2 dead in Tesla accident "Noone wasdrivingthe car" 15

[MartinLe]

https://www.click2houston.com/news/...er-fiery-tesla-crash-in-spring-officials-say/

“no one was driving” the fully-electric 2019 Tesla when the accident happened. There was a person in the passenger seat of the front of the car and in the rear passenger seat of the car.

the vehicle was traveling at a high speed when it failed to negotiate a cul-de-sac turn, ran off the road and hit the tree.

The brother-in-law of one of the victims said relatives watched the car burn for four hours as authorities tried to tap out the flames.

Authorities said they used 32,000 gallons of water to extinguish the flames because the vehicle’s batteries kept reigniting. At one point, Herman said, deputies had to call Tesla to ask them how to put out the fire in the battery.

 

[IRstuff]

That's what I was saying; they implied much more than a fancy cruise control, and promised that the hardware was fully capable of FSD, creating the expectation that it's way more.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

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[dik]

I'm saying that marketing is to blame... not just the Darwin drivers...

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Feel any better?

-Dik

 

[IRstuff]

Right, I'm saying that if they hadn't hyped it, the Darwin drivers would have been have abused it anyway, and there would be no one to blame but themselves.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

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[SnTMan]

I honestly don't understand why the US government permits this kind of horsesh*t. You'd not get away with it on a $100 lawnmower.

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

 

[human909]

I have no love for Tesla, but I do start to wonder if blame is being thrown in the wrong direction.

The glaring safety issue surely is cars in general. Having poorly trained and laymen freely in charge of heavy and high powered machinery is the glaring issue. The question that should be being asked isn't how effective the Tesla safety systems are, but whether they improve safety.**

**Even that is putting a higher bar on Tesla than is required of many automobile manufactures. Plenty of automobile manufactures are making road safety worse by building bigger vehicles with more blind spots which are more dangerous to other road users. I'm thinking big SUVs and pickup trucks.

We hear all about the Tesla incidents where somebody dies while drive assist is operating. We don't hear about the counter factual incidents where somebody doesn't die due to drive assists.

 

[JohnRBaker]

Has it even been established that the car was being operated in auto mode? I thought I read something earlier which stated that based on the road where this accident took place, that a driver would not have been able to put the Tesla into auto mode. Also, have there been any reports of the blood-alcohol levels of the two 'passengers'? I'm thinking that this could have been one of those 'hold my beer' moments.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-'Product Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[davidbeach]

So, who was the third one who exited the car moments earlier?

I’ll see your silver lining and raise you two black clouds. - Protection Operations

 

[TugboatEng]

2 hours of fire may make a BAC reading difficult. It would also incinerate the wooden pole used to push the gas pedal. The third guy could have been caught one one of the many cameras but again, 2 hours of fire... The last one that went up around here was in autopilot and kept reigniting for 2 more days. Other drivers were able to recreate the scenario. The incident was on CA highway 280, the car went head in into a split lane divider. I'm having trouble finding the videos.

 

[hokie66]

It's the snake oil that burns for so long.

 

[dik]

...and lithium batteries, too. A couple of Teslas could have saved Texas!

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Feel any better?

-Dik

 

[GregLocock]

John - yes I'd read that the road in question has no white lines and therefore Autopilot would not have engaged.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

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[itsmoked]

Funny. I drove by the Tesla plant today four times.

I went to an IN and OUT Burger place

and there was a car carrier loaded with Teslas in front of the place.





Keith Cress
kcress -

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[RedSnake]

I have a problem with this from the News.

The owner, he said, backed out of the driveway, and then may have hopped in the back seat only to crash a few hundred yards down the road. He said the owner was found in the back seat upright.

I am not sure what he ment by hopped
The only way he could have gotten in the to the back seat is if he stopped the car and went in buy the back door.
Getting from the driver seat to the back isn't possible from the inside of the car, their is no room.

As I have understood it, you can buy and get feathers and upgrades download directly to the car from Tesla.
That would also make it possible to hack the system and upgrade it your self or it might be hacked by someone else.

Best Regards A

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

 

[LittleInch]

redsnake - I think you mean "features", not feathers...

