[HN Gopher] Cause of Fatal 2021 Tesla Wreck Was "Excessive Speed...
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Cause of Fatal 2021 Tesla Wreck Was "Excessive Speed" and "Alcohol
Intoxication"
Author : jo6gwb
Score : 52 points
Date : 2023-02-09 20:36 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ntsb.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ntsb.gov)
| cs702 wrote:
| "Excessive speed" and "alcohol intoxication" -- two common causes
| of human driver failure.
|
| Other causes of human driver failure include driving while tired
| or exhausted, falling asleep at the wheel, driving while angry or
| upset, getting bored while driving, using the car's infotainment
| system while driving, using a mobile phone while driving, getting
| distracted by passengers, smoking pot while driving, being a
| recklessly immature teenager (or a grown-up idiot), lacking the
| bare minimum of driving skills that every driver on the road is
| supposed to have, and so on. The list of causes of human driver
| failure is long. There are a lot of horrifically dangerous human
| drivers -- look around you next time you're on the road.
|
| Notably, machines are immune to all these human failure modes.
|
| I'm looking forward to the day in which cars drive themselves
| well enough to rid the roads of so much dangerous human driving.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Me too, but that's not this day. I hope it comes soon, but I
| think it's important that car companies promise and deliver in
| a rock solid fashion like Mercedes is doing instead of
| grandiose near future predictions that everyone knows won't be
| met. Not commenting on this incident in particular, just the
| general landscape of self driving.
| jo6gwb wrote:
| I'm not sure why they don't explicitly write in the report that
| the driver may have been trapped in the back seat, and was unable
| to locate or use the mechanical release to escape. While that
| wouldn't be a contributing factor to the wreck, it would be a
| contributing factor the the driver's death, and important for
| Tesla and their passengers to know about.
|
| The report states:
|
| _The frontal impact with the tree resulted in a power loss of
| the car's 12-volt system, which runs the non-traction power
| systems. During normal operation, the front door latches operate
| electronically with the pull of the interior lever. In the event
| of a 12-volt system power loss, the interior front doors open as
| usual using the interior door handles. The rear doors also have
| both electronic and mechanical latches; however, mechanically
| opening the rear door during a power loss requires additional
| steps. According to the owner's manual, during a loss of 12-volt
| system power, a rear-seated occupant must locate a small cutout
| in the carpet beneath the seat cushions and pull the mechanical
| release cable tab toward the center of the vehicle to manually
| open the rear door. Inspection of the door latches and locking
| hardware was limited by postcrash fire damage._
|
| Edit: Must add that this assumes the front door was jammed and
| couldn't be opened mechanically.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I don't think they have sufficient evidence one way or the
| other to draw that conclusion. The driver's cause of death was
| BFT with thermal damage and smoke inhalation; I don't know they
| have reason to believe he was conscious and trying to escape
| the vehicle.
| sowbug wrote:
| This was the one where the media reported that because nobody was
| found in the front seat it must have been the fault of the self-
| driving feature. The NTSB found that none of the driver-
| assistance features were activated, and the driver was probably
| tossed into the backseat from the impact:
|
| _Although the driver's seat was found vacant and the driver was
| found in the left rear seat, the available evidence suggests that
| the driver was seated in the driver's seat at the time of the
| crash and moved into the rear seat postcrash. Specifically,
| residential security video showed both the driver and passenger
| getting into the front seats prior to driving away from the
| residence. In addition, the EDR data showed active accelerator
| pedal inputs consistent with driver activity in the 5 seconds
| prior to the impact with the tree, and that the driver's seat
| belt was connected at the time of the crash. Finally, the
| steering wheel examination conducted by the NTSB Materials
| Laboratory indicated an impact to the upper left quadrant,
| consistent with the driver loading the steering wheel during a
| frontal crash._
|
| The entire journey appears to have lasted less than a minute
| (9:07pm is mentioned both as the time the car left the driveway,
| and as the time of the crash), so it's unlikely the driver jumped
| into the back seat as a stunt while driving.
