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The headline referred to a real Engadget article published on October 9, 2024. Its core findings came from a Fortune investigation into the Las Vegas Convention Center portion of The Boring Company’s Vegas Loop.
Fortune reported at least 67 trespassing episodes since 2022 and 22 cases since early 2023 in which vehicles followed Tesla Loop cars into stations or tunnels. But the numbers need context: the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority said the vehicle entries were generally inadvertent, and only one of those incidents resulted in an actual tunnel intrusion.
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What the Engadget headline actually meant
“The Morning After” was an Engadget news roundup, not the original investigation. Engadget summarized Fortune’s review of incident reports obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, or LVCVA.
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Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →The headline’s phrase “lost drivers” is best understood as shorthand for drivers who became confused or followed a Loop vehicle into an access point. It does not establish that motorists were routinely lost underground. Likewise, “trespassers” describes people or vehicles recorded as entering areas without authorization; it does not mean every person involved deliberately attempted to breach a secure tunnel.
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That distinction matters. The available evidence shows genuine access-control and wayfinding problems, but it does not show that the Vegas Loop was routinely overwhelmed or that passengers faced frequent serious danger.
What is the Vegas Loop?
The Vegas Loop is an underground transportation system built by The Boring Company. In the period covered by the 2024 reporting, passengers rode in ordinary Tesla vehicles driven by human operators through relatively short road tunnels.
The initial Las Vegas Convention Center Loop was designed to move convention attendees between stations on the convention campus. The LVCVA describes that portion as approximately two miles of tunnels with five stations and a designed capacity of more than 4,400 convention attendees per hour. Its current description is available on the LVCVA’s Vegas Loop page.
This operating model was materially different from the autonomous, high-speed or hyperloop-style transportation often associated with Elon Musk’s earlier tunnel ambitions. The operating system discussed in the 2024 reports was essentially station-to-station service using human-driven Tesla cars—not an autonomous subway and not a demonstrated hyperloop.
What the incident records showed
Vehicles followed Tesla cars into access areas
Fortune reported at least 22 instances, beginning in 2023, in which unauthorized vehicles followed Tesla Loop cars into stations or tunnels. According to the LVCVA, drivers apparently believed they were following a vehicle toward a rideshare pickup area or parking access.
The most important qualification is that only one of those vehicle incidents was characterized by the LVCVA as an actual tunnel intrusion. Many occurred at surface stations or associated buildings. Therefore, “22 vehicles entered the tunnels” would be an inaccurate summary of the evidence.
Pedestrians entered restricted areas
The reports included a skateboarder who entered through a passenger pickup station and people who entered when the system was not operating. Two people were found sleeping in a station and were escorted from the property. Another person reportedly attempted to remove a license-plate reader.
These incidents are unusual and expose weaknesses in station access and supervision. They also vary considerably in seriousness: a person sleeping in a station is not equivalent to someone reaching an active tunnel, interfering with safety equipment, or driving into a restricted passage.
Other incident categories were separate from the trespassing count
Fortune’s reporting also discussed records involving property damage, theft, technical problems, injuries and near-misses. Those categories should not automatically be added to the 67 trespassing episodes. They represent broader safety and operational records, while the 67 figure refers to reported trespassing episodes identified in the documents reviewed by Fortune.
Regular passengers reportedly caused relatively few problems, including occasional unruliness and an incident in which a passenger bumped their head on a Tesla trunk while retrieving luggage. The available reporting does not provide a standardized severity scale for all incidents.
Why the problem was partly a wayfinding problem
The evidence establishes that drivers mistakenly followed Loop vehicles, but it does not provide a formal human-factors study assigning responsibility to a particular sign, entrance or road design. Still, the operating arrangement helps explain how confusion could occur.
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One free scan finds every outdated or missing driver and matches the right update for your exact hardware.Free scan · exact hardware match- Loop vehicles entered specialized access points that were located near convention-center, parking and rideshare infrastructure.
- A driver following a Tesla might assume the car was heading toward a familiar pickup or parking area.
- The Loop’s station entrances and tunnel approaches do not resemble a conventional rail station or an ordinary public road in a straightforward way.
- The system combines public-facing surface access with restricted vehicle infrastructure, creating a boundary that must be obvious to people who are not Loop passengers or staff.
The practical lesson is that a visually distinctive system can still be difficult to interpret from behind the wheel. A driver does not need criminal intent to cross a boundary if the boundary looks like a plausible route to parking or passenger pickup.
How the operators responded
Fortune reported that the LVCVA and The Boring Company installed license-plate-reading technology intended to close a tunnel gate when an unrecognized vehicle entered from a surface station. The LVCVA said it was working with The Boring Company to eliminate opportunities for inadvertent intrusion.