"Hopped" isn't meant to be taken literally, it just means he made a small change from front seat to back seat for some unknown reason.

Maybe he thought it had more features than it actually did. We'll never really know how much the Tesla terminology of "Autopilot" instead of enhanced cruise control which is all it really is affected what the owner thought it could do all by itself.

Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.

 

[RedSnake]

I give you a highly speculative far-fetched theory as a solution to what happened.
You can see it, as a sign of boredom due to the pandemic.
Warning, No facts involved !!

The driver drives the car while sitting in the driver's seat.
He then drives off the road at high speed hitting the tree.
The airbag releases pushes him back against the driver's seat backrest.
The car starts to burn.
The airbag explodes.
The explosion throwing/pushing him through the upholstery of the seat so that he ends up in the back seat, with his legs lying on the driver's seat cushion.
As the fire increases, it pulls his legs together because the tendons contracts so that he ends up sitting in the back seat in an upright position.

It would be more reasonable for him if he had been in a "fetal position" think Pompeii.

Best Regards A

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

 

[RedSnake]

I think you mean "features", not feathers...

Ha ha ha Yes I do
Seen too many swans and canada geese lately. ;-)
New record here 8400 swans at the same time.

Red

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

 

[SwinnyGG]

The only way he could have gotten in the to the back seat is if he stopped the car and went in buy the back door.
Getting from the driver seat to the back isn't possible from the inside of the car, their is no room.

Getting from the driver's seat to the back seat without exiting the vehicle is not very hard... I did it in my car the other day (it had been parked inside a shipping container, use of the doors was not possible).

That doesn't explain Tesla's statement that the car could not have been put into auto on that road, but I digress...

The airbag explodes.

I think your post was in jest so if so, excuse my literal interpretation. But - an airbag would not explode. Fun fact about airbags; they are inflated by a chemical gas generator at extreme speeds; modern bags fully inflate in about 30 milliseconds. The bag itself is, by design, not gas-tight. The bag is designed so that in the event of a collision, the bag is fully inflated before the passenger makes contact, but the bag is vented - as soon as it is fully inflated and the gas generator stops producing nitrogen gas, the bag begins to deflate. When the passenger makes contact with the airbag, their inertia drives more gas through the vents in a controlled way. A big portion of the kinetic energy of the passenger's body is removed from the system as their inertia 'pumps' pressurized gas out of the bag. That mechanism is how the airbag provides protection - by slowing the passenger's body down in a controlled way.

In movies and on TV they show airbags as big soft balloons that fill up the passenger compartment and stay inflated until the punch line. But in real life that isn't how they work. Don't know if you've ever been in a crash that involved an airbag deployment, but slamming into that bag at speed is ZERO fun. But the point is that hitting that fully inflated bag (which feels about as hard as concrete when you hit it) is still significantly safer than hitting the steering wheel or the dash.

 

[RedSnake]

Not sure this is the same model.. but why do they not start burning here.

https://www.nyteknik.se/fordon/tesla-far-basta-sakerhetsresultatet-6964029

BR A

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

 

[RedSnake]

SwinnyGG do you have a Tesla?
Just asking because I can think of many cars where it would be possible to crawl over from the front to the back, and I can think of equally as many where you couldn't.
Also dependent on the size of the person in question, won't ask you about that..

Doing it while the car is driving with someone in the passenger seat a couple of hundred meters from where you started before you hit a tree, hmmm not sure, would have been easier to stopp get out and back in again.

I have hardly never been in a car that actually has a airbag.
And never had one deployed at me.

Yes it was a jest
I don't minde your literal interpretation.
I actually saw it myself on crash video, had not read your post then.

BR A





“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

 

[SwinnyGG]

I can't read Swedish.

But every single Tesla crash does not result in a fire (just like every crash of a gas fueled vehicle, in fact MOST crashes of gas fueled vehicles, do not directly result in vehicle fires).

My understanding is that the Tesla fires are usually the result of an exothermic chemical reaction which results from the batteries themselves being punctured during a severe collision and going into thermal runaway.