assess alleged traffic-safety violations while FSD is engaged. The opening resume says the assessment can encompass behavior when approaching railroad crossings.⁴

The agency's Dec. 3 information request is more specific. It defines the alleged-defect scope to include attempted or actual violations of traffic signals, signs or markings at railroad crossings.²

For each responsive incident, NHTSA asks Tesla for the vehicle and FSD software versions, incident location and time, whether automation was engaged, whether a warning or takeover-immediately prompt was issued and when, vehicle speeds, whether the incident occurred at a railroad crossing, crash or injury information, and supporting records such as logs, video or imagery.²

NHTSA separately asks Tesla to explain FSD's theory of operation, including how the system perceives, classifies and responds to railroad crossings. The request also asks about system limitations, driver alerts and situations in which map information and sensor inputs may conflict.²

Those requests establish what evidence the agency wants from Tesla. They do not establish that a railroad-crossing defect exists, that Xing's Aug. 26 account has been validated by NHTSA, or that his event is already included among incidents responsive to PE25012.

That distinction matters because a driver-posted video can show a concerning event without establishing the cause. Vehicle logs, software version, warnings, driver inputs, map data and perception records are the kinds of evidence needed to move from an account of what happened to a technical explanation of why.

14.3.7 was not the newest observed build

Xing identified the software in his vehicle as FSD 14.3.7.¹ By the time of his Aug. 26 report, third-party Tesla software trackers had begun observing a limited rollout of FSD 14.3.8 in software version 2026.26.6.5.⁵

That means 14.3.7 should not be described as the latest FSD version as of Aug. 27. It also does not mean 14.3.8 fixes, reproduces or changes the railroad-crossing behavior Xing reported. The tracker data establishes that a newer observed version existed, not how that version performs at crossings.⁵

The stronger question is therefore not whether one clip proves a fleet-wide problem. It is whether incidents can be reconstructed with the incident-level and system-design evidence NHTSA has already requested from Tesla: software version, warnings, intervention timing, vehicle data, logs and the system's railroad-crossing perception and response.²

Sources

Footnotes

1. Lei Xing Aug. 26 railroad-crossing post and follow-ups — Lei Xing (@leixing77), Aug. 26-27, 2026. Original: https://x.com/leixing77/status/2092695732322988252 ; text mirror used during research: https://www.sotwe.com/leixing77 Establishes Xing's public account that he manually braked, his description of flashing lights/train horn and no gate or railing, his Model Y, and his identification of FSD 14.3.7. The newsroom did not independently reconstruct the vehicle's behavior from logs or directly inspect the original video frames in the research run. ↩ ↩²

2. Information Request ID PE25012-01 — NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation, Dec. 3, 2025. https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/inv/2025/INIM-PE25012-30897.pdf Establishes the railroad-crossing language in the alleged-defect definition, the incident-level fields and records NHTSA requested, and its request for Tesla to describe FSD perception, classification and response at railroad crossings. The request does not establish that the alleged defect exists. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

3. Full Self-Driving (Supervised) — Tesla, current support page observed Aug. 27, 2026. https://www.tesla.com/support/fsd Establishes Tesla's published instructions that FSD (Supervised) requires active driver supervision, does not make the vehicle autonomous and leaves the driver responsible for speed and control. It does not establish what happened in Xing's vehicle. ↩

4. ODI Resume — PE25012, Traffic safety violations while Full Self Driving (FSD) is engaged — NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation, Oct. 7, 2025. https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/inv/2025/INOA-PE25012-19171.pdf Establishes the preliminary evaluation's opening scope, estimated population and explicit reference to railroad-crossing situations. It is an investigation-opening document, not a defect finding or recall. ↩

5. FSD v14.3.8 / Tesla software rollout trackers — TeslAnt and Teslascope, observed Aug. 25-27, 2026. https://teslant.com/en/changelog/tesla-fsd-v14-3-8-hw4-2026-26-6-5 ; https://teslascope.com/software Establishes third-party observations of a limited FSD 14.3.8 rollout around Aug. 25-26. Tracker coverage is not Tesla's full fleet and does not establish railroad-crossing performance. ↩ ↩²