The car came to rest more than 70 metres away, on the opposite side of the road, leaving a trail of wreckage. According to witnesses, the Model S burst into flames while still airborne. Several passersby tried to open the doors and rescue the driver, but they couldn’t unlock the car. When they heard explosions and saw flames through the windows, they retreated. Even the firefighters, who arrived 20 minutes later, could do nothing but watch the Tesla burn.
At that moment, Rita Meier was unaware of the crash. She tried calling her husband, but he didn’t pick up. When he still hadn’t returned her call hours later – highly unusual for this devoted father – she attempted to track his car using Tesla’s app. It no longer worked. By the time police officers rang her doorbell late that night, Meier was already bracing for the worst.
News of malfunctioning Tesla cars and Musk going crazy are still not enough to crash Tesla stocks to zero. Which I am hoping will happen not just to inflict sorrow on Musk and his wealth, but so that I could hedge against the stock 😂
Article does not actually answer why Tesla vehicles crash as much as they do or how they crash frequency compares to other vehicles. Its more about how scummy tesla is as a company and how it witholds data from the public when it could incriminate them.
I have never ridden a Tesla, and I plan on requesting a non Tesla car from now on when I have to take a taxi.
Cars in general, Teslas in particular, should have a standardized blackbox data recorder that third parties can open and access the logs, we have had this kind of tech on aircrafts for many decades.
It is terrifying that Tesla can just say that there was no relevant data and the investigative agency will just accept that.
I remember watching an episode of Air Crash Investigations, where a plane crashed, and they could not find an immediate cause, but the flight data recorder was able to be analysed far back, way before the accident flight, and they noticed that a mount for the APU turbine had broken many flights earlier, and the APU had broken free during the flight, causing the crash.
It is not Tesla’s job to tell the investigators what is relevant and not, it is Teslas job to unlock all data they have and send it to the investigators, if they can’t or won’t, then Tesla should lose the right sell cars in Europe
I drive a BMW i4 and one of the reasons I prefer it is because it still uses a number of mechanical options like physical buttons and an actual door handle. I never trusted that flush handle from Tesla, even back when I liked Tesla.
If we lived in any sort of reasonable or responsible world then these cars would be banned from public roads all over the globe.
And Tesla would be fined and sued into oblivion.
And the people who knowingly put profits before lives would be individually serve time for manslaughter.
Call me a Luddite but I won’t ride in a “self driving” car. I don’t even trust lane assist although I’ve never had a car with that feature.
I think my sweet spot is 2014 for vehicles. It’s about 50/50 with the tracking garbage and the “advanced features” on those models but anything past 2015 seems to be fully fly-by-wire and that doesn’t sit right with me.
I’m old though and honestly if I bought a 2014 right now and babied it as my non commuter car I could probably keep it until I should give up my keys. You younger people are going to have to work around all this crap.
Drove a few cars with “lane hold” and it’s infuriating to have to suddenly correct the car’s trajectory at every curve because it misjudges the road line. Some cars are worse than others but it was literally the first thing I disabled every time. I wonder how truck drivers feel about it. Do modern trucks even have this?
I don’t know what professional truckers have for “assist” but I’m sure they resist it. “I’m a professional fucking driver! I don’t want this shit.”
I’ve never had any issue with the lane assist in my Mitsubishi. It’s absolutely built as an “assist” and not something that will actually try to take control from you. It’s trivial to “overpower” it manually and turn out of your lane without signaling if that’s what you want to do, but does a perfectly reasonable job of steering on its own when left to its own devices.
That said, I wouldn’t be driving a vehicle new enough to have the feature yet either if I hadn’t been rear ended a couple of years ago and had my 2012 Lancer written off. :(
I quite like lane assist in the 2019 Honda I drive, even though it gets it wrong occasionally. It will not function unless it detects that you’re providing some steering input of your own, and it’s easy to override just by steering the way you want to go. That and cruise control are handy on the highway and have worked well for 6 years with no problems. But it’s very far from either functioning or being advertised as “full self driving.”
So it does move the wheel under your hands? That’s just gross to me. I guess maybe I should rent a car with it and give it a shot but I don’t think I’ll like it.
I rented a Hyundai Elantra. Yes, the wheel will move under your hand. Yes, it has hand detection, which is probably trivial to spoof. When I used it, winter had just ended and lines on the road weren’t always clear, so it would occasionally disable itself. Trying to change lanes without signals isn’t terrible, but certainly won’t happen by accident.
I would by no means rely on this, or recommend relying on it, just like I wouldn’t recommend relying on blind spot detection, but they can be handy aids to improve your overall driving, and can help catch your mistakes.
Does it pull the wheel when you’re trying to change lanes?
I see the blind spot detection on other people’s mirrors when I pass them and that looks cool as fuck but what happens the instant it fails? If I’m reliant on it and it breaks one day am I going to mistakenly merge into another driver’s right of way?
I have a Toyota with lane assist and it doesn’t. The “lane assist” is part of cruise control. It’s off by default.
