Highway 1 fatality

[Merrill]

Has anyone heard why he went off the cliff?

 

[jaanton]

I've had a tire fail on this stretch of road while driving my Roadster. I'll tell you it's plenty scary. Good that I was paying attention. There was no place to pull over for a couple miles, so I'm driving on a flat trying to get out of traffic. No cell phone service. No service call boxes. Found a place to pull over and try the can of tire goop. That got me a couple more miles to a call box with the goop failing on the way. Several hours to get a tow.

Tesla time was interesting. There's a Tesla Roadster stuck on hwy 1. Several people stop to help or pass messages along. One lovely couple had a trailer and made tea for us to help keep warm. What fun you have driving a Tesla!

Forgot to add, so I got towed to Gualala by AAA, then called Tesla Roadside Support. Told the woman I was on Hwy 1 in Gualala only she thought that was southern CA not northern so I got the wrong service people. In the end I had a tire overnight delivered from Tirerack to the Gualala Shell station. They added a photo of my car to the wall of exotic cars they've worked on.

 

[Victory]

Whoa, that car looks like a crushed up tin can. So sad

 

[anxman]

Does anybody know if airbags deployed in the vehicle? We've seen a number of Teslas go totally dead when there's a 12V or HPC problem. I've always feared my Tesla dying at an inopportune time like while driving HWY1.

 

[AWDtsla]

Does anybody know if airbags deployed in the vehicle? We've seen a number of Teslas go totally dead when there's a 12V or HPC problem. I've always feared my Tesla dying at an inopportune time like while driving HWY1.

First of all airbags don't need the 12V battery to be connected to fire.

Second of all, if you think airbags are going to save you from that drop... well.. ahh just forget it, it's hopeless.

 

[anxman]

Nothing would have saved the driver short of a parachute, but that still doesn't answer if the car went dead.

In a Tesla, I don't believe airbags would deploy if the 12V had failed given that even the hazards don't work in that case. So in the case of this accident, checking for airbags could be one way to tell if it was caused by driver error or not.

 

[AWDtsla]

Nothing would have saved the driver short of a parachute, but that still doesn't answer if the car went dead.

In a Tesla, I don't believe airbags would deploy if the 12V had failed given that even the hazards don't work in that case. So in the case of this accident, checking for airbags could be one way to tell if it was caused by driver error or not.

Airbags have backup power so they can still deploy even if the 12V supply is lost.

 

[bollar]

Nothing would have saved the driver short of a parachute, but that still doesn't answer if the car went dead.

In a Tesla, I don't believe airbags would deploy if the 12V had failed given that even the hazards don't work in that case. So in the case of this accident, checking for airbags could be one way to tell if it was caused by driver error or not.

AWDtsla is right. The Supplemental Restraint System has capacitors that ensure the airbag's pyrotechnics ignite, even if 12V power is lost. Depending on the car, the airbag is "live" for 15 minutes to an hour after power is removed.

 

[CDT]

Sad story. I surf in that area quite a bit and have hiked to the bottom of the cliffs. Not an area you want to go off the road.

 

[tc4542]

I just hope they definitively figure out why/how it happened.

 

[David_Cary]

FWIW. A nearby driver stated that at that area at that time, the sun was directly in your eyes coming around a turn. It was blinding.

Source: My father lives near there and drives that stretch weekly. He was talking with someone who was "a few cars behind" the Tesla.