Staff and security personnel also escorted unauthorized people from the property. These measures address two different problems: automated controls can limit vehicle access, while personnel remain necessary for pedestrians, unusual behavior and incidents that technology cannot classify reliably.
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The public reporting does not establish how effective the license-plate system became after installation. It does not say whether false positives occurred, whether readers covered every station, how the system interacted with emergency access procedures, or whether incident rates later declined. Installation should therefore be treated as a mitigation step, not proof that the underlying problem was solved.
Was the Vegas Loop unsafe?
The fairest answer is narrower than either “yes” or “no.” The records support a finding of real access-control and wayfinding weaknesses. They do not, by themselves, establish a generalized passenger-safety catastrophe.
Four questions help separate the issues:
- Security: Unauthorized vehicles and pedestrians were able to reach stations or related restricted areas.
- Wayfinding: Some ordinary drivers apparently mistook Loop access for parking or rideshare access.
- Operational resilience: Staff and security were able to remove reported unauthorized occupants, but the public record does not provide a complete measure of delays or service interruptions.
- Safety oversight: The available reports raise legitimate questions about incident reporting, inspections and emergency procedures, but do not provide a complete system-wide safety audit.
There is also no denominator for the headline numbers. The reporting reviewed here does not give a complete matching total for passenger trips, vehicle movements, operating hours, station entrances or actual tunnel entries. As a result, 67 reports cannot be converted into a reliable incident rate from the available information.
Nor should every report be treated as equally dangerous. A surface-station intrusion, an attempted equipment theft and a vehicle entering an active tunnel present different risks. The evidence supports concern about the design and controls—not a claim that ordinary passengers were frequently exposed to serious harm.
The gap between the promise and the operating system
The Vegas Loop also drew attention because its real-world operation differed from the futuristic concept used to promote broader tunnel ambitions.
The system operating in Las Vegas used human-driven Tesla vehicles in short underground road tunnels. It provided direct point-to-point movement between selected stations, rather than functioning as a conventional citywide subway with rail vehicles, fully separated platforms and a mature network of redundant routes.
That design has trade-offs. Small road tunnels and existing electric vehicles may support a comparatively direct construction and operating model, but they also create questions about throughput, vehicle control, emergency procedures, traffic separation and access management. The system’s unusual entrances can be distinctive while remaining confusing to drivers who encounter them as part of a busy convention-center environment.
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Fortune also described the operating system as far removed from the original hyperloop concept and reported that the promised hyperloop technology had not been developed. The distinction is important when evaluating expansion claims: a functioning shuttle service is not evidence that the broader autonomous high-speed vision has been delivered.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What was planned in 2024—and what is claimed now?
In October 2024, coverage referred to an expansion plan of approximately 65 miles of tunnels and 69 stations. Current official project pages use different figures. The Boring Company says an approved plan involves 68 miles of tunnel and 104 stations, while the LVCVA describes a planned network of more than 68 miles and more than 100 stations.
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Those figures should not be read as proof that the entire network is built and operating. They describe approved or planned expansion alongside operational sections and construction. The Boring Company’s current project page says more than three million passengers have been transported through eight stations; that is a company-reported figure, not an independently audited ridership total.
The numbers also should not be projected backward onto the smaller Convention Center system that was the subject of the 2024 incident reporting. A five-station convention-campus shuttle and a proposed 104-station regional network present different engineering, operational and oversight challenges.
Why oversight matters as the network grows
The trespassing reports are only one part of the broader oversight question. Separate reporting by Fortune described increased LVCVA safety involvement, while ProPublica reported concerns about regulatory and oversight arrangements.
Those issues should not be folded into the 67-count trespassing figure, and separate infrastructure or monorail safety incidents should not be presented as proof of tunnel trespassing. They are nevertheless relevant to the expansion question. As a transportation network grows, the important measures are not only miles drilled or stations announced, but also consistent incident definitions, transparent reporting, emergency planning, inspection authority and evidence that access controls work under real operating conditions.
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The most defensible interpretation is:
- There were at least 67 reported trespassing episodes since 2022 in records obtained by Fortune.
- Twenty-two vehicles followed Tesla Loop cars into stations or tunnels beginning in 2023.
- The LVCVA said those vehicle entries were generally inadvertent.
- Only one vehicle incident was described as an actual tunnel intrusion.
- Other reports involved pedestrians, a skateboarder, people sleeping in a station and attempted interference with a license-plate reader.
- The evidence demonstrates access-control and wayfinding failures, but does not establish routine malicious intrusion or widespread serious passenger danger.
In other words, the story was not simply about people sneaking into a secret tunnel. It was about the complications of operating a road-like transit system with unconventional entrances, surface stations, private vehicles and a much larger expansion promise.
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