Tesla driver kills pedestrian with Getaround rental

Getting behind the wheel of a Tesla rented through Getaround’s car-sharing app is a breeze — perhaps too much so. 

On Sunday, a 22-year-old driver allegedly ran a red light in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, crashing a rented Tesla into another car before striking two pedestrians in a nearby crosswalk. The driver, who is reportedly not old enough to have rented the car via the app, killed one of the two pedestrians and left the other hospitalized in critical condition. 

So reports the San Francisco Chronicle, which notes the age of the driver of the rented car as 22. Getaround’s website, which offers Teslas starting at $25 an hour, states that renters of specialty cars must be at least 25 years old. 

The victims, Benjamin Dean and his wife, Kelly, were visiting San Francisco from nearby Clovis, California, and were reportedly in the crosswalk at the time they were struck. 

SF Weekly notes that SFPD is investigating whether autopilot was enabled at the time of the crash. 

We reached out to Getaround to confirm that the car was rented through its service and that the driver was indeed 22, but received no response as of press time. 

If the driver was indeed under the company’s required age for renting a Tesla, the question as to how she got behind the wheel of the car is surely to plague the company. 

According to Vision Zero, as of June 30, 11 pedestrians and one cyclist have been killed by drivers on San Francisco city streets this year. This number does not include the July 18 death of a pedestrian who was hit by the driver of a tractor trailer.