Model X Crash on US-101 (Mountain View, CA)

[SMAlset]

My thought was maybe some type of post embedded in the concrete wall at a safe distance from the barrier with flashing directional arrows might be a solution. Sort of like 85 <- and -> 101 to call attention to drivers day or night as they are approaching that barrier. I'd like to think something could be done to improve this apparently very dangerous area. Too many cars traveling fast in HOV lanes there.

 

[McRat]

Correct, that cylinder is the compressed air storage tank for the air suspension.

Caltrans could be in big legal trouble if the compression sled was previously damaged and not repaired in a timely manner.

To clarify, we California Taxpayers are in big legal trouble because the driver hit the barricade. If they had the barricade reset, they might still win in court, they are fickle. Our fault for not requiring drivers to be alert and for having solid objects near roadways.

 

[SMAlset]

I'm thinking it's possible that several of the news station choppers who routinely fly over this area to do their traffic reports could still have footage of it earlier that day or day before. Not sure if it's kept but you never know I guess. The other idea was anyone with dash cam having driven it earlier that morning and taken the 85 or 101 HOV lanes.

 

[EVie'sDad]

Here is a similar barrier on SB880 in Milpitas. It too looks shortened, but has the water drums to help cushion such an impact.

 

[SMAlset]

To clarify, we California Taxpayers are in big legal trouble because the driver hit the barricade. If they barricade was reset, they might still win in court, they are fickle. Our fault for not requiring drivers to be alert and for having solid objects near roadways.

I get the responsibility aspect of this from a driver's perspective but also you can't deny there is a level of responsibilty by designing something that needs repair and not maintaining it if that is the case. We don't know what happened to the driver to have him end up on that end of the barrier but I'd like to think the barrier was put there because it was needed due to the design of the new roadway years ago and that it was there to minimize injuries to drivers/passengers using that stretch of highway.

 

[e-FTW]

I drove that road on Thursday night, and I'm about 99% sure the barrier had been reset. I vaguely recall noticing the barrier. It is possible that I'm remembering wrong, though, and it is also possible that there could have been two crashes there within a few hours of each other.



Strongly agreed—particularly regarding the addition of those plastic posts. Also, the fact that we're debating whether it was reset or not tells me that there needs to be a policy change. If it can't be reset immediately, they should have to put in temporary barrels before they reopen either carpool lane, and this should be mandated by law, or else it won't happen.

But the biggest thing that they can do to improve things is to make the signage better. The second sign about the exit is way past the point where it is too late to act on it. The second set of signs should be at least good fifty to a hundred feet earlier, possibly even as far back as the Shoreline bridge (which is just past where the first set of signs are. That also means that the first set should be even further back than they are.

And a third of the way from Rengstorff to Shoreline, that sign on the right side that says "Junction 85 1/2 mile" should also appear on the left.

The first hint that the left lane is an exit lane doesn't happen until you get to the signs on the Old Middlefield Rd. bridge right before Shoreline, just 3,000 feet from the hard gore point, and 2,000 feet from the start of the solid white line, which appears very suddenly right after you get out from under the Shoreline bridge. The fact that the line is partially obscured by the shadow of the bridge doesn't help. That solid line should really start before the Shoreline bridge so that it is more visible.

Also, there should be brightly colored pavement markings indicating that the left lane is an exit lane, starting just south of Oregon Expressway where the second carpool lane first appears, so that drivers are not caught off guard. I thought they had some white pavement paint, but I don't see it on Street View, so perhaps I'm remembering wrong. Either way, I guarantee if you had a green state route shield painted on the lane with a number painted on it, that would be a thousand times more visible. And the way I see it, they should appear as often as the carpool lane signs. After all, if you have to have those every couple of hundred feet to keep people from accidentally straying into the wrong lane, the routing markers seem like they should be at least as important.

Agreed on all fronts. I just know that by the fact I often felt caught out by this current configuration while being alert and engaged, distracted drivers are probably getting into dangerous situations trying to get back to 101 south. Not that this is what happened here, we do not know.

Am saddened by the idea that the smart barrier may not have been fully extended/reset. This is speculation at this point, but could be an important factor.

@TEG you may have a point about the width of the smart barrier. It may be designed to hit an internal combustion engine in the case of a dead center collision. It is still better than the old railing they had years ago, as those tend to “impale” a car.

 

[SMAlset]

....

