I highly doubt Tesla is using GPS to decide where the car should be on the road. For navigation, as in deciding what route to travel, sure. For positioning, no.
As mentioned already, if you look at the highway the solid white line shifts right as the new exit lane starts. The car was simply following this solid line and drove off the exit. This same thing has happened in a number of other incidents with Tesla autopilot, and has been reported many times by owners who have found there are spots on their commute highways the car tries to exit or change lanes when it shouldn't.
Looking at the street view, I'm pretty sure most any newer car could exit into that parking lot at 70mph without much issue.
The part I still don't get is how it ended up turned into the truck. I'm thinking it saw the angled parking lines and tried to turn left into the continuation of what it though was the driving lanes. By the picture, I think it's under the truck at an angle, not straight on.
Remember, it is mostly following the lines on the road. You can find lots of videos with it acting stupid trying to follow various lines on the roads.
Also remember, Tesla is trying to do the autopilot using cameras only. Musk has often spoken out against systems using other types of sensors. Cameras are only as good as the image processing. Do the image processing wrong when trying to determine what objects are seen in the images from the cameras and then you don't even know there is an object in front of the car. Case in point was Tesla attempting to drive under a transport trailer a few years ago. Using something like radar you at least get a signal saying something is out there blocking the path of the car. I understand the return is processed too, but that can be done outside of the "AI" engine. Of course calling the electronics operating these systems AI is as big a misnomer as calling the Tesla driving system autopilot.
![[ponder]](/data/assets/smilies/ponder.gif "[ponder] [ponder]")
