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

[mongo]

By "kind-of-good" I meant reasonably well-written and thought out, not "good for Tesla" or "good for any particular argument." I call it a "kind-of-good" rather than "good" article because I thought the author somewhere misunderstood a couple of the complaints about the methodology.

Yar, and that's what I meant by kind-of-bad. The title/ headline did not align with the body of the article.
Headline: stat doesn't hold up: implies further data shows the claim is wrong and article will detail it.
Body: data is ambiguous / need more dissection/ could be better/could be worse

At least, that's the way I read it.

 

[bhzmark]

Actually that article is funny Since it quotes another report showing a correlation between cars with autopilot having fewer accidents.
"But it did find a 13 percent reduction in collision claim frequency, indicating sedans with Autopilot enabled got into fewer crashes that resulted in collision claims to insurers."

Now two different sources (and one, iihs, uses their own independent data) find that being equipped with autopilot correlates with fewer serious collisions (as indicated by air bag deployments or collision claims, respectively).

 

[kkboss]

All vehicles on the road are prone to misuse by their drivers. It's easy to get into any vehicle and drive it however dangerously or inappropriately that you feel like without the vehicle itself holding you back from your own stupidity. You can only really say that AP is "defective" if it actually malfunctions in some way while being used appropriately e.g. suddenly slams the brakes full on for no reason or suddenly tries to swerve off the road while following a clearly marked suitable road. Of course AP is prone to misuse and so are all other driving controls in a vehicle. So I don't think you can use that argument alone to limit AP functionality.

Drifting to gore lane and hit a barrier at freeway speeds. Does that sounds like malfunction? And if that is the limitation of te technology then it should still be in the lab and not available for general public.

 

[Economite]

Looks like the Mountain View fire chief is very unhappy with the state of procedures on how to respond to battery fires:

Tesla battery reignites days after deadly crash: 2 Investigates

 

[Ulmo]

Looks like the Mountain View fire chief is very unhappy with the state of procedures on how to respond to battery fires:

Tesla battery reignites days after deadly crash: 2 Investigates

I saw one picture with the emergency responders looking gleeful about the crash and the results. I think that team of emergency responders is actively working against Tesla. I don't know what's wrong with them. That was the Moutain View area responders at the crash scene.

That is a very good article. It's worth reading.

I think either EV manufactuers need to come up with a common fix for this, or emergency responders need to have robots that can take the battery out without risking human life, and isolate it in containment. With gas car fires, similar issues happen, but they manifest slightly differently. I think a lot of this is simply a lack of willingness of people to learn. The gene pool that makes emergency responders is probably solidly anti-EV. That will change as soon as EVs get cheap enough that they're less expensive than gas cars, but I think also emergency responders may be combating the effort to reduce the number of crashes, which means layoffs for them, and since their families have always worked in the same industry, they are fearful about finding new work. As usual, Tesla seems to be non-proactive about this, being more reactive instead, but they're trying to turn a profit right now, so it will probably take a long time for attitude shifts at Tesla.

This seems to support the thought that emergency responders have decided to stop responding to EV fires until further notice, and want some type of equipment to deal with it better:

In the meantime, Mountain View’s fire chief has banned crews from touching any damaged batteries "until it is verified that it is 100 percent de-energized." He’s also shared his memo with fire agencies across the region.


"We wanted to share that with the rest of the fire service. Not only with our firefighters in our department but to the rest of the Bay Area fire departments to know what the challenges that we faced and could potentially face if they encounter a similar situation," said Diaz.


The Mountain View Fire department is considering several changes including creating a specialized team to handle electric vehicle incidents. They also hope get a new device called a DC hot stick, currently in the testing phase, that would allow them to quickly and safely check if an electrical vehicle still has electricity flowing.

Tesla batteries have this feature that other car EV batteries do not, and I think emergency responders will just let live occupants burn to death rather than save them, even in Teslas, because they won't be allowed to differentiate between Teslas and other EVs:

Tesla battery packs are designed so that in the rare circumstance a fire occurs, it spreads slowly so that occupants have plenty of time to get out of the car. According to witnesses, that appears to be what happened here as we understand there were no occupants still in the Model X by the time the fire could have presented a risk. Serious crashes like this can result in fire regardless of the type of car, and Tesla’s billions of miles of actual driving data shows that a gas car in the United States is five times more likely to experience a fire than a Tesla vehicle.

from What We Know About Last Week's Accident

As long as Tesla is not magnaminous and instead is one-sided, that means others will take up the other side, and will have a leverged effect in response. Lawyers do not help Tesla in this way. This is a problem with juries that award excessive liability verdicts, and companies that respond by not caring about human life enough to solve issues. But, there is inherent risk in many things. I'm currently afraid that awful soup of social misdesign is causing a situation where systemic mechanisms will be put in place that don't save EV occupants, even if they are very savable.

