[UPDATED] 2 die in Tesla crash - NHTSA reports driver seat occupied

[SMAlset]

What caused the car to explode with flames 20 feet in the air? I did not think the battery would explode like that. Maybe there was something very flamable in the frunk.

The car apparently ended up wedged in a small forested area of trees near the lake. Somewhere heard these included pine trees. Pine needles and cones and other forest debris likely woukd have been underneath the car when the damaged battery cells started to go into thermal run away. Good tinder for a fire and pine trees high in pine oil and tall torch material. Think about last year’s lightning strikes here in California in heavily pine forests that exploded in tall flames. Highly flammable material.

They could not have picked a worse residential area there to have crashed into. Except maybe someone’s home gas meter.

 

[EVNow]

There would be NO time for a 59 year old 9or a 60 year old) to activate the system and climb into the back. There simply isn't enough road.

To me the age is about (mental) maturity. I've seen plenty of 60 year olds who are very agile. You just have to be thin enough.

 

[EVNow]

But the report is one upright in the front passenger seat and one upright in the rear passenger seat.

Once the person got to the back seat - he sits upright as he tries to open the door. The some makes them unconscious as he sits in the seat ... ?

 

[alexgr]

I have rarely heard of police pushing so hard their version of events in the press before investigations are over. ... unless, of course, the police is involved.

Texas police to demand Tesla crash data as Musk denies Autopilot use

Texas police will serve search warrants on Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) on Tuesday to secure data from a fatal vehicle crash, a senior officer told Reuters on Monday, after CEO Elon Musk said company checks showed the car's Autopilot driver assistance system was not engaged.

www.reuters.com

This Mr. Herman, IMHO, should be suspended, subpoenaed, and investigated.

 

[BooMan]

I anticipate something like this as well

SO It will come out in the coming days that the "brother in law" that said he backed the car up then got in the back seat and the car just drove away" was actually driving the car and lost control not anticipating the acceleration the car has and crashed into the tree, got out and ran back to the house to call 911

This makes absolutely no sense. So your saying dude was driving the car. Drove headlong into a tree. Survived the accident UNSCATHED. Open driver door. Got out. Closed Driver door behind him - despite his friends/family somehow being incapacitated still in the car. Made no attempt to get them out (car passenger compartment did not appear appreciably crumpled from pics BUT lots of fire damage, so...). Somehow walked away UNSCATHED. And the first responders observed no injury, scratch (whatever) on this guy who was presumably on the scene when they arrived (as in your theory he called 911 and would be nearby).

Seems...unlikely... HIGHLY unlikely (or even possible?)

What's more likely is that some purposeful hanky panky was going on like driver got in passenger seat after starting car and used stick/rod, device/foot to jam the accelerator. Doubt AP or a mystery driver (Driver X, perhaps?) had anything to do with this.

 

[SMAlset]

Of course Tesla’s log reports would be subpoenaed. Happens in accidents by insurance companies, attorneys or policing authorities. When I read Mr. Herman’s statement I kind of laughed thinking he wanted to sound tough. Now does he have the authority to be the investigating agency here? I thought that federal agencies had jurisdiction over local into conducting the investigation. Anyway the logs will get turned over and eventually we’ll see the results published hopefully resolving a lot of questions.

 

[cucubits]

Both funny and sad how much the media skews these stories. Just got a call from my mom from our little eastern european country. She always watches the local news and whenever something "texas" comes up, she calls to report. This is what she started with: "a tesla on autopilot crashed into a tree and blew up"

 

[alexgr]

Oh, shoot! I think I know!

TX fire chief slams inaccurate Tesla crash coverage with firsthand details on Model S fire

Immediately following the fatal Tesla crash in Texas this weekend, reports from both local and national media outlets emerged citing the statements of Harris County Pct. 4 Constable Mark Herman, who remarked that police were 100% certain that there was no one in the driver seat of the ill-fated...

www.teslarati.com

I've re-read this story, look guys at the facts.

1) Someone called 911 for a forest fire
2) Firefighters came and found the car
3) Put the fire down in 4 minutes
now...
4) Herman spoke to the press and said that the blaze was burning for 4 hours
5) He said the EYEWITNESSES saw relatives driving a Tesla without anyone in the driver's seat
6) That is confirmed by the Herman's investigation.

and now THE question:
Why the eyewitnesses, the relatives of the deceased, didn't call 911 about the car crash?
Two, and only two possibilities here (none is good):
a) they didn't know about the crash and they are not the eyewitnesses; then Commander Herman is simply lying.
b) they knew about the crash and didn't report it that makes them suspects of homicide investigation.