|
| https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/...
| ajross wrote:
| Worth pointing out that the most recent Tesla crash freakout
| was similarly thinly sourced. We have one line in a police
| report saying AP was in use, and no statements from the driver
| nor telemetry from the vehicle. And that was enough to drive
| thousand-comment threads right here on HN.
|
| (And yeah, I'm on record saying that it's extremely unlikely
| autopilot commanded the lane change in that Bay Bridge
| accident. It just doesn't work like that, the blinkers came on
| simultaneous with the motion. That's a human driver for sure.)
| gamblor956 wrote:
| The NHTSA is on record as saying FSD was "definitely" engaged
| during the recent Bay Bridge accident in the tunnel.
|
| And notably, Musk did not chime in to blame the driver like
| he always does when the driver is at fault, which is very
| strong circumstantial evidence that FSD was engaged.
| anonporridge wrote:
| > This was the one where the media reported that because nobody
| was found in the front seat it must have been the fault of the
| self-driving feature.
|
| And the fact that this was media disinformation won't matter
| much, because the damage to the Tesla brand and the idea of
| self driving cars in the public's collective consciousness has
| already been done, and won't easily be undone by these newly
| revealed facts.
|
| "A lie makes it halfway around the world before the truth even
| gets its boots on."
| bena wrote:
| It wasn't "media disinformation", it was the local constable
| and his accident investigators being wrong.
|
| https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/tesla-spring-
| crash-f...
|
| And even in that article, there's an addendum a couple of
| months later stating that a person was seen getting in the
| driver's seat and that the NTSB reenactment wasn't able to
| engage the autosteering when trying to replicate the crash.
|
| I don't know what more you want from the press. They reported
| what they were told by the authorities. And then when new
| information came in, they reported that as well.
| dboreham wrote:
| > it was the local constable and his accident investigators
| being wrong
|
| Possibly it's the media's job to question when law
| enforcement comments seem implausible?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| What most people actually want is better attention from the
| public, not better reporting from the media.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| Tesla is damaging the idea of self-driving cars in spite of
| the media, not because of it.
|
| Self driving cars were billed as the cool new thing. Then
| Tesla started charging people for "Full Self Driving" with a
| system that regresses from basic LKA that was shipping in the
| mid 2000s in terms of safety by using public roads for beta
| testing an intentionally hamstrung* L2-billed-as-L5 driving
| stack.
|
| It's frustrating to watch as someone working in the AV space,
| and it's silly to act like this one case was isolated enough
| that the fact it was wrong changes any of that reality. We
| know Tesla's stack has killed people: it became normalized
| once the first few times it happened they were able to get
| away with victim blaming. By 2021 it was already accepted,
| this incident was already business as usual.
|
| *humans just need eyes so self driving cars just need cameras
| ajross wrote:
| > a system that regresses from basic LKA that was shipping
| in the mid 2000s in terms of safety
|
| Cite? Everyone likes to throw around the word "safety" as a
| qualitative thing, but the only data we have points to the
| system being extremely safe.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| Mid 2000s LKA was passive systems in the US market: they
| were backups that vibrated the seat or steering wheel, or
| provided mild outputs. _That meant they couldn 't
| actively put the driver into danger, making them
| inherently safer than a system that will gladly drive
| onto a sidewalk_
|
| Now what about active systems from back then? Almost _20
| years ago_ Lexus had learned the lessons that Tesla
| kicked and resisted until about 2 years ago on. _You need
| to watch the driver to ensure they 're full attentive_:
| https://lexusenthusiast.com/2007/09/08/a-look-at-the-
| lexus-l...
|
| In markets with LKA, that same module was used to ensure
| that drivers were actively watching the road while it was
| activated.
|
| In other words a 2007 Lexus did a better job on the one
| thing that Tesla is _still_ getting dinged on
| (https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/tesla-driver-
| moni...)
