Shipping tycoon Angela Chao was drunk when she inadvertently reversed her Tesla into a pond and drowned last month at a Texas ranch, police say.
Blanco County Sheriff’s Office found her blood alcohol level was nearly three times the state’s legal limit.
The 50-year-old died after dinner on 10 February with a group of friends at the estate near Johnson City.
Her brother-in-law, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, cited the tragedy in his resignation speech.
On Wednesday, Blanco County Sheriff’s Office released the findings of its investigation concluding Ms Chao’s death was an “unfortunate accident”.
Fuck drunk drivers. Just glad she didn’t kill anyone else.
Bummer Mitch McConnell wasn’t in the trunk.
Oh, I didn’t know he went by his middle name
(☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞
😂
Of course she was. Putting your car into reverse and letting it back fully into a pond without braking when you actually meant to put it in drive is not something an unimpaired driver does.
Don’t be so sure. I have seen people, rarely, actually be that incredibly stupid.
But, yes, it most often means they are impaired.
One could argue that a room temperature IQ constitutes enough an impairment for driving.
If that were the case, then we wouldn’t have global warming problem anymore.
Eh, not defending a drunk driver but there’s more to this:
- the Tesla gear interface is a touchscreen where there’s no “feel” for which gear you’ve selected if you fatfinger it.
- many folks, sober or drunk, when they get the car moving in an unexpected way reflexively stamp down on the pedal their foot is currently on. This could happen to you. You are not immune.
So if you are in the wrong gear, then panic stomp the pedal, you can absolutely find yourself speeding in the wrong direction.
the Tesla gear interface is a touchscreen
Because of course it is… Jesus fucking Christ, of all the things to remove all tactile feedback from…
The gear selection method in those is non-intuitive. Doesn’t alter your conclusions, just an unfortunate and unsafe design choice.
Edit: replaced wrong words
Adrenaline does weird things to your brain, when controlling a car. When startled, we default to getting low and stable. That’s good when standing, however, it putting your feet flat on the ground is extremely bad when in the driver’s seat.
I’ve actually witnessed this in action. A slip resulted in 2 cars written off, 1 pushed through several gardens. I can easily see someone doing something similar, with a Tesla. Alcohol would just amplify the effect.
Not just drunk, 3x the limit drunk.
Which is probably like 6 drinks in most states
Honestly for her probably closer to four. I am assuming she wasn’t a very big person and I know she is a she so yeah about four.
she was also asian
Don’t drive drunk, fam.
The only natural predator of billionaires is addiction.
A funny part of this whole thing that isn’t discussed… Why isn’t the “intelligent robot car” equipped with anything to stop you from doing any of the shit that led to this? Fucking snake oil bullshit.
You really don’t want an automated system to have complete, unbreakable control over a scenario. You always want the option for a human to manually take control, because automation isn’t foolproof, especially in edge cases.
However, they probably should have a breathalyzer that prevents you from taking manual control if you’re so impaired that the automated system is probably safer than your drunken judgement.
You’re missing the point, I didn’t say full autonomous control. There are thousands of intermediate steps that could be involved - from escalating light/audio warnings, to auto lowering of the Windows or popping doors slightly to relieve pressure when significant water is sensed within car’s internals for a sustained period of time to maybe even a temp limit of a vehicle speed/control while it’s moving under a certain speed towards a sensed danger and not on a road/highway.
The bigger point is that musk snake oil cars are sold with the vapor of “smart” and this did nothing smart to help save this woman’s life, in fact it sealed her into her avoidable death due to poor design and profound lack of several basic and easy to implement potential “smart” features that could have attempted to warn or intervene.
You’re absolutely correct.
I’m reminded of a submarine, but I’m not sure why.
Smell that Bill? Smells like someone died.
One less billionaire in the world is a good thing no matter the cause.
Oh no. Next!
I continue to be happy for her
Memento mori.
One down…
She did everything wrong that she could have done. I’m going to assume even sober she never read the manual and learned where the manual door releases are.
I am kind of surprised that in 2024 vehicles don’t have drop detect sensors but our Roombas do. For 99% of driving of you detect a dropoff, some sort of active brake should be applied…
The false positives with that sort of system would be a major annoyance or dangerous. Steep driveways, rough transitions, potholes, railroad crossings, speed bumps, etc.
A Roomba operates on a nice flat floor and there is no reason it would have to traverse a surface transition of more than 3/8ths of an inch.
Also the speeds are much higher so the brakes would never have time to have any effect. But it could maybe help if designed properly for low-speed maneuvers
You hit a pot hole on the highway and now you’re stopping in the middle of it.
That’s why they don’t exist on vehicles, there’s lots of cases where they drop and still need to keep moving, while only a couple where it should stop, and in those cases it’s usually too late and won’t help.
Well no, obviously there’s a maximum speed. Just like parking sensors have different distance warnings when driving versus parking.
And on a Tesla with so much vision, it should really know the topography.
At speed is when you would need the active breaking…
And great now my car stopped in the parking lot from every speed bump…,
Can you provide a usecase where active breaking from a drop would actually help?
I’d argue for drop that extends across the width of the lane, or both. Couple that with a system that can penetrate heavy rain, and two truck drivers might have lived through a washout of Interstate 88 in Central N a few years back. They didn’t have much of a chance back then.
After almost freezing to death in Colorado winter with a broken down rental, I make it a point to know how to operate all the locks and ignition manually.
It always amazes me how many people hop in a completely foreign car and just start driving. They’d rather try to learn where the windshield wiper control is while barelling down the highway at 80mph instead of while parked in the garage.
I’ve got pretty strong rental preferences so I’m sure they hate me when I ask for specific vehicles.
“She was no angel”
