Model 3 DashCam last minute of accident missing

[SMAlset]

Couldn’t Tesla, at the request of your insurance company, get a few seconds of crash video other than from the TeslaCam? Or was that only something available on the MS/MX? I know Tesla doesn’t release this to the owner but to insurance or police if requested I thought. I also know there was a kit I recall reading about they came out with to capture car info. Again don’t recall if for the Model 3. If it is, It was kind of expensive and would think there might be companies that could come and retrieve it.

 

[SMAlset]

I wonder if your insurance company or police could see the license plates of nearby cars that would have seen the accident and contact the owners for a statement.

 

[Nebuchadn3zzar]

I wonder whether connecting the USB drive via a short USB extension cable could help with this solution's susceptibility to shock and vibration, by reducing the stresses at the connector...

 

[Kain]

I wonder if your insurance company or police could see the license plates of nearby cars that would have seen the accident and contact the owners for a statement.

Good call. The last 3 minutes of the footage shows the prius to the left of me that I almost hit when I was sideswiped from the right by the driver. It also shows the car behind him but not sure what the law is regarding reaching out to them somehow as witnesses. I'll ask my insurance claims agent when they contact me Monday about the situation.

 

[brkaus]

I'm not sure how the USB would be jostled. It fits in pretty right.

I have a low profile one in mine. Basically the size of the connector.

But, it's probably not the highest priority task for the car.

Regarding the car saving images, I believe that is in case if an air bag deployment.

Edit to add -

Here is the usb I purchased - https://amzn.to/2CRVuwP

I have not pulled video from it yet. I was previously using an old USB and it constantly had the "X" on the camera and corrupted the drive. This new one has not reported corruption.

 

[JohnSnowNW]

I'm sorry about your accident OP, but I would like to say that your experience has been educational on how we should use the dashcam feature. I read the manual, and I still would have told my wife to press the record button immediately...and perhaps forgotten to tell her to hit the pause button before removing.

Thanks, and I hope you can get this worked out.

 

[Perry]

Sorry to hear about the accident.

I recall someone here saying that you actually have to wait one minute before pressing save, otherwise the thing you actually want to save will be lost (or at least will not be transferred to the list of playable files, and will be difficult to get back).

Easy enough to experiment with and see whether it is true. But use a different ISB drive if you are doing that...

However, what you really want is the footage, not experiments. I have no idea whether the files you want are on the USB or saveable in any way. I would not put the drive back into the car until you determine some way to get the missing footage (there may not be a way...)

The reason you have to wait one minute before pressing save is because the videos are saved in 1 minute chunks and when you press save, it saves all the completed videos, not the one currently being recorded. Waiting at least a minute guarantees that the last video being recorded has completed. This is an oversight in the way Tesla coded the software and they should include the video being recorded in the list to be saved.

What can you do? Obviously the video you want has been deleted and not kept by the software. There are third party software tools that can recover deleted files from drives with one caveat that no other file has written over that spot. Here is where luck comes in since re-using free space is a random operation. You can greatly increase your odds of recovery if you immediately removed the drive and stopped using it (stopped witting to it). But if you left it in the car and since the drive is probably small in size the chances are great that the sport of the drive that held that deleted video has been overwritten or reused for another video. In that case there is nothing you can do and the deleted video is unrecoverable.

 

[Kain]

I'm sorry about your accident OP, but I would like to say that your experience has been educational on how we should use the dashcam feature. I read the manual, and I still would have told my wife to press the record button immediately...and perhaps forgotten to tell her to hit the pause button before removing.

Thanks, and I hope you can get this worked out.

Thanks bud, it really is gutwrenching knowing your new car is damaged by someone driving wreckless. Had the footage been recorded, I would feel more at ease but because it is missing, and the witness' statement seems to support the other driver, there's a chance I can get dinged for something that I know was not my fault. Kinda like rubbing salt on the wounds. The only consolation I can get out of it is if I can help anyone else here from my experience.

