Tesla fatal crash under investigation over potential use of Autopilot and fire - Sensationalist Headlines

https://electrek.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/download-4.jpeg https://electrek.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/download-5.jpeg Last week, a Tesla Model X driver died of due to injuries after his vehicle caught on fire in a crash on the highway in the Bay Area. Today, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) announced that they are sending 2 investigators to conduct a “Field Investigation” of the accident. According to the California Highway Patrol, a Model X hit the median barrier on highway 101 in Mountain View and it quickly caught on fire before being hit by two other cars. The driver was taken to the hospital, but he unfortunately died of his injuries. Today, NTSB announced the investigation and they say that it’s still “unclear if automated control system was active at the time of the crash.” ... Tesla also has firewalls inside the battery pack that can slow down the fire from spreading between the modules. In this case, it seems to have stopped about halfway through the pack. https://electrek.co/2018/03/27/tesla-model-x-fatal-crash-ntsb-investigation-autopilot-fire/ Square crash barriers don't seem like the best idea...

That's one hell of a crash

The batteries probably ran off after impact set which point he was fucked.

jesus that's a grizzly photo. that's def gonna hang over them for a long damn time. RIP driver, tho

The most important thing to note here is that the fire suppression systems in the Tesla actually worked very well considering it stopped the battery fire about half way through the pack. That's insane when you realise how volatile these batteries actually are.

Probably went head on into the rectangular / square crash barrier at 75+ MPH, goodbye front end. Apparently it wasn't "reset" after some other recent crash into it. Another picture with a half cooked battery module: https://electrek.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/download.jpeg

That video kind of makes all the difference in my opinion. From first glance I was under the assumption that car crashed and immediately caught fire and the driver died in the ensuing fire. This on the other hand shows that the fire took place after the driver was ejected or removed from the vehicle. If anything this should prove as a positive testament to the design of the battery pack, as it did what it was designed to do. I'd expect a similar fire from a regular vehicle in a similar case.

jesus, if that guy had been in a normal suv he'd have been a flatpack to the morgue anyways.

Oh shit I know where that happened

I wonder if the car's "blackbox" survived at all to be able to recover the driving data. It sounds like it didn't survive judging by how they weren't sure if Autopilot was enabled or not at the time of the crash. Regardless of whether or not Autopilot was enabled, the Tesla Model X is still one of the safest cars ever made in terms of crash test ratings. With human drivers still the very vast majority on the road and so many variables to compute that are ever-changing, accidents are always going to occur. Even with a "perfect" autopilot system, there can still be events that occur that is outside of it's control and will result in an accident of some kind. Nothing is perfect in our world, and hopefully this doesn't make people turn their cheek away from Tesla/Autopilot systems just because perfection doesn't/can't exist. It will improve over time, guaranteed.

It can take a while to remove telemetry data off the car. Even if everything is intact, it'll take some time for data to reach engineers with the tools to decode it. But if it was in a serious crash, they'd need to do hardware recovery too. For solid state memory that can mean anywhere between a couple days and a month.

Will probably end with a severe neglect on the drivers side if the crash wasn't caused by another driver, not sure. Tesla cars are simply build like a rolling safe. Sad the driver didn't make it but the Tesla probably gave him the best chances.

Tesla responded: We were deeply saddened to learn that the driver of a Model X vehicle involved in an accident last Friday passed away. Safety is at the core of everything we do and every decision we make, so the loss of a life in an accident involving a Tesla vehicle is difficult for all of us. Earlier this week, Tesla proactively reached out to the authorities to offer our assistance in investigating. While we do not yet know what happened in the moments leading up to the accident, and we do not yet have any idea what caused it, here is what we do know: Due to the extensive damage caused by the collision, we have not yet been able to retrieve the vehicle’s logs. We are currently working closely with the authorities to recover the logs from the computer inside the vehicle. Once that happens and the logs have been reviewed, we hope to have a better understanding of what happened. Our data shows that Tesla owners have driven this same stretch of highway with Autopilot engaged roughly 85,000 times since Autopilot was first rolled out in 2015 and roughly 20,000 times since just the beginning of the year, and there has never been an accident that we know of. There are over 200 successful Autopilot trips per day on this exact stretch of road. The reason this crash was so severe is that the crash attenuator, a highway safety barrier which is designed to reduce the impact into a concrete lane divider, had either been removed or crushed in a prior accident without being replaced. The following image shows what the barrier looked like when the crash attenuator was in proper condition, and what it looked like the day prior to the crash, based on dash cam footage from a witness of the accident who commutes daily past this location. We have never seen this level of damage to a Model X in any other crash. Tesla battery packs are designed so that in the rare circumstance a fire occurs, it spreads slowly so that occupants have plenty of time to get out of the car. According to witnesses, that appears to be what happened here as we understand there were no occupants still in the Model X by the time the fire could have presented a risk. Serious crashes like this can result in fire regardless of the type of car, and Tesla’s billions of miles of actual driving data shows that a gas car in the United States is five times more likely to experience a fire than a Tesla vehicle. What We Know About Last Week's Accident | Tesla UK

