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

[SMAlset]

But it was an Apple owned phone. So he was using a company owned phone while driving. I would think it is certainly in their rights to say that you will not use a company owned device while driving. If you are using your own personal phone while driving that would be different. But then again companies can have a no smoking policy where you aren't even allowed to smoke in your own home on your own time, so yeah, they can do it but how would they actually enforce it?

The phones were supplied by Apple but according to the NTSB "The Tesla driver was required to obtain his own wireless service for the phones."

 

[Az_Rael]

I would think that companies that employ people as delivery personnel would have something like that as part of the job during business hours. But for people traveling to and from work from their home, these guys are on their own time. Does your company regulate your phone usage during non-business hours and the weekend? In this accident case the driver had not started his business day at work and just left his child at daycare, wasn't on any phone calls but was on a phone playing a game.

Yes, my company regulates the use of my company provided phone at all times. He was on his company phone, not his personal one from my understanding.


I guess my company is more unique in this realm than I would have thought.

 

[SMAlset]

People could refuse to carry a company phone and just use their personal one but you know companies these days want to reach their employees at various times they are "off the clock" so provide them the use of a phone/s to also be used for personal and/or business calls. I just don't see how if you are enjoying your morning, evening or weekend how the use of the phone isn't your responsibility in how you use it during non-business hours.

I know there are companies who even if you are using your own phone prohibit the use of them while at work (more of a not-on-office-time-you-don't kind of thing but from a productivity standpoint). Apart from delivery personnel for example, I've never heard people say the Company restricted their phone usage in any other way except maybe if the Company pays the phone bill and so no personal calls can be made. @Az_Rael do they pay for your phone usage in your case?

 

[SMAlset]

I wonder how the family's lawsuit will proceed now. As far as Tesla goes, while the NTSB felt AP could be improved or force a driver's attention I guess, if the driver hadn't been playing a game on his phone while operating the vehicle (especially in an area where he knew the car had some difficulty on occasion reading the lane lines or whatever), the driver would have been paying attention to the warnings and saw that his car was deviating from the car in front of it and taken evasive action. Even one of the NTSB board members made a comment questioning how knowing there was an issue at that junction why the driver was not pay more attention at that point. Something I think we have all wondered and can only guess that he got engrossed in the game.

I've seen people do all kinds of things driving (mostly non-Teslas actually) that make me shake my head. Clearly the attenuator not being set was a big issue as far as this becoming a fatality. I thought they kind of downplayed the line markings as being a significant contributing factor but would disagree with that.

 

[Az_Rael]

@Az_Rael do they pay for your phone usage in your case?

Yes, completely company controlled and paid for device. We even have a company app store and are only allowed to download apps from there. Personal calls are allowed on a very limited basis.

I have heard of companies that mix personal and business phones by having you install company apps on your own device, I would not be down with that at all.

 

[BikerPeaBody]

I wonder how the family's lawsuit will proceed now. As far as Tesla goes, while the NTSB felt AP could be improved or force a driver's attention I guess, if the driver hadn't been playing a game on his phone while operating the vehicle (especially in an area where he knew the car had some difficulty on occasion reading the lane lines or whatever), the driver would have been paying attention to the warnings and saw that his car was deviating from the car in front of it and taken evasive action. Even one of the NTSB board members made a comment questioning how knowing there was an issue at that junction why the driver was not pay more attention at that point. Something I think we have all wondered and can only guess that he got engrossed in the game.

I've seen people do all kinds of things driving (mostly non-Teslas actually) that make me shake my head. Clearly the attenuator not being set was a big issue as far as this becoming a fatality. I thought they kind of downplayed the line markings as being a significant contributing factor but would disagree with that.

Will be very interesting. Him playing a game definitely has an impact on the crash. If not having that phone and just paying attention even while on AP, he probably could have made some evasive maneuver. Like isn't there something called contributory negligence? Of course Tesla plays a role. So which is greater? The game on the phone or Tesla's AP?