@TEG you may have a point about the width of the smart barrier. It may be designed to hit an internal combustion engine in the case of a dead center collision. It is still better than the old railing they had years ago, as those tend to “impale” a car.

The crash test videos @TEG posted to show various types of vehicles being tested with it. I would have no idea about weight of the cars/trucks used but some looked rather heavy. Also showed vehicles of different heights. There was some mention about vehicles of lighter weight and the damage to them could be worse. With the emphasis on attaining better mileage on the road, cars and even semis are being fitted closer to the road surface these days.

Crash test video link earlier in the thread: Model X Crash on US-101 (Mountain View, CA)

 

[McRat]

I get the responsibility aspect of this from a driver's perspective but also you can't deny there is a level of responsibilty by designing something that needs repair and not maintaining it if that is the case. We don't know what happened to the driver to have him end up on that end of the barrier but I'd like to think the barrier was put there because it was needed due to the design of the new roadway years ago and that it was there to minimize injuries to drivers/passengers using that stretch of highway.

There are thousands of 'idiot barriers' on our highways. People hit them constantly. Some die. And we need perhaps a million or more. Every tree, post, wall, support, ravine, needs one since we don't hold drivers accountable for their actions in many cases.

That one would not make the top 100 of dangerous targets on our highways.

It is the driver's responsibly to repair or notify the government when you destroy or damage public property. It's not included in your registration fee, it's public assets you ruined or damaged. You are to blame and you are responsible to your neighbors to handle the problem and give warning to others.

Caltrans is you, me, and our neighbors. The government isn't some ambiguous 3rd party. It is us. $2.5 million wrongful death against a government agency? That means we lost $2.5 million that could be used for roads or schools.

It is nearly impossible to create a barrier a passenger car is 100% safe smashing into head-on at California freeway speeds. Government crash tests are done at 35mph. Over 90% of deaths occur at under 45mph. That is why the crash speed is so low. IIRC, it's the 75% level. I've posted the link many times. Too lazy today to find it again.

It is very popular thinking to blame "the big guy" when people are injured or die, no matter who was actually at fault, or whether the accident was survivable to begin with. Get blind drunk (.22 BAC) go speeding with your family in the car, fly off the road, and die. Win big because the airbag didn't deploy because you had a huge weight hanging from your keychain. The force of the car rolling would have rotated any key/tumbler switch. But it's the big guy to blame.

 

[TEG]

I am just looking at what type of crash cushion was there, and if it functioned as intended.

That is not a tree in a field, or ditch off the road that someone might happen to run into someday.
This is a major, heavily used, high speed interchange with a "cement knife" inches from passing vehicles.
I think there is an expectation of planned safety, and reasonable care and maintenance there that you wouldn't expect from most other objects near roads.

I wasn't even thinking about driver attentiveness, liability, lawsuits or anything like that.



You seem to want us to put all the onus of road safety on the driver. As if you want to go back to the days before air bags, seat belts, crash cushions, etc. They are there for good reason including many cases where the driver had no choice such as blown tire, something falls in the road, etc. I find it disagreeable that you call them "idiot barriers".


Also, from the "perfect is the enemy of the good", you are right that we can't expect them all to be 100% able to handle all situations, but there are signs that this location is not as safe as it could be or should be. I wonder if anyone studies how frequently that "smart cushion" is getting compressed to 100% used up? It certainly looks like there is plenty of room for a longer slow down area. It seems to me that each time there is a fatal crash running into a freeway barrier, we ought to stop and think if something should be done better to make it safer "the next time."


I am thinking mostly in terms of what could be improved in the future, not who to "blame" for what happened here.

 

[krouebi]

Hi,

there could indeed be some truth to the theory brought forward in this post about the width of the "safety cushion" being narrow enough to pass between the frame rails of the MX.

It reminds me of an accident just before Christmas in the Philippines, where a jeepney transport hit a bus head on, causing 20 casualties. Here, the front end of the jeepney chassis was narrower than the distance between the frame rails of the bus, the jeepney literally being "swallowed" by the soft front end of the (rear-engined) bus, and Christmas got a lot sadder for a lot of people.

Philippine traffic being rather non-disciplined, this kind of turnoff is usually hard-divided (first poles, then cement divider) to avoid swerving - and "black spots" simply have fixed flashing red/blue LED lights to wake people up. And it generally works - it might be an idea to copy.

 

[Joelc]

20180323_080953_NF on Flickr

Video from my BlackVue yesterday at 8AM.
The barrier appears at the 30 second mark.
Does not look like it was reset.