 

[MrAustraliaTax]

I think also emergency responders may be combating the effort to reduce the number of crashes, which means layoffs for them

This is, to say the least, an extraordinary claim and one which I find utterly implausible.

 

[Economite]

Seems like the de factor system for firefighters dealing with Tesla fires is to get stumped and call Tesla for guidance. That's obviously not something that works long-term. This is a good issue for NTSB to investigate and issue guidance on.

It's not necessarily that Tesla's are more likely to catch fire than other cars, or that the fires are more dangerous. But the fires do behave differently than normal car fires, and that seems to be confusing firefighters (who tend to be very cautious with electrical fires and unusual chemical fires).

 

[Ugliest1]

Seems like the de factor system for firefighters dealing with Tesla fires is to get stumped and call Tesla for guidance. That's obviously not something that works long-term. This is a good issue for NTSB to investigate and issue guidance on.

It's not necessarily that Tesla's are more likely to catch fire than other cars, or that the fires are more dangerous. But the fires do behave differently than normal car fires, and that seems to be confusing firefighters (who tend to be very cautious with electrical fires and unusual chemical fires).

what many owners in many cities have done is take their vehicles to a fire station and have an hour or two run-through of what to do and not do with the firefighters. That's a much better, quicker, more positive solution than asking the NTSB to issue a paper in 4 years.

 

[bonnie]

what many owners in many cities have done is take their vehicles to a fire station and have an hour or two run-through of what to do and not do with the firefighters. That's a much better, quicker, more positive solution than asking the NTSB to issue a paper in 4 years.

Yep. Or your local highway patrol substation. They'll try to time it at shift change.

 

[dhanson865]

Tesla should start its own auto insurance division for non-commercial vehicles. It's not cool I'm still writing my checks to TRUCK INSURANCE EXCHANGE!

You write checks?

 

[greghanssen]

Here's a kind-of-good article about that statistic: Tesla's Favorite Autopilot Safety Stat Just Doesn't Hold Up

I don’t know if tracking “disengagements” is really a good indication of overall safety.

Does ACC/AEB reduce the number of rear-end accidents? I would think so.. Does LDW/LKA reduce the number of accidental lane departures? I would think so. Does AS reduce the number of lane departures more than LDW/LKA? Not sure about that. I would guess not. Does AS increase the likelihood that the driver won’t pay attention to the road? Certainly. So if it doesn’t decrease lane departures (vs LDW/LKA) but does encourage inattentive driving... is it really “safe”? Cool, absolutely.. but safe?

 

[bhzmark]

I don’t know if tracking “disengagements” is really a good indication of overall safety.

Does ACC/AEB reduce the number of rear-end accidents? I would think so.. Does LDW/LKA reduce the number of accidental lane departures? I would think so. Does AS reduce the number of lane departures more than LDW/LKA? Not sure about that. I would guess not. Does AS increase the likelihood that the driver won’t pay attention to the road? Certainly. So if it doesn’t decrease lane departures (vs LDW/LKA) but does encourage inattentive driving... is it really “safe”? Cool, absolutely.. but safe?

Now two different sources (and one, iihs, uses their own independent data) find that being equipped with autopilot (and not just FCW and AEB) correlates with fewer serious collisions — as indicated by air bag deployments or collision claims, respectively.

 

[Peteski]

Does AS reduce the number of lane departures more than LDW/LKA? Not sure about that. I would guess not.

I'm curious how you came up with that guess? Are you saying that people override AS to accidentally depart lanes? Or are you saying that AS accidentally departs the lane by itself? Used appropriately, I find it near impossible to accidentally depart a lane with AS. I can deliberately depart a lane by using the auto-lane change function or manually override AS, but I've never accidentally done that yet!

All I see when I'm cruising in AS are other cars and trucks around me drifting around in their lanes and sometimes outside of the lane markings while they get distracted by their phones, children or whatever else.

