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

[mongo]

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The problem is that the lane split is too wide and doesn't happen soon enough. There should really be about a one-foot-wide double set of lines with stripes between them starting approximately where that sign is, forcing people to make a decision by then. And the striping should continue beyond the point where the death lane appears (where the stripes get far enough apart to look like a lane).

All that and a load of rumble strips.

 

[scaesare]

And if the MX really did somersault over the barrier while the drive unit was stuck in it, the front end would have been pulled off - where it would have been designed to be much stronger in compression.

I wonder if this was a "vertical" flip end-over-end (i.e. a summersault) in the air, or a "horizontal" flip around... perhaps with the rear end coming up significantly (a 360ish thing).

For some reason I suspect perhaps the latter...

 

[Ulmo]

I don't want to second guess the road planners / designers

I do. It used to be correct pre-Google-Streetview with the onramp aligned left by the median, then the government broke it and started murdering people some time before 2011 (I noticed the abrupt change when I recently drove it at the time, but I don't have my notes about what date that was). What standards were they following to smash people into the barrier tip rather than keep them in a straight long onramp onto 85 closer to the median?

 

[scaesare]

Just looked at structure of the barrier and some test videos. In all the crashes, the barrier appears to push through bumper (couple zone) and doesn't stop till it hits the engine block.
With the design of the Tesla, the pack may have been the stopping point with the barrier sides a foot or more through the structure.

Front end pictures from the crash show the middle of the front of the pack took an impact. So perhaps it was an offset hit with the side of the barrier going up the middle of the car? Then car went to the right and was hit which pushed it back to the concrete barrier? That might explain the pile of front end pieces in the other lane and the other damaged car. The pic in #134 may show a trail of blue coolant that makes a sharp left turn into the concrete (could also be due to a partially attached front wheel)

Could titanium bar/ pack act as a skid to let the car ride up over the barrier?

In one early video, Elon is explaining the safety afforded by the immense crumple zone of the frunk. He illustrates it by saying that when you hit the water from a high dive, you want the water as deep as possible "preferably with no rocks" (i.e. engine).

This was before AWD. Now that there's at least a small rock up front with the small motor, I wonder if that's what was forced back in to the front of the pack, damaging it?

 

[Az_Rael]

I count thirteen (13) lines of text (and symbols) in that first picture you posted. Those 13 lines are composed of 24 words and five (5) symbols. Those 24 words + 5 symbols are spread across four (4) high hierarchy sections, with 2 subsections of which each has subsections of its own, three for the left pane and two for the right pane. In addition, the left subection has a yellow subsubsection in it. The top of the two subsections has its own inverse subsection, with small text. There is no way a driver can read all of that and get any sense of what is going on, and realize that the lane drives them straight into the sword tip of a wall, simultaneously. It is quite near the worst type of signage possible.

Looking at the dash cam video, that sign is actually the 2nd one you encounter. The first looks like it is well ahead of the interchange (a full 30 seconds at highway speeds), so hopefully you would get an inkling back there that maybe you need to change lanes.

Admittedly, we don't put as much text on our signs down here, and we do have a lot of those type of interchanges, so I agree they could improve those.

Saw this post link on Reddit (TheSocialAndrew). It's a very clear dashcam video of someone traveling this section back on 12/19/17. You'll see exactly what happens at this highway juncture probably many times a day.

why accidents happen... why couldn't this driver let the guy in???

Agreed - I saw that, and thought - wow they really boxed the white car in! In the dash cam drivers defense - that white car should have made the decision and got in the lane. They had plenty of space for the change and just hesitated too long it looks like.

I probably would have been hard braking as soon as I saw the brake lights to my left and the white car moving like it was going to enter my lane at a much slower speed. Would have had to hope the guy behind me was paying attention. I also would have slowed down more than he did when traffic to his left started slowing significantly. But I am a super conservative driver. Probably an annoyance to those around me most of the time.