 

[SMAlset]

This may seem harsh but It does all come down to the driver though doesn’t it? Using a hand held phone, playing a game, not following Tesla’s admonitions about using AP only as a driver assist feature requiring driver attention, not keeping hands on or near the steering wheel especially after getting the visual and audible nags, knowing AP isn’t infallible and can’t recognize things in certain circumstances at this point in time but still not paying special attention at a frequented junction that has repeated caused veering off the intended path yet choosing to use AP at this stretch of 101. All of this explains why this accident happened and to me it’s pretty overwhelming.

 

[dhanson865]

Will be very interesting. Him playing a game definitely has an impact on the crash. If not having that phone and just paying attention even while on AP, he probably could have made some evasive maneuver. Like isn't there something called contributory negligence? Of course Tesla plays a role. So which is greater? The game on the phone or Tesla's AP?

I'd go for a ratio of

0 parts Apple
1 part Tesla
2 or 3 parts Caltrans (paint and crash barrier should both have been repainted/repaired by the state or by some agency funded by the taxpayers)
4 to 6 parts driver (he has to be the primarily responsible party, the game and driving fall on his shoulders not Apple, not Tesla)

on the grand scale I blame Apple not at all and Tesla just enough to register that there is room for improvement. Tesla software will eventually be able to make up for human error but I'm not blaming them for this one.

If Caltrans had repainted the accident might not have occurred, if they fixed the barrier it might not have been fatal. Either fix might have saved a life. Both fixes most certainly would have.

I think SMAlset covered the drivers situation already.

 

[S4WRXTTCS]

I wonder how the family's lawsuit will proceed now. As far as Tesla goes, while the NTSB felt AP could be improved or force a driver's attention I guess, if the driver hadn't been playing a game on his phone while operating the vehicle (especially in an area where he knew the car had some difficulty on occasion reading the lane lines or whatever), the driver would have been paying attention to the warnings and saw that his car was deviating from the car in front of it and taken evasive action. Even one of the NTSB board members made a comment questioning how knowing there was an issue at that junction why the driver was not pay more attention at that point. Something I think we have all wondered and can only guess that he got engrossed in the game.

I've seen people do all kinds of things driving (mostly non-Teslas actually) that make me shake my head. Clearly the attenuator not being set was a big issue as far as this becoming a fatality. I thought they kind of downplayed the line markings as being a significant contributing factor but would disagree with that.

I think it's dead in the water because all the empathy is removed.

If he wasn't playing a game or using his phone then it would have been a pretty slam-dunk case. The kind of auto steering that happened has been reported as happening pretty fast. So it's conceivable to a human with normal empathy levels that it could happen to them.

But, now it's trying to argue that Tesla didn't have enough warnings but Tesla has a LOT of warnings.

They've be better off going after the games creator for it being too addictive.

The NTSB job is transportation safety so they don't tend to put blame on people because they basically want to put people into protective bubbles.

 

[FlatSix911]

I'd go for a ratio of
0 parts Apple
1 part Tesla
2 or 3 parts Caltrans (paint and crash barrier should both have been repainted/repaired by the state or agency funded by the taxpayers)
4 to 6 parts driver (he has to be the primarily responsible party, the game and driving fall on his shoulders not Apple, not Tesla)
If Caltrans had repainted the accident might not have occurred, if they fixed the barrier it might not have been fatal.
Either fix might have saved a life. Both fixes most certainly would have.

I agree with your mathematical ratios... ultimately the driver is responsible for his actions.
Secondarily, if Caltrans had reset the crash barrier in a timely fashion he would be alive today.

"20 miles away, we saw a very similar crash where there was a damaged crash attenuator that Caltrans had failed to repair in a timely fashion. So what I want to know is, if the crash attenuator wasn't damaged, do we believe that the driver would have survived?
>> Yes. We did an analysis of that, and had the previous collision that happened prior to this one not collapsed that attenuator and had it been operational, the driver would likely have survived.