The previous post is correct. The reason this crash is even in the news is because of California highway services, not Tesla. Someone on Reddit was saying there was another crash into this barrier (which is located in a notoriously bad intersection) a few days prior, and the water barrels that are normally placed in front of these kinds of barriers weren't replaced. It is absolutely disgusting.

I doubt this would've made it beyond local news if the car involved wasn't a Tesla.

I guess, if it was a BMW, Volkswagen or Mercedes the statement would be like this: We are sad that that happened, be we ensure that our vehicles are well tested and rated based upon the regulations defined by law. The law also says that the driver is always responsible for his/her doings at the wheel all the time. For fact there wouldn't even be a statement at all. For me it seems Tesla has to justify them self for every crash that happens to their cars, because A) they are new to the business, B) the battery and C) the autopilot.

This kind of sums it up really, definitely needs to be looked into why this wasn't repaired properly and instead the warning sign was just moved closer to the concrete. There's basically no crumple area on that barrier. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/153089/ae4115fb-5681-4e5b-accb-00abcfc19e8f/Screenshot-2018-3-28 What We Know About Last Week's Accident.png

It's realllly important to know (And they warn you) that auto-pilot is NOT A REPLACEMENT for a driver at all

Turns out autpulot was on: In the moments before the collision, which occurred at 9:27 a.m. on Friday, March 23rd, Autopilot was engaged with the adaptive cruise control follow-distance set to minimum. The driver had received several visual and one audible hands-on warning earlier in the drive and the driver’s hands were not detected on the wheel for six seconds prior to the collision. The driver had about five seconds and 150 meters of unobstructed view of the concrete divider with the crushed crash attenuator, but the vehicle logs show that no action was taken. An Update on Last Week’s Accident | Tesla Europe When you look at where it happened I expect when the lanes diverged it thought that the bit leading straight up to the crash barrier was a lane, since it has no hatched markings at all https://goo.gl/maps/aDbeEV7CgW32

I can understand how it might confuse it for a lane, but how did it not see the barrier it was rapidly approaching and at least slow down? Radar should've been able to easily see it.

I don't think Tesla's autopilot acts on static objects yet unless both the camera and radar agree on it, which it will only do if it's a car or a person.

Jesus christ, that car hit a concrete divider pylon at 75 mph and the driver didn't die instantly on impact? The impact appears to have ripped the car in half and didn't kill the driver, how is that even possible

I understand that the safety barrier accordion thing wasn't replaced, but why did the car even hit the concrete? Seeing as they aren't sure if autopilot was being used, I have my doubts that the autopilot mode would have done this..

Yeah you're pretty much fucked no matter what you're driving if you hit that K-rail without the barrels/guardrails/cushioning devices in place and in proper order. This has nothing to do with the Tesla and everything to do with Californian highway maintenance being terrible. Someone hits those barrels they should be reset *on the scene.* It should be part of the cleanup for the crash. Had they done that we'da never even known this Tesla crashed at all, it would have hit the water barrels and bounced around harmlessly with a fraction of the damage it actually took.

Here you go, someone managed to recreate the issue. https://youtu.be/6QCF8tVqM3I

I hope the lesson learned from this is not that autopilot will never be good or that Tesla is an irresponsible company, but that "keep your hands on the fucking wheel" is actually understood as "keep your hands on the fucking wheel". I do think Tesla should've marketed auto-pilot differently, though - "assisted steering" maybe?

That is pretty fucking close, holy damn. Someone reach out to Tesla, the software engineers will probably let out a hearty "What the fuck" upon seeing this.

How is detecting a solid immobile object in the driving path of the vehicle not something the car looks for? Like if the radar and the cameras disagree, it is time for the car to scream bloody murder and disable autopilot.

I agree with GarrettFox. Is autopilot not yet searching for debris in the carriageway? I don't know about the US but here in the UK dumbfucks with stuff lashed to their roofs or van doors hanging open is a daily occurrence on the motorway.

Pretty surprised that it relies on that solid line that heavily.