I do however agree with you about the likelihood of some drivers not paying attention to the road in AS. Being an automotive engineer I'm acutely aware of the limitations of AS and would never do that myself (I actually do the opposite and watch like a hawk!) but I know some people would trust it too much, like the idiot in the UK who was recently caught sitting in the passenger seat while using AS.

 

[Ugliest1]

On the flip side, an owner just completed a 16,500km journey *90% on Autopilot*, and strangely enough, highly enjoyed it:

Log into Facebook | Facebook

The road trip spanned 3 provinces, 1 Territory in Canada and 22 US States. 100% electric, $0 in energy costs and a whopping $5 maintenance for washer fluid. Not sure if that $5 was in USD or CAD.

 

[MXWing]

On the flip side, an owner just completed a 16,500km journey *90% on Autopilot*, and strangely enough, highly enjoyed it:

Log into Facebook | Facebook

The road trip spanned 3 provinces, 1 Territory in Canada and 22 US States. 100% electric, $0 in energy costs and a whopping $5 maintenance for washer fluid. Not sure if that $5 was in USD or CAD.

Your post doesn't fit the narrative of people who don't own Tesla's with autopilot.

Owner should have died 10x over if all the FUD is to be believed.

 

[Mrcook4590]

what many owners in many cities have done is take their vehicles to a fire station and have an hour or two run-through of what to do and not do with the firefighters. That's a much better, quicker, more positive solution than asking the NTSB to issue a paper in 4 years.

I have offered to have our local fire department do a drill using my X and my husband's S. That was a year ago. Still no word. It's disappointing, really. My grandparents started the rescue squad in my home town, so going to the local station was one of the first things I did. I know it takes a while to set up a drill, but over a year is excessive. At least I know four people at that station know where to cut the door and where to look for the power cable.

 

[Economite]

I have offered to have our local fire department do a drill using my X and my husband's S. That was a year ago. Still no word. It's disappointing, really. My grandparents started the rescue squad in my home town, so going to the local station was one of the first things I did. I know it takes a while to set up a drill, but over a year is excessive. At least I know four people at that station know where to cut the door and where to look for the power cable.

This kind of grass roots training is helpful.

But it's really no substitute for getting general training material out to all first responders (and their trainers) about general procedures for responding to electric car fires and no substitute for creating some uniform procedures for things like locating electric cut offs and accessing specific manufacturer information. That's something that the NTSB and the feds can do well. Can't expect firefighters to rely on randomly produced training that may be applicable only to a single car and may not have been designed by fire suppression/fire safety folks.

 

[greghanssen]

I'm curious how you came up with that guess? Are you saying that people override AS to accidentally depart lanes? Or are you saying that AS accidentally departs the lane by itself? Used appropriately, I find it near impossible to accidentally depart a lane with AS. I can deliberately depart a lane by using the auto-lane change function or manually override AS, but I've never accidentally done that yet!

All I see when I'm cruising in AS are other cars and trucks around me drifting around in their lanes and sometimes outside of the lane markings while they get distracted by their phones, children or whatever else.

I do however agree with you about the likelihood of some drivers not paying attention to the road in AS. Being an automotive engineer I'm acutely aware of the limitations of AS and would never do that myself (I actually do the opposite and watch like a hawk!) but I know some people would trust it too much, like the idiot in the UK who was recently caught sitting in the passenger seat while using AS.

I’m not saying that you’re MORE likely to depart the lane with AS.. just that it’s probably negligibly better than LKA systems alone. I suppose if the driver were unconscious AS might be better (for a while) whereas LKA (GM at least) would eventually ping pong you out of the lane. But if lane excursions aren’t noticeably reduced (compared to LKA) but driver inattentiveness is mildly increased.. well, hard to say the net impact on over all safety.

I still use AS all the time.. I like to think I remain attentive even though my system doesn’t require hands on the wheel. But if the system doesn’t require intervention for tens of minutes there is always the chance I might have a lapse of better judgement :/

 

[Reciprocity]

Look. 131 pages on one car fire. There have been Roughly 14 Tesla that burned, mostly after very high speed collisions like the one discussed here. Icev are 64x more likely to burn. The collisions are so devastating that the people on the cars are not likely to survive those injuries regardless of the fire. The packs generally burn very slowly and very hot over a long period of time. But I can assure you, it's safer for a firefighter to put out 1/64th the fires even if it takes 10x the time and water. Stop the madness, this conversation is of the rails

 

[greghanssen]

Having read all 131 pages I think I can safely say it’s not about the fire.