This particular crash attenuator was damaged at least 12 times between 2006 and this crash -- just at this one location. According to Caltrans, of the eight left HOV exits in district 4, which this one was in, this one was by far -- by far -- the most frequently damaged attenuator.

>> Yes. Our investigation identifies numerous times where the crash attenuator wasn't repaired for time periods of up to 45 days. One time, over 80 days. >> So we just got through saying a few minutes ago that if this crash attenuator had been in working form, this driver likely would have survived. And yet, this has been a problem with Caltrans not repairing these in a timely fashion. Granted, CHP didn't alert Caltrans in a timely fashion."

 

[GeoX750]

Found the NTSB report on the game. This is from the Cell Phone Records and Data Recovery Factual Report.

"NTSB reviewed the logs and identified the “sgz” process to be a gaming application known as “Three Kingdoms” mobile edition, with a build version of 1.4.0. The game was released on November 15, 2017, by Hong Kong based Black Beard Games Limited and its content is in Chinese. Build version 1.4.0 was released on March 21, 2018, two days before the crash.

The game is a world building, strategy game with multi-player capability. In the game, players from around the world are placed together on a map grid of more than 1 million tiles, and players recruit generals, develop cities, create squads, and develop alliances with other players to compete against others. When playing the game on a mobile device such as an iPhone 8 Plus, most players have both hands on the phone to support the device and manipulate game actions. The log data does not provide enough information to ascertain whether the Tesla driver was holding the phone or how interactive he was with the game at the time of the crash.

A look at historic CrashReporter logs from the driver’s device shows a pattern of active game play, every day from Monday, March 19, 2018 to Friday, March 23, 2018, between the hours of 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. Wakeup resource logs were dropped each day showing that the driver was using the “Three Kingdoms” game during his trip to work:

• March 19, 2018 at 09:03:21
  
  
• March 20, 2018 at 09:18:53
  
  
• March 21, 2018 at 09:37:53
  
  
• March 22, 2018 at 09:21:31
  
  NTSB queried the wife of the Tesla driver (through the family attorney) whether she was aware of her husband playing the game “Three Kingdoms” on his phone. The wife responded that her husband loved to play games on his phone, but he never did so while driving. Additionally, the wife advised that she did not recognize the game “Three Kingdoms” as something her husband was interested in."

The game logs seem like a big deal to me. What do these logs really tell us about his actual use of the game during the drive? Do they actually show he was actively playing the game during the drive?

 

[FlatSix911]

Additional details from Electrek... https://electrek.co/2020/02/25/tesla-apple-some-blame-fatal-crash-autopilot-ntsb/

Unfortunately, the NTSB is blaming Tesla for telling people to pay attention and then blaming Apple for not telling its employees to pay attention when driving.

During the hearing today, NTSB chairman Robert Sumwalt put some of the blame on both Tesla and Apple, the employer of the driver.

Sumwalt said about Apple: The crash driver’s employer, Apple, is a tech leader, but like most employers, has yet to develop a distracted driving policy. As we reported yesterday, phone data about the accident showed that the driver was playing a game on his phone around the time of the crash, though it’s unknown how engaged he was with the game, or if he was even holding the phone.

The NTSB chairman also said about Tesla (via Reuters): Sumwalt also had harsh words for Tesla, which he said has ignored the NTSB’s calls for the company to equip its vehicles with better safeguards to prevent drivers from misusing systems that provide limited automation. He said auto safety regulators have provided little oversight of the technology and also ignored recommendations to improve the safety of those systems.

 

[SMAlset]

The game logs seem like a big deal to me. What do these logs really tell us about his actual use of the game during the drive? Do they actually show he was actively playing the game during the drive?

Here's some of the info from the Cell Phone Records and Data Recovery Factual Report that might answer some of your questions.

"In the 12 hours preceding the crash, the highest data usage was recorded in the minutes immediately leading up to the crash - a rate of 204 KB/minute. This level of data activity is consistent with online game activity. When the phone was not in use during the overnight hours when the Tesla driver was asleep, the average data usage was less than 1 KB/minute."