|
| Tesla blamed a man for playing Candy Crush when his Tesla
| drove into a barrier and killed him. Lexus had solved the
| problem that killed this man over a decade prior.
|
| A 2007 Lexus would have used it's Driver Awareness Module
| to recognize the man was not paying attention and stopped
| lane centering. The solution was not complex, not
| expensive, iirc Tesla even had interior facing cameras by
| then but was still resisting turning them on until much
| more recently.
|
| Tesla put their not-marketing ahead of human life,
| because if they had enabled more aggressive awareness
| monitoring than capacitance sensing or silly steering
| wheel jiggles, Elon wouldn't get to tweet about how
| "you're just there for regulatory reasons"
|
| -
|
| Also slightly off topic, but I think my biggest internet
| pet peeve is when people ask for a citation on a complex
| problem that requires critical thinking. I can't chew and
| pour the conclusion for you, but you're free to research
| before making low effort commentary like "Cite"
| kmeisthax wrote:
| The thing is, I would have thought that Tesla's stance on
| repairability alone would have made their brand
| _radioactive_ to the average Hacker News commenter, way
| before the Pedo Guy accusations or Elon Musk burning a
| bunch of money to make Twitter worse. Tesla is everything
| we claim to hate about Apple.
| a4isms wrote:
| If Apple owned Tesla, there wouldn't be enough room in
| this comment to list all the reasons HN would hate it:
|
| 1. What do you mean, the OS and all its software is
| proprietary? Why can't I sideload my own fart app?
|
| 2. Highest margins in the industry? No we won't praise
| their business genius, we'll complain that they're
| charging a Tesla Fanboi Tax.
|
| 3. Like you said, RIGHT TO REPAIR, this is John Deere
| stuff, only it's a car and not a tractor.
|
| 4. Shit build quality would have us raving about
| butterfly keyboards 2.0.
|
| And so on, and so forth. Steve Jobs had a "reality
| distortion field." So does Elon Musk, and it's aimed
| squarely at a certain very obvious demographic.
| bjelkeman-again wrote:
| From a business perspective, a demographic bigger than
| the HN readership.
| Smoosh wrote:
| Conspiracy theory: Autonomous driving is being undermined by
| traditional car companies who see that if it is successful,
| it would hugely change personal transportation and greatly
| reduce total sales of vehicles.
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| Related to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law
| tablespoon wrote:
| > And the fact that this was media disinformation won't
| matter much, because the damage to the Tesla brand and the
| idea of self driving cars in the public's collective
| consciousness has already been done, and won't easily be
| undone by these newly revealed facts.
|
| The "damage to the Tesla brand and the idea of self driving
| cars" wasn't caused solely by this one incident.
|
| > "A lie makes it halfway around the world before the truth
| even gets its boots on."
|
| It's not a lie to say cigarettes kill people by lung cancer,
| even if it's later proven that one smoker who died in some
| study actually got lung cancer from a different cause.
| mjfl wrote:
| The whole idea of being drunk and getting in a car with the
| intention of driving as fast as possible seems so stupid that
| I've never in my life even had the smidgen of a thought to do it,
| even if especially drunk. People really do have different brains.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Does NTSB investigate every car crash with a death? Or just
| Tesla?
| sp332 wrote:
| I think they picked it up because it might have involved
| autopilot, the driver's seat was empty, and the data recorder
| had been destroyed in the crash.
|
| The full list is here
| https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/Investigations.asp...
| You can see it's been a while since since they investigated a
| Tesla.
| foobarbecue wrote:
| How can a Tesla can even be old enough to drink
| brookst wrote:
| Tesla is further ahead in AI than any of us thought!
| jonsen wrote:
| Artificial Ingestion?
| Smoosh wrote:
| Artificial Intoxication.
| kdamica wrote:
| Almost 43,000 people died in car-related deaths in the US in 2021
| (and millions more worldwide). I hope we can stop focusing on the
| small number of deaths from this one car company that has self-
| driving features.
|
| Relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_bites_dog
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(page generated 2023-02-09 23:01 UTC)