Welcome to Tesla Motors Club
Discuss Tesla's Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck, Roadster and More.
Register

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

This site may earn commission on affiliate links.
Might be plausible that he was just going straight in the gore area (mistakenly thinking it was the lane), and hit the barrier (which is offset to the left) causing it to rotate to the right, then the Mazda hit it and pushed it toward the wall, and then the Audi hit it and pushed it even more into the wall.

View attachment 289814

I think your earlier diagram, with the MX moving from left to right, is more likely. We’ll see.
 
It was supposed to be a metal impact attenuator, which works really well if it is intact, but this one was damaged earlier and not repaired by CalTrans. They just left it there with no additional cushioning. Unconscionable. Also, they had poorly painted lines that made the gore point look like a lane instead of the commonly used heavy white chevrons as seen in the lower image taken in New Zealand.

View attachment 290063
View attachment 290064

Let's see, the speed of CalTrans .... I filed a fixit that the northbound 280 -> 17 south interchange was extremely dangerous: it was completely unlit, with a steep incline at the fork. It needed light, or paint.
Drivers *routinely* swerve onto the 17 south ramp when they realize they missed it ... one car almost broadsided me, and skidded into the right shoulder as he veered off of 280N onto the 17S ramp using the sloped median.

Fix time: 2 *YEARS*
 
  • Informative
Reactions: Icer and bhzmark
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.
Dang, I'm just now stumbling on this video... I can't believe he hit this gore point. It's like he was getting over really late from left to right.... if this isn't the case, if the tesla had rear right damage I would have thought that other car might have pushed him into that.. and caused him to lose control. This is weird... hopefully they get some other video or accounts.
 
Dang, I'm just now stumbling on this video... I can't believe he hit this gore point. It's like he was getting over really late from left to right.... if this isn't the case, if the tesla had rear right damage I would have thought that other car might have pushed him into that.. and caused him to lose control. This is weird... hopefully they get some other video or accounts.
After watching that video I can see how easy it would be for a driver cruising along in the left of the 2 HOV lanes then realizing damn this lane exits while the right HOV lane continues on 101 and having to try and get back onto the highway 101.
 
After watching that video I can see how easy it would be for a driver cruising along in the left of the 2 HOV lanes then realizing damn this lane exits while the right HOV lane continues on 101 and having to try and get back onto the highway 101.

And, most often, newbies driving in the second from left HOV lane see in the distance an "HOV ONLY" sign thinking they have to merge to the left HOV lane only to discover that it is an exit and then swerve back to the original 'HOV continuing on US 101 lane'.

Bad signage, bad planning, bad maintaining of road markers. Not yet sure what happened here, but still a bad section of heavily used hwy.
 
The other guy was in a lighter weight car which would have had an effect on his survival but of the same accord I am guessing that the Tesla Model X has a sturdier cabin and better safety rating than the Prius given all the head on collisions and accidents I've seen the Model X survive. Might be wrong but I'd be surprised if not. I'm glad the guy lived from his accident but also have to wonder if being DUI didn't factor into it.

Glad Dan is on the reporting. I hope Dan investigates how many other cars have crashed here and what the driver's outcome was.

Regarding Caltrans policy on repairing these barriers, I can't believe in a high speed area (65+) with 2 diverging HOV lanes and a barrier in betwen and with a concrete wall behind the barrier that their policy is 5-7 days turnaround. I really don't have words...
 
Last edited:
Not resetting the barrier is weak but Caltrans can’t be expected to fix everything instantly. However if the exposed ‘attenuator’ rails guided the driver into the now unpadded concrete wall that is much worse. We will just have to wait for the NTSB - I actually think that they are pretty darn good at figuring this stuff out.
 
  • Disagree
Reactions: bhzmark
Everyone seems to forget that the battery pack is liquid cooled (not water), and that liquid around the batteries probably helped delay or reduced the fire potential of the compromised battery pack.
I'm not sure the small amount of liquid in the thin tubes between cells would have much influence once cells started shorting out and going into thermal runaway.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Icer
You can most certainly blame AP (assuming it was on in this crash). The driver should be alert at all times with eyes on the road, but when you are given the impression your car car drive by itself for stretches (Who would ever get that impression after activating a feature called "Autopilot"? :rolleyes:) you are likely more prone to let your attention wander compared to someone driving manually. About 5 seconds of distraction was probably all that was needed to allow this crash to happen.