I always had a dash cam on my older vehicle. Decided not to get one because Tesla has a built in one. Big mistake on my part.

 

[Leeclanual]

Good call. The last 3 minutes of the footage shows the prius to the left of me that I almost hit when I was sideswiped from the right by the driver. It also shows the car behind him but not sure what the law is regarding reaching out to them somehow as witnesses. I'll ask my insurance claims agent when they contact me Monday about the situation.

You need to call the police officer who drafted the report and give him the license number...

 

[SMAlset]

If not mistaken our old dashcam would corrupt files on the micro card if the dashcam wasn’t oroperly shut down before removing the card. Pretty sure this was corrected in our latest Blackvue 900S. Hopefully something Tesla can address due to the importance of the info drivers want saved.

 

[Kain]

You need to call the police officer who drafted the report and give him the license number...

There wasn't one. There was a firetruck with an officer (in Sunnyvale, California, Police officers are also Firemen) who came by to check if we were ok. I asked for an officer so we can get a report and he called one but claims that there's not much they can do as it is just both our statements along with the witness' statements. Because of that, he kept insisting we just exchange info and he will call off the other officer to which we both agreed.

I told them I had dashcam on as well. At the time I was confident I had captured the entire incident so it was more stress of the accident than anything. Once I got home and plugged in the usb, the real nightmare began as I'm scrambling to find the footage and wondering why it recorded everything right up to the minute before the accident.

I called Tesla Support twice to check if they can find logs or recordings or what may have happened to which they both said there's nothing they could really do. The 2nd guy at least told me to call the service center even though they are fully booked until feb and see if they can squeeze in a time for me to drop by and get data from the black box.

Also stayed up and spent a good 6-7 hours scanning the usb with 2 different disk recovery tools but nothing of use were found aside from corrupted .REC files. I found this company which is located a mile away from me which I will contact and see if they can help recover anything: Data Recovery Services by WeRecoverData.comⓇ | Hard Drive Recovery & Repair Services

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

This is an extremely information post as it helps correct something that I was obviously doing wrong.

Anytime something interesting happened on the road I pushed the button to save it along with the the last 9 minutes.

I didn't realize you'd have to wait.

OOPS.

Sure I never bothered to check it after the first time I pushed I tested it, but when I tested it I wasn't paying attention to the precise timing of the event.

If I designed it I would have made the save button save slightly past the point where I pushed save. So even the moment I pushed save was recorded.

I'd also design it not to record while in park (that's for sentry mode). That way as soon as person put the car into park it would disconnect from the drive to allow the drive to be removed (assuming sentry mode isn't in use). People aren't going to remember to push save or hold the button down to stop it in order to remove the drive. They're just going to want to remove the drive after they'd stopped.

They're going to be in too much shock to think straight.

Hopefully they'll just switch everything to the cloud. Where you never remove the drive. You simply push upload, and it uploads the last X minutes where X is selectable (up to 60, but normally at 10). Maybe even have a secure drive solution somewhere in the car that's not designed to be easily removed.

Then I'd have an interface within the account to view the video and to send the video to the Tesla Autopilot team. Since most the videos won't be crash videos, but will be AP incidents where I'm simply reporting an error. It's nice to have a video when reporting something.

 

[Dre78]

I wasn't aware of pressing and holding it to turn off. I only tapped it thinking it will stop the recording. Afterwards I immediately removed the usb. I think tapping it before it finished recording the 1 minute loop must've somehow corrupted the last minute of footage.

Did you see the Recording Icon before you shut off Model 3 and/or removed the usb? Tapping TeslaCam before it finished recording the 1 minute loop starts the process to finish recording and move/rename files from local memory.

I called Tesla Support twice to check if they can find logs or recordings or what may have happened to which they both said there's nothing they could really do. The 2nd guy at least told me to call the service center even though they are fully booked until feb and see if they can squeeze in a time for me to drop by and get data from the black box.

