A 21-year old Indian origin man named Jashanpreet Singh has been accused (here, here, and here) of causing an eight-car chain reaction crash on the Interstate-10 freeway in Ontario, California, USA. At least three people were reportedly killed in this deadly crash, which left several others injured. According to the police, he was under the heavy influence of drugs.
In this context, a video (here, here, here, and here) featuring two clips that allegedly show the dashcam footage of the truck involved in the accident is circulating on social media. In the first clip, we can see a sikh man cooking food inside the truck cabin. The video then cuts to the second clip, which shows the front view of the truck ramming into the vehicles on a highway. This video is being shared on social media by users as visuals of the accused cooking food inside the truck before the accident. We fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: This is dashcam footage of the truck involved in the Interstate-10 freeway accident in California, USA, which shows the accused cooking inside the truck before ramming it into vehicles
Fact: The cooking clip in this video is unrelated to the accident and may have been generated by AI. However, the crash dashcam footage is real and related to the California crash accident. Hence, the claim made in the post is Misleading.
To verify the veracity of the viral claim, we conducted an internet search using relevant keywords to determine whether the viral video clips are related to the California interstate freeway crash. Through this search, we found that the second clip featured in the viral video was widely reported (here, here, here, and here) as the dashcam footage of this crash.
However, we did not find any news reports that contained the first clip featured in the viral video. None of the news reports on this incident mentioned that the accused, Jashanpreet Singh, was cooking inside the truck at the time of the collision. This led us to suspect the validity of the clip. We observed that the viral clip contains a watermark that reads ‘@VOX_OCULI.’
Through an internet search, we found the video in question on ‘@VOX_OCULI’s X page. The bio of this page contains words like ‘Satire’ & ‘AI’ in it.
This handle also features several other videos and images that appear to have been created using Artificial Intelligence (AI). Additionally, we found a few inconsistencies in the viral video that are generally observed in visual content generated using AI.
For instance, a car that passes by the truck has a single window for both the front and back seat doors. The shape of the ladle used in the video appears to change in a few frames. Such visual inconsistencies are common in AI-generated content. However, AI content detection tools have not detected this video as AI-generated content.
Furthermore, the fact-checking organization Lead Stories reported that California Highway Patrol spokesman Lt. Matt Gutierrez, after viewing the video clip, confirmed that it was not released by them. “I can tell you none of our staff have seen that video before you sent it to me. I am unable to verify its authenticity, but the freeway in the background is not the correct freeway where the crash occurred,” Gutierrez told Lead Stories. This makes it clear that the first clip in the viral video is not related to the I-10 freeway crash in California, USA.
To sum up, the first clip in the viral video does not show the truck driver accused in the California I-10 freeway crash cooking curry inside the truck before the crash.