I love it because it removes a little of the mental load giving me more time to scan the road for potential problems.
Off by default should be the default.
It didn’t so much as pull as get stiffer to turn out of the lane. Again, that doesn’t happen if your signals are on, so it’s a good reminder to use your signals, too.
Like I said, relying on these assists as replacements for proper driving isn’t something I would recommend. You should still be shoulder checking and using your mirrors. My wife’s vehicle has blind spot detection, which turns on an amber light by the mirror. If you’re changing lanes, it’s an obvious indicator that it may not be safe. A more thorough shoulder check can identify if the vehicle is actually at risk for collision. For example, if you just passed a vehicle and are pulling away, the detection light may still be on, but you aren’t at risk of collision. Alternatively, if I thought the lane was clear and decide to change lanes, the light may be on due to a speeding driver who is approaching to pass me in the adjacent lane. The light will be on even though he isn’t in the way yet, and changing lanes could result in an accident. Or maybe someone has been sitting in your blind spot for a few minutes and you decide to change lanes. A quick mirror check indicates you’re safe, but that amber light says maybe not. If your shoulder check doesn’t catch the problem, you probably haven’t done it well enough.
Again, can be good assistance tools, I don’t think they’re good enough to be replacements yet.
I have a Sprinter van with lane assist for cross country travel. As obnoxious as it is 99% of the time, it has come in clutch a few times when I started to get drowsy and drifted off my lane.
it has come in clutch a few times when I started to get drowsy and drifted off my lane.
Respect for sharing your mistakes.
it has come in clutch a few times
Massive disrespect for not learning a thing.
Yikes. Chew gum, pinch the lobe of your ear, take a nap.
Your anecdote terrifies me that people may be relying on this shit when they are overtired.
Driving when tired enough to drift out of your lane multiple times?
You shouldn’t have a license.
I suddenly got very tired today when driving, and noticed my car drifting out of lane as I was unfocused, I was far from home, didn’t have any snacks or anything.
Luckily I found a place to park soon after, pulled over, and rested for 20 min or so.
Tiredness can come sudden, it doesn’t mean you should loose your license as long as you can deal with it in a safe manner.
If it happens to someone multiple times and they treat lane assist as a crutch then they are not safe to drive on the road.
The best part is they followed up with this gem so I know they didn’t pull over like you did:
For sure, but when you are driving cross-country you sometimes do not have a choice because there is nowhere to stop.
Fair point.
I hear you, but a 99% chance of being obnoxious isn’t a great review.
I think I’ll just stick to not driving when tired.
That’s easier said than done. You can’t judge your own behavior when impaired because you are impaired. By the time you are aware you are that tired, you’ve already been impaired for a long time.
For sure, but when you are driving cross-country you sometimes do not have a choice because there is nowhere to stop.
“Guess I’ll just drive off the road then!”
My 2023 Subaru has lane assist. It was absolutely obnoxious so I turned it off.
It turns itself back on every time you restart the van.
Humans first
the truth? Because Elon is the CEO errrr Teknoking.
supercars…
How about some FACTS BITCH
In 2022 in the USA, there were 285 million registered vehicles. Also in 2022 there were 5,930,496 reported crashes, resulting in one crash for every 48 vehicles in 2022.
In the 7 YEARS between 2015 and 2022 Tesla has delivered 2.6 million cars with Autopilot capability. Between 2022 and 2023 there were 510 reviewed crashes, resulting in one crash for every 5,098 Teslas in that period. Despite taking only their most dangerous year, Tesla is ONE HUNDRED AND SIX TIMES SAFER than humans in the USA alone.
Ignore all the trash.
I’m almost won over by your charming manners, but…
- What is your source?
- What happens when the severity of accidents are taken into account? Because it could be this: Tesla Has the Highest Fatal Accident Rate of All Auto Brands, Study Finds
- Tesla’s self-driving features expose their cars to a distinctive kind of risk. It would be important to distinguish the accidents where this played a part.
- Regardless of the statistics, there are some other clear design problems with Tesla’s, such as batteries that explode in a crash and doors that won’t open without power (not to mention autopilot’s limited camera-only inputs and software glitches). These are still concerns specific to Tesla that other brands don’t share, so again it’s worth reviewing accidents where these played a role when gauging Tesla’s safety.
That’s some nice fact cherry picking, and it ignores Tesla’s ongoing campaign to hide and obfuscate their crash records from the NHTSA and the public.
510 reviewed crashes, resulting in one REVIEWED crash for every 5,098 Teslas
you dropped a unit in your analysis. I fixed it for you.
you are an embarrassment
Reported and reviewed are the same word so your math checks out.
Natural Selection.
Someone’s $50,000+ car malfunctioning and killing them isn’t natural selection. That’s not what that term means.
They bought and trusted a Tesla and it almost ended their bloodline.
They’re not the fittest.
This crude recourse to “evolutionary fitness” is the rhetoric of fascists.