 

[McRat]

I am just looking at what type of crash cushion was there, and if it functioned as intended.

That is not a tree in a field, or ditch off the road that someone might happen to run into someday.
This is a major, heavily used, high speed interchange with a "cement knife" inches from passing vehicles.
I think there is an expectation of planned safety, and reasonable care and maintenance there that you wouldn't expect from most other objects near roads.

I wasn't even thinking about driver attentiveness, liability, lawsuits or anything like that.



You seem to want us to put all the onus of road safety on the driver. As if you want to go back to the days before air bags, seat belts, crash cushions, etc. They are there for good reason including many cases where the driver had no choice such as blown tire, something falls in the road, etc.

If you cannot control the position of your car within ± 12 feet, you probably should hand your keys to your kids.

 

[daktari]

More details and photos posted on Electrek: Tesla assists in removing partially destroyed battery pack after tragic fatal crash resulted in a fire

A Tesla Model X driver died of his injuries earlier today after his vehicle caught on fire in a crash on the highway in the Bay Area. Following the accident, Tesla assisted in the removal of the battery pack that caught on fire. There’s a lot of talk about electric vehicle fires even though there’s no statistic showing that they catch on fire any more frequently than gas-powered cars.

But there’s no doubt that they burn differently due to the battery packs and it is affecting the work of first responders as we reported in a ‘Behind the scene look at how firefighters disabled a Tesla battery while extinguishing a Model S fire’. At one point, 35 firefighters were involved in controlling a Tesla Model S fire.

Today, a Model X hit the median barrier on highway 101 in Mountain View, according to the California Highway Patrol (via NBC), 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. Images of the aftermath show that the front-end of the Model X was completely destroyed either because of the impact, the extraction process, or the fire (pictures via Dean C. Smith on Twitter):

In this post, one can see the collision forces deformed the front of the battery pack. Wonder if a more deformable battery pack could reduce forces on the driver/pas. in a high energy crash like this?

 

[PedanticOne]

Video from my BlackVue yesterday at 8AM.
The barrier appears at the 30 second mark.
Does not look like it was reset.

No permission to view that, apparently.

 

[daktari]

A typical road marking of a european/Norwegian highway split.
Oslo
Google Maps

 

[SMAlset]

20180323_080953_NF on Flickr

Video from my BlackVue yesterday at 8AM.
The barrier appears at the 30 second mark.
Does not look like it was reset.

Hi JoelC. Thanks for checking and posting on this. Can you make this publicly viewable? When I clicked on the video it came up with a Yahoo sign in. I'll have to dig up my log in for it (seldom use) but I'm sure others don't have Yahoo accounts and would appreciate being able to see it. Thanks again.

 

[Joelc]

No permission to view that, apparently.

Sorry. I think i fixed it. try again now?

 

[SMAlset]

If you cannot control the position of your car within ± 12 feet, you probably should hand your keys to your kids.

While I understand your point, I hope you aren't driving one day and get forced out of your lane into one of these, especially one that wasn't reset for your protection. Bet your kids will feel the same way.

 

[f-stop]

That one shows an entirely different sort of crash cushion:
View attachment 288858

On advantage of that kind, and the sand barrels is that people can notice more easily when it has been used up, and would contact CALTRANS asking for it to be replaced. With the "Smart Cusion" sled, I think people drive past a compressed one all day long without noticing that it needs to be reset.
Perhaps that is what was meant by "low maintenance" in one of the crash cushion comparison documents I posted before.

That was kind of my point in bringing up plastic barrels earlier. “Low maintenance and easy to reset” may provide a false sense of economy & safety if the smart barriers aren’t immediately repaired/reset after being compressed. We obviously don't know yet if that's a factor at all in this case, hopefully not.

as to the idea of the X impacting the narrow-ish smart barrier right in the center of the X's frame, from the photos and location of most of the debris it looks like the impact was somewhere around the left front wheel. also makes sense given the layout of the barrier towards the left of that no-mans-land in the gore point. Offset impact would also explain how such a big heavy car flipped into the air...

 

[bxr140]

That one shows an entirely different sort of crash cushion:

But has the same exact lane markings. Does anyone know if LA people run into that one on [apparently] a monthly basis?

More pucks and some bollards in conjunction with an earlier lane split might be a reasonable compromise to keep the inattentive safe from themselves at this exchange.