 

[Ulmo]

Signage is already self-evident. There are three overhead signs that are not confusing, starting over a half mile upstream. You can't fix stupid; you can't make someone pay attention more.

Wrong, wrong, maybe, maybe but irrelevant because we're not talking about stupid drivers, and wrong. I went into more detail about the signage in prior posts of mine, so I refer back to them for this paragraph.

Bollards would certainly help, though one high speed run over would probably rip the lot of them out.

Cross hatching is probably a good addition in the wedge

Yes, but mainly:

but overall pavement lines are self evident.

Sort of but not fully; they should be normal onramp style, not jagged lanes.

I think policy would need to change to make them more idiot proof.

What policy?

Here's the same kind of intersection in socal: Google Maps

That is the correct and old way they did it for this offramp 101->85. That is the best way to do it, and it should go back to that. I'm referring specifically to the Google streetview of your Southern offramponramp that the lane clearly hugs the left of the roadway and never directs you straight into the death causing concrete barrier. You can see it if you follow your link and keep driving forward in the left lane.

 

[Ulmo]

They need one of these (FF to 1:25):

Off topic, but their accent would make it extremely hard for me to be in their company. I wonder if I'd get used to it over time. It's extremely offputting to watch it jarringly in a video all of a sudden, so I suppose that's part of it.

 

[Ulmo]

Also, by the way, in this photo from the video here:
Crash involving Tesla on Hwy 101 in Mountain View
You can see a bunch of Model X front end components (I think perhaps gear box, half shafts, etc) jammed up against the "smart cushion":
View attachment 288861

I wonder if the "smart cushion" is so narrow that the Model X crash beams straddle either side and so it may have "punched a hole right in the middle" of the X crash structure?

View attachment 288862

I think those barrier tests tend to have a wider obstacle that hits the crumple structures closer to the tires.

If true, then the barrels of sand (or water?) would be better, since they're usually lined up in a triangle like in bowling.

 

[Ulmo]

Hope these workers had crash prevention trucks behind them. From the photo this looks pretty dangerous. Really appreciall the info you have provided. Now if you find one of the days leading up to the crash showing it was not reset that will be very interesting because from the videos you have provided the drivers most likely would have lived.

I agree. Maintaining that manual reset device would kill as many people as it saved. Not a good overall design in my opinion, although they did seem to do a fair amount of decent engineering in partial concepts of the device.

However, I'm sticking by my statement that the biggest problem there is bad lane alignment with a sudden change at the very end where it's almost impossible to notice you have to go left to save your life.

 

[mongo]

In one early video, Elon is explaining the safety afforded by the immense crumple zone of the frunk. He illustrates it by saying that when you hit the water from a high dive, you want the water as deep as possible "preferably with no rocks" (i.e. engine).

This was before AWD. Now that there's at least a small rock up front with the small motor, I wonder if that's what was forced back in to the front of the pack, damaging it?

Interesting idea. Parts of the front suspension ended up in various places, so it is possible it was pushed packward then detached. I'm thinking the motor stayed attached to the front cradle. Based on the damage to the front of the pack, I'd expect the motor to go up and over vs pushing the leading edge in.

 

[Ulmo]

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.

While all of your solutions aren't counterproductive by themselves except for the extra signage (which would cause more confusion and distraction, not less), none of them fix the main problem, that the lane was realigned to the right to direct drivers direclty into the gore point (what I've been calling the wall tip). I finally figured out what everyone was saying by "gore" point; maybe I don't watch/play enough violent movies/games, so that wasn't strongly in my vocabulary.

It would be better to remove ALL the signs except one little "^\ 85" sign with the diagonal arrow upleft and realign the lane back where it was supposed to be by the median of the freeway, far left, straight onto the offramp to 85, never directed at all toward the gore point, but well left of it. You can't fix stupid with a bunch of signs; the way to fix stupid is to move the lane back to the way it was supposed to be. The drivers aren't the stupid here; Caltrans and the government are the stupid here for breaking the lanes.

