The 'entered vehicle' message is confusing, but what you're actually doing here is remote driving it, which is a feature not a bug (if you go to map view alick the spidertron there should be a 'drive remotely' button, you don't need to be standing nearby, or even on the same planet).

It's only a ...

(First observed this in [2.0.26] but not sure how far back it goes.)

Steps to reproduce: Walk over and stand near a Spidertron, then go into map mode, and zoom to a zoom level which shows the detail view. Then hover the mouse over the Spidertron so it gets the target reticle, then press Enter to ...