Plenty of blame to pass around (including Caltrans, the driver), but to simply dismiss Tesla has any responsibility because no one "should" ever get in an accident with AP is pretty silly.

It's extremely difficult to make any kind of system foolproof. At some point there needs to be an understanding that the person who chooses to use some kind of technology understands the limitations of that technology.

As an example I have a Boosted board which is an Electric Longboard. It's awesome because it has the ability to electronically brake while going downhill. It's known to anyone who bothers to read the user manual that it can't brake going downhill if the battery is full.

Now let's say I crashed while going downhill because I forgot about that, and I ignored the beep warning. Should Boosted share responsibility for my accident? Probably not. They had warnings about needing to read the manual, and the manual clearly spells it out.

Should they have designed it so it didn't have this drawback. That way ignorant people would be protected, and informed people who simply had a "off day" wouldn't get bit by it.

Probably.

But, the problem with that is it means we can't have nice things. Everything would be held back because of liability concerns.

In this fatality accident we know the driver wasn't ignorant about AP. The autopilot name didn't trick him into trusting it. He was an extremely intelligent engineer who not only understood it, but complained about a drawback it shouldn't have. Just like I complained to Boosted about their limitation in their board.

For me to really blame Tesla/AP for this type of accident it would have to be a major systems failure that greatly reduced the drivers ability to react.

I say this as someone who has AP1, but doesn't use it very often. I don't because I believe that all L2 systems have the potential to reduce situational awareness. I could easily see myself getting into an accident with AP that I wouldn't get in without.

That's a choice I made for myself, and it's a choice that every other Tesla own should be given the benefit of the doubt to make.
 
Not resetting the barrier is weak but Caltrans can’t be expected to fix everything instantly. However if the exposed ‘attenuator’ rails guided the driver into the now unpadded concrete wall that is much worse. We will just have to wait for the NTSB - I actually think that they are pretty darn good at figuring this stuff out.

SCI who manufacturers these attenuator barriers says a trained team can reset them within 22-30 minutes. Someone here, @TEG ?, posted the sales video on this thread showing how it's done. Cost, apart from work time, is 2 bolts if I remember correctly. A lot of barriers could be repaired in just one day, each one at I think they estimated under $2.

SCI Attenuator Design and Installation Manual

If you are interested in reading more about this device and how through time google maps shows the barrier not set, we covered a lot of this in discussions already and a good jumping in point to start reading this thread would be here and go forward a number of pages.
 
Last edited:
Not resetting the barrier is weak but Caltrans can’t be expected to fix everything instantly. However if the exposed ‘attenuator’ rails guided the driver into the now unpadded concrete wall that is much worse. We will just have to wait for the NTSB - I actually think that they are pretty darn good at figuring this stuff out.

11 days is a pretty long time. We also don't know what the average time it's left unreset. That could be days, and this might have been unusual. Or it could be months.

Personally I think they should have an IoT type sensor that detects when it's been crashed into. That way they can be immediately notified, and should have a goal of fixing it within 24 hours.

I'm glad the NTSB is involved, and like you I have a lot faith that they'll figure this out even if the cause of the accident itself isn't their number one priority. I predict that this section of road will undergo quite a few changes as a result. There have been a ton of good suggestions on this thread of ways to reduce the likelihood of crashes. It won't stop everyone, but hopefully it will reduce the rate to something more reasonable.
 
I think the evidence suggests the opposite. If he says 7/10 times the car veers toward the divider, that suggests he has used AP in that area several times, no? Presumably more than ten.

This tells me that he often (or even always) used AP here and just paid attention and noted when it chose wrong. And especially lately, when AP updates have been coming, maybe he continued to use it, to "trial" the new software, as we are all wont to do. It's not hard to imagine a scenario where he just had an off day, or lost vigilance, had poor visibility, the car did something he wasn't used to, or whatever... leading to the accident.

Or someone was just driving without AP and had a bad day. Perhaps running late. Trying to pass some cars before merging. Or got a phone call. Or checking calendar on the phone. Or fell asleep. Or was nudged or cut off. Or...
 
IMHO, 10.4 would have either prevented the Model S collision with the fire truck or it would have made the collision significantly less severe. It all depends on how much time the fire truck was unmasked to the MS and the MS’s speed after the car ahead moved out of the way.

It's a speculation without any independent experiment to prove that it passes a simple task of braking for a stationary obstacle such as a bedroom lamp post below:

 
  • Informative
Reactions: bhzmark
upload_2018-3-29_21-24-9.png