 

[bhzmark]

Exactly right Ulmo. And thanks for making the point so clearly and with good evidence and reason. And cudos for escaping (for now) the wrath of those who think calling out the agency's deadly negligence is snippy.

Excellent crowdsourcing of evidence and analysis led by TEG and Ulmo and the rest in this thread. Now who can lead a call to action to get CalTrans to change?

Can TMC have a higher purpose than complaining about fake suede cloth and debating Tesla timelines?

CalTrans needs to change this intersection.

What does the barrier look like now?

then the government broke it and started murdering people some time before 2011 (I noticed the abrupt change when I recently drove it at the time, but I don't have my notes about what date that was). What standards were they following to smash people into the barrier tip rather than keep them in a straight long onramp onto 85 closer to the median?

 

[mattack4000]

The biggest problem is bad and stupid driver. Stop insulting the 10000+people that drive by the same spot daily. One fatality out of the millions that have driven by it, is the road the problem? Give me a break

 

[timvracer]

I used to race cars, and go-karts, and consider myself a pretty aggressive/offensive driver. However, in this case, I would have done exactly as you say below. The freeway isn't a race track, not trying to "win" -- I would have immediately slowed down as I saw the compression, it just looked like something was going to happen... and I would not have had to slam the brakes, but just brake gently so my brake lights go on, and let the guy in.

Clearly, the white car is the problem, just saying I have seen many accidents happen because folks don't anticipate stuff or give room.

Agreed - I saw that, and thought - wow they really boxed the white car in! In the dash cam drivers defense - that white car should have made the decision and got in the lane. They had plenty of space for the change and just hesitated too long it looks like.

I probably would have been hard braking as soon as I saw the brake lights to my left and the white car moving like it was going to enter my lane at a much slower speed. Would have had to hope the guy behind me was paying attention. I also would have slowed down more than he did when traffic to his left started slowing significantly. But I am a super conservative driver. Probably an annoyance to those around me most of the time.

 

[Ulmo]

Admittedly, we don't put as much text on our signs down here, and we do have a lot of those type of interchanges, so I agree they could improve those.

View attachment 289204

I agree with your admission. Those two signs are much nicer than the 101-85 atrocity, although still excessive. The less text in the Southern signs is more likely to actually be read without excess distraction than the rediculous signs they installed up here. By the way, the rediculous immense signs are a new idea of the last decade or two; they never had that crap up here before. They don't work!

 

[Ulmo]

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.

If the lanes were split with the left offramp hugging the median like I explained a dozen times already now, then that wouldn't be necessary, and would probably do more harm than good if they fixed the lane alignments.

 

[Ulmo]

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.

That video clearly shows what I'm talking about, about right when the sun blinds the camera view, where the lane should be going off to the left already but isn't until the last fraction of a second when it juts violently left only to miss the same-colored gore point at the last milliseconds. When the sun is blinding you, the lanes are mismarked, the cars are going crazy, they put a sign up of immense size and volume, and there's just no chance to do it right. I'm amazed they only have crashes there 3 or 4 times a day, which is what it seems by the reset frequency of that accordian barrier.

 

[Ulmo]

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

Or, fix the roads.

 

[Ulmo]

View attachment 288884 A typical road marking of a european/Norwegian highway split.
Oslo
Google Maps

That looks like the lanes are not jagged; they follow gentle curves that don't abruptly change as the 85-101 does right before the gore point.

 

[Ulmo]

But has the same exact lane markings.

I COMPLETELY disagree; it has far superior markings, which if you follow it, you will see, which I took a screenshot of, where you can see the steady straight lanes onto the new roadways, completely not directing any drivers into the gore point:

Compare:

If they weren't so busy planting crappy piss yellow annual-dying trees on bridges, they could pay attention to old good ways of doing things.

But, then you said something I bolded I agree with:

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.

I don't think it's inattentiveness causing this disaster. There's too much crap going on to be doing jagged moves of lanes.