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2015 Tesla Accelerated into a wall

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@boaterva I don't know specifically what version firmware the Tesla has. Probably not the latest update since it's been blocked. What feature is this? I'd like to find out, and see if my car has it (when I get it from the tow yard).

Two things I *wish* for my next Tesla:
1. That is has a feature or menu option to ignore user input and *always* engage AEB if it detects an obstable. Especially at low speeds. Maybe this is that new feature you're talking about.
2. That it has a mechanical emergency brake. The police were amazed that it didn't have one (they kept asking my wife where it was). My wife said she would have pressed that in as well and that might have overridden the accelerator (if she was indeed pressing it). I'm talking about a third pedal on the left side, like my Leaf has. Even a hand pull brake on the center console.

@electracity I sure hope Tesla is more understanding than you. So far, the police, the fire department, Grocery Outlet and our insurance company (Progressive BTW) have all been very understanding and compassionate to my wife who bursts into tears every time she has to recount what happened. I hope Tesla is the same way.
 
@D.E. Well you probably just said everything possible to convince me, dammit. Can I swear on this forum?

I guess I'll decide when Progressive tells me how my claim will be settled. You're right, I can probably get a new 3 for what I paid. I was hoping to get a nicer used Model S because I feel the sedan is a more elegant car.

An expensive lesson...

*sugar*

[edit] OK, you know I didn't just type *sugar* there...
 
So if you did read the other threads, then you no doubt saw these two posts by @wk057:

Sudden Unexpected Acceleration today

Sudden Unexpected Acceleration today

I think that about sums it up.

I will say, the one big difference here is that the car is salvage and was repaired by some guy in Minnesota. There's no telling what was done to the car or what shape any of those systems were in. The fact that OP says the car kept trying to accelerate even after being disabled suggests to me that this is at least partially a botched repair job.
 
@boaterva I don't know specifically what version firmware the Tesla has. Probably not the latest update since it's been blocked. What feature is this? I'd like to find out, and see if my car has it (when I get it from the tow yard).

Two things I *wish* for my next Tesla:
1. That is has a feature or menu option to ignore user input and *always* engage AEB if it detects an obstable. Especially at low speeds. Maybe this is that new feature you're talking about.
2. That it has a mechanical emergency brake. The police were amazed that it didn't have one (they kept asking my wife where it was). My wife said she would have pressed that in as well and that might have overridden the accelerator (if she was indeed pressing it). I'm talking about a third pedal on the left side, like my Leaf has. Even a hand pull brake on the center console.

@electracity I sure hope Tesla is more understanding than you. So far, the police, the fire department, Grocery Outlet and our insurance company (Progressive BTW) have all been very understanding and compassionate to my wife who bursts into tears every time she has to recount what happened. I hope Tesla is the same way.

No mechanical emergency brake. Many modern cars have an electric emergency brake instead, which is what Tesla has. If the brake pedal failed completely for some reason, press and hold the park button on the transmission stalk and it'll engage the electronic parking brake.

The feature Tesla added to address folks running into things is called obstacle aware acceleration, and it's set on the driving screen of the center console. I don't remember which FW version it appeared with or whether it defaulted to on, but it greatly slows the acceleration if the car thinks it sees something on ultrasound (I've had it trip falsely a couple times from some combination of pavement cracks and wind, and it's a very eerie, disturbing feeling when the car barely creeps forward for a second or two before it realizes there wasn't really a wall there.)
 
I agree, that doesn’t look like a 40 MPH impact. That’s a pretty wimpy wall. These cars are heavy. She didn’t even break the studs. I think at 40 MPH, she’d she’d have been right the way through that wall, especially if the car was powerfully accelerating.

I don’t know that I’d really want the unconditional automatic braking. The car sometimes “sees” things that aren’t really there, and goes into short duration full braking mode, then it seems to recover, and goes on its merry way. Until it is absolutely flawless in its interpretation of the driving conditions, I want the ability to override it. Of course I haven’t driven into a concrete wall yet. Maybe that would make me reconsider. Maybe reconsider a Honda. And not a salvage one either.
 
