Scary near crash with a big truck today. Disappointed that teslacam did not record the event 😕

[_Redshift_]

I was driving to Santa Cruz to drop off my daughter today, and on the 880 south after passing 280 interchange, there was a big truck to the left of me.

I was doing 72 and just driving along normally. Suddenly, the truck starts entering my lane, no turn signal, nothing. I could see his mirror, so he should have been able to see me. Obviously, the a-hole wasn’t looking. I swerved hard, braked, the truck went back into his lane.
I honked, and slowed down, the truck AGAIN starts entering my lane, almost hitting me again! WTF. I swerved, and went to another lane.

After calming down in 2-3 seconds, I ask my daughter to download the teslacam footage. Just now I got back home, checked, and it has everything BUT the moment of the near-crash. What the hell?

I don’t have the clips saved on honk, so don’t post about how I should have done that. I don’t like to save every time I honk to gently nudge someone who is not paying attention when the light turns green.

I say, I have said Tesla software and UI engineers are very mediocre. This event just cements my belief that that is the case.

At the exact time of the near-crash, there is a 1KB file called event.json, which is a Java script, I am presuming. But no clips.

I do have clips starting about a half minute later, and they have the truck license captured. My daughter took a picture too. However, without proof, I cannot make a report to the Police, or the trucking company now.

 

[linkerc]

I second that. Sometimes people are trying to be too smart for their own good. All they need to do is add a save past 10 min button on the dashcam regardless of the mode (manual, auto, honk, etc). There's a very thin line between "clean" and "duh".

 

[_Redshift_]

I don’t get this - why would it not save those 30 seconds? Everything before and after. Before goes on for nearly 10 minutes.

What nonsense is this?

 

[Soul Surfer]

If you set the dashcam to kick in upon honk, I think it would have captured this.

 

[_Redshift_]

If you set the dashcam to kick in upon honk, I think it would have captured this.

Please. Read. The. OP. In full.

 

[boriszima]

If you set the dashcam to kick in upon honk, I think it would have captured this.

OP likely honks a lot and dont want that evidence to be saved But yeah that sucks that Dashcam is not perfect

 

[Knightshade]

While I agree dashcam is not perfect, if you honk so often it's filling up your drive there might be another problem

BTW, supposedly "save dashcam" or "save video" via voice command also works.

 

[_Redshift_]

OP likely honks a lot and dont want that evidence to be saved But yeah that sucks that Dashcam is not perfect

This is the Bay Area, after all.

 

[Missile Toad]

Does Tesla make any features that are not beta?

 

[stopcrazypp]

I was driving to Santa Cruz to drop off my daughter today, and on the 880 south after passing 280 interchange, there was a big truck to the left of me.

I was doing 72 and just driving along normally. Suddenly, the truck starts entering my lane, no turn signal, nothing. I could see his mirror, so he should have been able to see me. Obviously, the a-hole wasn’t looking. I swerved hard, braked, the truck went back into his lane.
I honked, and slowed down, the truck AGAIN starts entering my lane, almost hitting me again! WTF. I swerved, and went to another lane.

After calming down in 2-3 seconds, I ask my daughter to download the teslacam footage. Just now I got back home, checked, and it has everything BUT the moment of the near-crash. What the hell?

I don’t have the clips saved on honk, so don’t post about how I should have done that. I don’t like to save every time I honk to gently nudge someone who is not paying attention when the light turns green.

I say, I have said Tesla software and UI engineers are very mediocre. This event just cements my belief that that is the case.

At the exact time of the near-crash, there is a 1KB file called event.json, which is a Java script, I am presuming. But no clips.

I do have clips starting about a half minute later, and they have the truck license captured. My daughter took a picture too. However, without proof, I cannot make a report to the Police, or the trucking company now.

What did you mean exactly when you say "download the teslacam footage"? If you mean open the dashcam viewer (such that it shows the footage on the screen), then that may have been a big mistake, as from my testing, the dashcam stops recording when you turn on the viewer.

If you mean pressing the button until it shows the green checkmark, then that was the correct move, as that would move 10 minutes of footage to the Saved Clips folder (assuming dashcam was on and recording).

If you mean the dashcam was gray before (meaning it was paused):

And your daughter turned it on after the incident (such that it shows red):

Then issue was the dashcam was not recording in the first place, and would only start recording afterwards.

Did you check all the folders in the actual original drive (or card) plugged into the car? When you save the footage it's in the Saved Clips folder instead of the Recent Clips folder. I would check all folders in the original drive to make sure.
Model 3 Owner's Manual | Tesla
Note assuming you pulled the original drive from the car (make sure you paused dashcam first, with the symbol in gray otherwise it may corrupt the drive), you can recover "deleted" footage by using Recuva. If you don't pull the drive, it may overwrite the original footage. I have a backup drive in my car for this reason (so if I ever need to keep footage, I can pull the drive and swap in the backup drive).