"Because the device was an Apple-owned development fused model, after the iPhone was powered on, Apple was able to recover certain diagnostic logs that it located on the device."

"The diagnostic logs that were able to be recovered consisted of unencrypted cell phone application CrashReporter logs. CrashReporter logs are available to application developers for diagnostic purposes. When an application on a phone crashes, an application crash report is created and stored on the device. Application Crash reports generally describe the conditions under which the application terminated and contain a limited amount of information that can be used for a timeline analysis."

"On Friday, March 23, 2018, the following logs were dropped on the Tesla driver’s iPhone 8 Plus:

9:06:50 a.m.: A jetsam log was dropped that showed process “sgz” to be the application in use and in the foreground of the phone. The process was running for approximately 6 minutes prior to the log being dropped because of excessive memory use.

9:10:25 a.m.: A wakeups resource log was dropped that showed process “sgz” to be extremely active for a 5-minute window. The log was dropped due to excessive power usage.

9:49:51 a.m.: A jetsam log was dropped that showed process “sgz” to be foreground visible on the phone. This log was dropped because process “com.apple.siri.embeddedspeech” exceeded its memory limit while holding an active transaction. This means that Siri was engaged and listening for audio. The log also shows that Siri was launched about 2 minutes and 43 seconds prior to this log being dropped at about 9:47:8 a.m. Apple advised NTSB that Siri could have been engaged by someone holding the home button, or a damaged button could have kept Siri engaged and listening from 9:47:8 to 9:49:51 a.m."

For the full 9-page report: https://dms.ntsb.gov/public/62500-62999/62693/632606.pdf

For timeline (from Human Performance Factors Factual Report):
"Friday, March 23, 2018
7:00 – 7:15 a.m. Awakes -- Family interview
8:46 a.m. Departs home to transport son to preschool -- Carlog data
8:53 a.m. Arrives at preschool in Foster City-- Carlog data
8:59 a.m. Departs preschool to drive to work in Sunnyvale-- Carlog data
9:27 a.m. Crash – Mountain View, CA-- Carlog data"

"The records did show evidence of data transmissions occurring while the vehicle was in motion. One data transmission showed a connection time of 9:26:48 – less than a minute before the crash (see Figure 2). In the 12 hours preceding the crash, the highest data usage (204 kilobytes per minute) was recorded during the 11 1⁄2 minutes immediately preceding the accident."

In one of the reports there was witness testimony from someone at the scene who saw the phone damaged on the ground who picked it up (think they said it was ringing, but didn't answer it) but then set it back down. Believe this corresponds to around the time the spouse was trying to reach him.

For all the NTSB reports to date: Accident ID HWY18FH011 Mode Highway occurred on March 23, 2018 in Mountain View, CA USA Last Modified on February 12, 2020 11:02 Public Released on September 09, 2019 13:09 Total 58 document items

 

[MXWing]

First principles would say the driver is the insured party (and no one else).

Driver is responsible for EVERYTHING unless there is a proven defect outside of the drivers control.

Where is the actual standing to sue?

 

[banned-66611]

The Verge has a decent summary. Tesla Autopilot, distracted driving to blame in deadly 2018 crash

"Tesla CEO Elon Musk has long argued that autonomous cars don’t need LIDAR (a laser sensor that can build a real-time 3D model of the world), and so Autopilot is designed around a system of cameras, as well as ultrasonic sensors and a forward-facing radar. That reliance on cameras has limits, investigators said Tuesday, and the way Huang’s car drifted out of the HOV lane is an example of those limits."

Lidar would have prevented this crash. Teslas can't see barriers they are about to crash in to, which we kinda knew because all they have ever been able to do is image recognition.

This is what I was talking about when I mentioned Tesla not having a 3D model of the environment. Tesla can only recognize objects it is taught to recognize, it doesn't understand things like a barrier or a wall and probably can't be taught to since they are not standard or uniform objects.