@boaterva I don't know specifically what version firmware the Tesla has. Probably not the latest update since it's been blocked. What feature is this? I'd like to find out, and see if my car has it (when I get it from the tow yard).

Two things I *wish* for my next Tesla:
1. That is has a feature or menu option to ignore user input and *always* engage AEB if it detects an obstable. Especially at low speeds. Maybe this is that new feature you're talking about.
2. That it has a mechanical emergency brake. The police were amazed that it didn't have one (they kept asking my wife where it was). My wife said she would have pressed that in as well and that might have overridden the accelerator (if she was indeed pressing it). I'm talking about a third pedal on the left side, like my Leaf has. Even a hand pull brake on the center console.

@electracity I sure hope Tesla is more understanding than you. So far, the police, the fire department, Grocery Outlet and our insurance company (Progressive BTW) have all been very understanding and compassionate to my wife who bursts into tears every time she has to recount what happened. I hope Tesla is the same way.
In my car checking on new 16.2 so here are the details: Obstacle Aware Acceleration under Autopilot in the Settings menu. If this car hasn’t had an update in a while it probably doesn’t have it. I believe it came out relatively recently (maybe late 2018?).

The help message is: limits acceleration if an obstacle is detected in front of your vehicle while driving at low speeds.

Edit: I see @Saghost beat me to it!

As for the rest of this I’ve never heard of a Tesla moving with no one in the seat (except for summon, etc) and it all sounds like systems have been tampered with.
 
In the most juvenile and condescending tone as if there's a language barrier in a B-movie: If your foot on brake, car not move. Foot on brake. Car not move. Period.

That's from that thread, last page...

It's so hard... soooo hard..... I don't think you'd understand unless you were there. We are both 50+ years old. NOTHING like this has ever happened to us. It's so easy to blame the car. In my head I understand all the explanations out there and I think they're reasonable. But in my heart.... Oh god I want so bad for it to be Tesla's fault....

My son put it best: "This is a goddamn mess".

Progressive just decided on the pictures to total the car. The next step is for them to decide how much it's worth...
 
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In my car checking on new 16.2 so here are the details: Obstacle Aware Acceleration under Autopilot in the Settings menu. If this car hasn’t had an update in a while it probably doesn’t have it. I believe it came out relatively recently (maybe late 2018?).

The help message is: limits acceleration if an obstacle is detected in front of your vehicle while driving at low speeds.

Edit: I see @Saghost beat me to it!

As for the rest of this I’ve never heard of a Tesla moving with no one in the seat (except for summon, etc) and it all sounds like systems have been tampered with.

Oops. I just came back to correct that. I posted it was on the Driving screen, but while I was just out at the car looking at what 2019.16.2 brought me, I realized that as you just said it's actually on the Autopilot screen.
 
As for the rest of this I’ve never heard of a Tesla moving with no one in the seat (except for summon, etc) and it all sounds like systems have been tampered with.

The other weird case for moving with no one in the seat was when autopark was accidentally engaged. At one point you could trigger it with a double press on the Park button (not sure if that's still true,) and someone did that and stepped out and was shocked when the car moved a while back.

But this still doesn't sound like that - especially waking up from a shut down to start moving. Seems like the unknown repairs are a more likely explanation.
 
I’m sorry. Don’t let the trolls get to you. Wish someone would actually look at the logs to figure it out. If it was poorly hacked to get it operable after the repairs, a good investigation could serve as a warning to other buyers of salvage cars.

I worked for awhile doing forensic engineering investigations, and have read the reports about driver errors in unintended acceleration. Very common, but not the only cause.

I also had a car take off on me once. Happened around 2005. It was a 1990’s BMW, with a manual transmission. Car started accelerating quickly on the highway, with no driver input. Quickly pressed the clutch, engine went to redline before I could turn the ignition off. Old fashioned cruise control with a cable actuator. Found the cable housing for the cruise control cable had failed in a way that pulled hard on the throttle. Rare, yes, but real.

AND, none of the “driver error” theories explain why the car continued in drive after the driver left the vehicle. The open door sensor and empty seat sensor should have triggered the car to go into park.

Glad no one was hurt.
 