 

[BooMan]

I have rarely heard of police pushing so hard their version of events in the press before investigations are over. ... unless, of course, the police is involved.

Texas police to demand Tesla crash data as Musk denies Autopilot use

Texas police will serve search warrants on Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) on Tuesday to secure data from a fatal vehicle crash, a senior officer told Reuters on Monday, after CEO Elon Musk said company checks showed the car's Autopilot driver assistance system was not engaged.

www.reuters.com

This Mr. Herman, IMHO, should be suspended, subpoenaed, and investigated.

Why? For doing his job? Are you an accident scene investigator?

 

[SMAlset]

Oh, shoot! I think I know!

TX fire chief slams inaccurate Tesla crash coverage with firsthand details on Model S fire

Immediately following the fatal Tesla crash in Texas this weekend, reports from both local and national media outlets emerged citing the statements of Harris County Pct. 4 Constable Mark Herman, who remarked that police were 100% certain that there was no one in the driver seat of the ill-fated...

www.teslarati.com

I've re-read this story, look guys at the facts.

1) Someone called 911 for a forest fire
2) Firefighters came and found the car
3) Put the fire down in 4 minutes
now...
4) Herman spoke to the press and said that the blaze was burning for 4 hours
5) He said the EYEWITNESSES saw relatives driving a Tesla without anyone in the driver's seat
6) That is confirmed by the Herman's investigation.

and now THE question:
Why the eyewitnesses, the relatives of the deceased, didn't call 911 about the car crash?
Two, and only two possibilities here (none is good):
a) they didn't know about the crash and they are not the eyewitnesses; then Commander Herman is simply lying.
b) they knew about the crash and didn't report it that makes them suspects of homicide investigation.

We don’t know if the wives and BIL went in the house after the guys were ready to drive off. We don’t know they didn’t call 911 too. Doesn’t mean the Commander was lying, just knew what info had been passed on to him. I think the relatives involvement in their deaths is more highly unlikely than not.

 

[Effopec]

I haven't read through this all, but my $0.02 -
There is an almost zero chance that the car was in AP, and they would have had to try to purposfully defeat all the safety mechanisms to get it there:

1) Driving on cul de sac that can't be more than a few hundred feet long
2) No lane markers, AP can't be activated
3) would have to defeat seatbelt, seat weight and steering wheel sensors even if AP could be engaged
4) short road, so no chance to somehow trick car and hop in back
5) Even if they somehow were able to defeat the system and get AP to be active there it would be limited to 5 over, so maybe 30 mph.
6) Elon said the car didn't have FSD and wasn't on AP

So here's my guess:

A) Guy lets his 2 friends take his car for a spin
B) Driver doesn't anticipate the acceleration and misses the curve, hitting the tree
C) Driver isn't familiar with car and can't get driver's door open, climbs in back to try to get out that way
D) Fire starts to engulf vehicle as they struggle to get out

I suppose it is possible that the driver thought they were activating AP, but since it can't be activated there it only went to TACC - but that would give a warning beep.

What I hate the most is the totally irresponsible journalism that is still calling this a Tesla Autopilot crash even though the only evidence is the fire captain saying there was nobody in the drivers seat when they got to the scene.

 

[EVNow]

The original article reported that the brother-in-law said that the owner “may have” hopped into the backseat. In other words, he didn’t see it, and he’s merely speculating about how he ended up in the backseat.

“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.”

One big problem I have with these reports is that we never know what the question was. If a witness says X - did he say that unprompted or to answer a particular question.

For eg. in this case - to me it looks like the b-i-l was probably asked how did the victim get into the back seat and then speculated that "may have hopped" ... that's different than if he said that unprompted.

 

[SMAlset]

The 59 year old victim has been identified: he was the doctor. Making the engineer the older friend.

Memorial Hermann doctor identified as 1 of 2 killed in fiery Tesla crash in The Woodlands

Elon Musk cited a safety report, claiming a Tesla with Autopilot engaged has a nearly 10 times lower chance of accident than the average vehicle.

abc13.com

 

[ev_go123]

How fast would a Model S be going if autopilot is allowed to accelerate from a standstill in ~380 ft? Would it be fast enough to cause such an accident?