Definitely visit a service center. As you said, maybe the data can corroborate your statement. Or maybe by some miracle the black box has video of its own. I'm convinced TeslaCam is a separate application from the black box of the car.

Your post prompted me to do some experiments. I've posted my findings and assumptions: TeslaCam Instructions and Observations.

 

[Kain]

Did you see the Recording Icon before you shut off Model 3 and/or removed the usb? Tapping TeslaCam before it finished recording the 1 minute loop starts the process to finish recording and move/rename files from local memory.


Definitely visit a service center. As you said, maybe the data can corroborate your statement. Or maybe by some miracle the black box has video of its own. I'm convinced TeslaCam is a separate application from the black box of the car.

Your post prompted me to do some experiments. I've posted my findings and assumptions: TeslaCam Instructions and Observations.

Just saw your video, definitely informative. It may be what happened to me. The moment I tapped the icon to stop recording, it showed the red dot disappear and I immediately pulled the usb. I believe it was less than 23 seconds and my fear is that I removed the USB before the file has been converted to save.

 

[sreams]

Just saw your video, definitely informative. It may be what happened to me. The moment I tapped the icon to stop recording, it showed the red dot disappear and I immediately pulled the usb. I believe it was less than 23 seconds and my fear is that I removed the USB before the file has been converted to save.

I don't believe it matters how quickly you remove the USB drive after stopping recording. What does matter is that if you stop recording, the currently recorded minute is lost. You could wait an hour to pull the USB and it wouldn't change this.

 

[drj3]

It's been a little while since I've messed with my USB, but I think I was able to rename the .rec files with .mp4 extension and get them to play. It may or may not have the minute you want. When I was looking at them, some were from the most recent drive and some were older.

 

[balajeek]

exact scenario for me last month (but it was swipe on left), after I pulled over the first thing I did was click the icon to download videos, then called police. told the cop that there should be video and should be able to identify the other car, did not take the drive out until I reach home 30 min later, when I checked I have all videos but that exact 2 min at the incident time is missing. wtf, I have nearly 123 files when I looked, went back and plugged in the drive and clicked the icon again, waited few min then came back to computer and looked, guess what I now have only 74 files instead of 123, and I still did not have those 2 min which I badly want it.

The cop called me the next day on phone and I told him this is what i see and he says "you don't have a Honda or Mazda and you have Tesla paid so much for it and when they promise something and it did not work and that's insane."

Till today I haven't fixed the damage yet, wonder where to take it when I want to.

 

[e-FTW]

exact scenario for me last month (but it was swipe on left), after I pulled over the first thing I did was click the icon to download videos, then called police. told the cop that there should be video and should be able to identify the other car, did not take the drive out until I reach home 30 min later, when I checked I have all videos but that exact 2 min at the incident time is missing. wtf, I have nearly 123 files when I looked, went back and plugged in the drive and clicked the icon again, waited few min then came back to computer and looked, guess what I now have only 74 files instead of 123, and I still did not have those 2 min which I badly want it.

The cop called me the next day on phone and I told him this is what i see and he says "you don't have a Honda or Mazda and you have Tesla paid so much for it and when they promise something and it did not work and that's insane."

Till today I haven't fixed the damage yet, wonder where to take it when I want to.

Sorry to hear that. As I mentioned to the OP, it looks like the way the feature works right now, it does not properly handle the minute currently being recorded when you tap on the icon. Or when you tap and hold, which is what you want to do before removing the drive.

See: Model 3 DashCam last minute of accident missing

I guess feedback on the feature and suggestions on how to make it better should be sent here:
[email protected]

 

[happyzod]

Was involved in an accident last Thursday. I immediately pressed the dashcam icon after I got hit. Waited a 10 minutes or so to do a soft reboot of the car. When the car was rebooting, I unplugged my HDD. Why are drivers so careless?

 

[Leeclanual]

Lesson learned... let the recording continue for a few minutes then press the camera icon... no real rush as it has capacity to record and store a lot of video. Don’t rush!