The truth is that no one knows what happened and under what circumstances. We have your wife's account and then there's the unaccessible operating logs. Yes there have been a number of unintended acceleration cases with proof that the operator swore they were pressing the brake when evidence showed pedal confusion, but there have also been cases of "spaghetti" computer coding (Toyota). I'm a control-freak and buying our Tesla was a bit of a stretch for me. It's my first car without a clutch and my first car without a physical key (kill switch), which is one reason I did not buy an AP-equipped car. I try to education myself on how things work and how things don't work, and that is getting increasingly difficult with software programming. I'm left trusting the engineers and programmers because it's beyond me.

We're starting to see more issues with AP after software updates (phantom braking, micro-braking, etc) where the problems weren't experienced on older software. I'm also seeing an analogy between the complexity of AP and the software issues that Boeing appears to have with the MCAS and anti-stall system. The end users (pilots) did not know how was intended to work and they also didn't understand what happens when the sensor fails.

Of course things are also complicated by the damaged status and 3rd party repair.

We are definitely going to need more information and I think we ought to hold back from casting assumptions and aspersions. I would love to see a conclusive finding. I'm glad no one was hurt.
 
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Once, when I was in high school, I was rear-ended by a car doing a full 35 mph, no braking. Because I was young, I made the youthful mistake of having my wheels turned to the left while stopped, which launched me into the very busy plaza I was trying to turn into. My accelerator legitimately got stuck. I had to reach down with my hand and physically pull it up from the floor. I still didn't hit a damn thing...
 
IT IS VERY VERY VERY VERY obvious what happened.

She pushed the accelerator and thought it was the brake. There has been over 1 billion spent understanding this. Yes, one billion dollars because people are certain they pushed brake.

I know you want to dismiss my post but hear me out. Get in a car, gas car. ANY car. Watch youtube vidoes. The brakes are mechanical and stronger than a 2000 HP vehicle. Even if the Tesla had a long string of malfunctions, it cannot overtake the brakes. The car would stop if floored with the brakes floored at the same time.

It is nearly impossible to bypass built in safety of drive by wire. One, you'd have to have a redundant system fail, which to my knowledge never has in real world. Then you'd have to have the feature which disables acceleration fail (switch on the brake pedal).

I can prove this as well. Go to the car now, press the brake pedal. It will be firm, this because there was no mechanical failure of the brakes. Which after a redundant system failed, and the brake kill failed, you'd need a mechanical failure of the brakes which didn't happen. Test for yourself.

You wife BELIEVES she hit the brake. This has been shown over and over in the studies. The emotion of fear overtook her and she could no longer react.
There are countless videos and studies showing this. and I'll get back to that video in a moment.

After being scared, she got out of the car which was in creep mode, it drove at creep speed into a wall. She did this because she was frozen and could not think of anything but getting out and being scared. That wall in concrete veneer. I bicycle could break it. She didn't break the studs which a car at 10mph would do easily. Much less 40.
Look at this video. It's just 40mph crashes. Obviously this vehicle wasn't ANYWHERE near 40.

Remember the video of the woman on the highway? Look at the end, when she opens the door to get out and the officer grabs her. See the car start moving fwd? That's because she was too scared to think about the car, she just wanted out. Your wife did the same thing.


The only anomaly of the entire situation is that the car did not put itself into park when she got out. That was caused from the vehicle being salvage because the sensors in the seat cause issues in salvage cars which you use seats from a different Tesla depending on the years. That's a guess but highly likely.


I do these kinds of failure analysis quite often. The hardest part is getting the affected party to calm down enough to listen and think. It's an emotional issue. People are CERTAIN they did or didn't do something. It's not until the emotion is gone that they can process the situation and go over the facts as I've illustrated above. It can be hard for a non technical person to understand how a redundant dbw system works. You can cut a wire, cross wires, send volts to a wire. Nothing you do would cause acceleration. The system has one circuit that starts with higher voltage, one starts very low. As you press, one goes up, one goes down. They have to match expected behavior. There is nothing you can do to trick this system with wires, shorts or batteries. You'd have to have a circuit made.
 
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