Let's assume they bypassed all safety checks--seat-belt buckled behind, autopilot thought the curb was a line, autopilot turned on, then set to 0 mph, car was stopped with autopilot still "on", then increased to 60 mph or something if the system allows (car is now primed, but not moving), driver climbed into the back, and used a yard stick or equivalent to hit the accelerator to kick it off. The car would then accelerate at it's natural pace up to the curve. I wonder if this would even be fast enough to cause such an accident.

I also find it odd anyone would try to demonstrate auotpilot on a road that is only 0.3 miles long with a stop sign at the end. Did he think autopilot would stop at the stopsign? (it won't) Or he would use the yard stick/equivalent to hit the break? Or get his passenger to decrease the set speed on the steering wheel? Maybe he thought he had FSD but didn't? It just seems so far fetched/unlikely.

 

[Tam]

One thing that puzzles me about this accident and any others involving a collision with a Tesla. Why doesn't the car prevent itself from colliding with a solid object? Why doesn't the emergency collision avoidance software bring the vehicle to a stop when it sees imminent impact with a stationary object?

It's a known limitation for any car using radar technology and not just Tesla. It's disclosed in the Tesla Owner's Manual by searching for the word "stationary"

Why Tesla's Autopilot Can't See a Stopped Firetruck

Semiautonomous driving systems are designed to ignore unmoving obstacles because otherwise, they couldn't work at all.

www.wired.com

Scientists have been trying to improve RADAR since after WWI and the problem still persists today.

Some suggest adding other sensors to solve this problem such as LIDAR.

So far, LIDAR seems to do the trick.

Tesla suggests using the Camera.

Tesla's camera mistook the big white semi-truck for the white sky and collided into and under and through it since 2016 in Florida and soon Tesla will be able to get rid of RADAR to use the more superior Tesla Camera only. It says there's no need for the crutch of LIDAR.

 

[MP3Mike]

Tesla's camera mistook the big white semi-truck for the white sky and collided into and under and through it since 2016 in Florida

Technically that was Mobileye's camera/detection software...

 

[Tam]

I don't really know, but I'm pretty doubtful that the seats contain a digital weighing scale per se. I think they simply have a switch that registers whether a person seems to be occupying the seat...

Tesla does have a weight sensor to alarm the need to buckle up or not. Its weight sensor is also required in order to adjust the force of inflation for airbags. Those weight sensors are recorded in a car log.

That would verify how many in the car at the start of the drive at the driveway: 4 husbands and wives - 2 wives dropped off at the driveway = 2 husbands, not 3 as some suggest.

 

[Tam]

Technically that was Mobileye's camera/detection software...

Thanks for the correction very true for the 2016 incident.

However, I don't think it's MobilEye anymore for the exact same scenario for 2018 Model 3 vs Semi-Truck in Del Rey Beach, Florida.

Neither was MobilEye for 2017 Model X vs cement median in Mountain View, CA.

 

[jelloslug]

I haven't read through this all, but my $0.02 -
There is an almost zero chance that the car was in AP, and they would have had to try to purposfully defeat all the safety mechanisms to get it there:

1) Driving on cul de sac that can't be more than a few hundred feet long
2) No lane markers, AP can't be activated
3) would have to defeat seatbelt, seat weight and steering wheel sensors even if AP could be engaged
4) short road, so no chance to somehow trick car and hop in back
5) Even if they somehow were able to defeat the system and get AP to be active there it would be limited to 5 over, so maybe 30 mph.
6) Elon said the car didn't have FSD and wasn't on AP

So here's my guess:

A) Guy lets his 2 friends take his car for a spin
B) Driver doesn't anticipate the acceleration and misses the curve, hitting the tree
C) Driver isn't familiar with car and can't get driver's door open, climbs in back to try to get out that way
D) Fire starts to engulf vehicle as they struggle to get out

I suppose it is possible that the driver thought they were activating AP, but since it can't be activated there it only went to TACC - but that would give a warning beep.

What I hate the most is the totally irresponsible journalism that is still calling this a Tesla Autopilot crash even though the only evidence is the fire captain saying there was nobody in the drivers seat when they got to the scene.

This seems like the most logical scenario.

 

[kavyboy]

I'm guessing: Owner lets friend test drive. Unfamiliar driver has a "pedal misapplication" and floors it into a tree. Driver ends up in back seat for some reason - several have been presented here. Police representative is talking out his... butt. It's Occam's Razor in spades.