"In addition, the investigators said that Tesla’s method of making sure drivers are paying attention while using Autopilot — using a torque sensor to measure force on the steering wheel — “did not provide an effective means of monitoring the driver’s level of engagement with the driving task.”"

Another long standing complaint that Tesla have ignored.

"It also placed some blame on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for not requiring companies like Tesla to make those systems work in a crash like this.

If Tesla doesn’t add new safeguards that limit the use of the Autopilot outside of its advertised applications, investigators wrote, then the “risk for future crashes will remain.”"

 

[BikerPeaBody]

First principles would say the driver is the insured party (and no one else).

Driver is responsible for EVERYTHING unless there is a proven defect outside of the drivers control.

Where is the actual standing to sue?

The family/lawyers are saying Tesla and the crash barrier should have saved the driver despite not paying attention. That's it in a nutshell

 

[linux-works]

I have heard of companies that mix personal and business phones by having you install company apps on your own device, I would not be down with that at all.

agreed!

[rant] where I work, they ask us to install all KINDS of crap on our phones. worst is 'we-chat' (we have employees in china and that's THE thing everyone uses, it seems). but the privs 'needed' by that app are outrageous and the china government is very much tied to the admin of that 'service'. spooky things have been noticed and I want no part of it. they also ask us to install slack app (wants too many privs) and also exchange app (admin can remote wipe your WHOLE PHONE if they want; no thanks!). at one point they did offer a 2nd company phone but they no longer offer that. so, I don't check mail when I'm mobile and until there's a safe way that does not involve my installing risky apps, I'll stay mostly disconnected when I'm not *at* work. its their loss, not mine.
[/rant]

 

[pdxgibby]

When was the last time a gun manufacturer was mentioned as being partially at fault when there is a shooting incident?

I just don't understand why Tesla or Apple are even mentioned in the NTSB report. Contributing factors? Okay...maybe, but this all rests on the driver. He made the choice to ignore the road. He made the choice to use his phone.

As far as the tragic loss of life that *could* have been prevented had CALTRANS restored the attenuation barrier, I absolutely agree.

 

[MXWing]

The family/lawyers are saying Tesla and the crash barrier should have saved the driver despite not paying attention. That's it in a nutshell

I don't think Tesla will settle and the plaintiff counsel will be eating expense and opportunity costs.

Not a legal expert but that's my opinion.

 

[SMAlset]

The family/lawyers are saying Tesla and the crash barrier should have saved the driver despite not paying attention. That's it in a nutshell

I think the family and their attorney probably got a huge surprise when, despite the wife saying her husband never while driving played games on his phone and that she never knew him to play the game they asked her about (the one that was discovered being played each day that week on his phone during his drive to work), it turned out the husband did in fact play the game on his phone while driving. Had he not been playing on a phone used for development, it may not have been proven that he was in fact game playing while operating his car. At least that is what I got from reading one of the report sections. The phone's battery usage info from AT&T however did support game playing usage during that morning trip up until the crash further giving credibility to that happening. I can't imagine how difficult emotionally and intellectually this must be for his wife knowing this now.

I know that there are Tesla drivers who even on this forum have said that they try to defeat the safety nags and alerts that Tesla had to put in as a result of prior recommendations. Given how a vehicle especially moving at highway speeds can within a few seconds lead to a crash, and as in this case loss of a life, I don't get how being "inconvenienced" to hold your hand on the wheel is such a big deal. While clearly his self-distracted behavoir lead to his death, all kinds of unforeseen things could happen while driving and not having those few seconds to get your hands back on the wheel and take evasive action can get you seriously injured or killed or same for others around you. I think everyone's family wants to see them return home safely at the end of the day. I do believe that the car and AP, while improving all the time and will eventually recognize stationary obsticles, are making driving safer and saving lives. I hate the fact a few who want to act like we have hands off now could possibly affect the AP features we have now due to new regulations.