I documented my experiment with Recuva here:
Dashcam in Auto
As long as the car has recorded footage in the car in the past and it was not overwritten (due to drive running out of space), you can recover essentially all footage to the full size of your storage media (minus files that were not deleted yet). It takes a while to sift through given the filenames are gone. I give tips on how to skip files to speed things up, given the footage is recovered in relative order with a loop in the middle, and the metadata shows what time it was recorded. With this tool, it makes dashcam drastically more useful.

 

[mswlogo]

Honk feature is great. Who cares if you get a few extra clips. Also if it’s really important I wait 10 minutes and remove the drive. That makes sure it’s flushed to disk. And it should be in the 1 hr loop.

 

[_Redshift_]

…..Or, it works as its supposed to.

 

[_Redshift_]

What did you mean exactly when you say "download the teslacam footage"? If you mean open the dashcam viewer (such that it shows the footage on the screen), then that may have been a big mistake, as from my testing, the dashcam stops recording when you turn on the viewer.

If you mean pressing the button until it shows the green checkmark, then that was the correct move, as that would move 10 minutes of footage to the Saved Clips folder (assuming dashcam was on and recording).

If you mean the dashcam was gray before (meaning it was paused):

And your daughter turned it on after the incident (such that it shows red):

Then issue was the dashcam was not recording in the first place, and would only start recording afterwards.

Did you check all the folders in the actual original drive (or card) plugged into the car? When you save the footage it's in the Saved Clips folder instead of the Recent Clips folder. I would check all folders in the original drive to make sure.
Model 3 Owner's Manual | Tesla
Note assuming you pulled the original drive from the car (make sure you paused dashcam first, with the symbol in gray otherwise it may corrupt the drive), you can recover "deleted" footage by using Recuva. If you don't pull the drive, it may overwrite the original footage. I have a backup drive in my car for this reason (so if I ever need to keep footage, I can pull the drive and swap in the backup drive).

I documented my experiment with Recuva here:
Dashcam in Auto
As long as the car has recorded footage in the car in the past and it was not overwritten (due to drive running out of space), you can recover essentially all footage to the full size of your storage media (minus files that were not deleted yet). It takes a while to sift through given the filenames are gone. I give tips on how to skip files to speed things up, given the footage is recovered in relative order with a loop in the middle, and the metadata shows what time it was recorded. With this tool, it makes dashcam drastically more useful.

I know how to, and have Downloaded clips before.

 

[stopcrazypp]

I know how to, and have Downloaded clips before.

If it's not in either Recent Clips or Saved Clips (or even Sentry Clips), you can try Recuva if it's important enough. I tried it and it works like a charm. You don't have to recover all files (it will first scan the drive for deleted files), just selectively recover using the method I pointed out. Make sure you recover to a different drive, so you don't overwrite anything in the original drive.

As long as the car has ever written to the drive during the event, and your drive has enough free space so it's not overwritten, it should have the footage there (presuming drive was safely removed).

 

[_Redshift_]

If it's not in either Recent Clips or Saved Clips (or even Sentry Clips), you can try Recuva if it's important enough. I tried it and it works like a charm. You don't have to recover all files (it will first scan the drive for deleted files), just selectively recover using the method I pointed out. Make sure you recover to a different drive, so you don't overwrite anything in the original drive.

As long as the car has ever written to the drive during the event, and your drive has enough free space so it's not overwritten, it should have the footage there (presuming drive was safely removed).

OK I will try that, thanks.

 

[_Redshift_]

Recuva spent an hour and told me there were 500+ files it found in the USB stick, but when it finished, it said there were zero files available for recovery.

Well, I tried..

 

[stopcrazypp]

Recuva spent an hour and told me there were 500+ files it found in the USB stick, but when it finished, it said there were zero files available for recovery.

Well, I tried..

Were they mp4s or other files? What condition are they in (red or yellow)? In my experience the mp4s tend to show in green, so when toggle the check box they can be recovered.

 

[EVRider-FL]

FYI, with the latest builds, you can use the new dashcam app launcher icon to save video, you don’t need to open the Controls screen. In Drive, tapping the dashcam icon saves video (a confirmation message is supposed to appear). In Park, tapping that icon opens the viewer.

 

[Randy-12]

No disrespect intended, but if you have no damage and no one was hurt why are you trying so hard to get a video of this?
I see dashcams on lots of cars but have never seen the need for one unless there is an accident.

Maybe I'm just a old fuddy duddy like my grand kids call me.

 

[holmgang]

…..Or, it works as its supposed to.

How did you think it's supposed to work, versus how it actually worked?

You didn't answer the guy on how you initiated the save clip, or provide other information such as the capacity and free space on the card, etc etc. We don't have a lot of information to go on except "it didn't work"