SilentWarp
Member
I agree with asking this question, but what about when he really needs the video for a real crash? It needs to be reliable, and he's lucky this was only a dry run.
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Scary near crash with a big truck today. Disappointed that teslacam did not record the event 😕
- Thread starter _Redshift_
- Start date
I believe the driver was very unsafe, and should not have been driving a large commercial truck in that manner. he could cause a more serious injury or even death from the way he was driving.
Except there's no way to prove who was driving the vehicle. The plate only identifies the vehicle, not the driver. If you wanted the driver pulled over, you should have called the CHP right away and then followed it. Not that it would have done you any good though unless you had some footage.
That said, Tesla's video quality isn't very good. I run a Blackvue DR900X-2CH in my Tesla to supplement the Tesla cameras.
Seriously?
When you click on the dash am button in the controls section, it beeps, and tells you the clip was saved. that’s exactly what we did.
In this case, it missed the exact event, and saved all the clips prior to the event, going back 30 minutes or so.
It also saved 15 seconds AFTER the event. It’s almost diabolical how it missed the most critical section. so, it did not work as it’s supposed to. Get it?
My drive has 98% free space, and it’s a 128 GB drive. The fact that it saved many clips AFTER the event should tell you there is nothing wrong with the free space on the drive.
I hope you are happy with my answers, mr Tesla lawyer?
This is solely due to some software bug, which got through the sieve, that is Tesla quality control department.
my guess is, I honked, and the software has some glitch (as noted by others on few other threads regarding save on honk feature) that skips that exact moment, but saves everything else.
No matter. What’s done is done, I am going to move on.
Report for what? Why would the police in CA care about a "near-crash"? (those happen nearly every minute of every day.) Why do you need a video clip to call the Trucking Company to report an unsafe driver in their truck on 880 on xx date at yy time? Unlike the cops, who won't give a darn, reputable companies do care about their drivers being unsafe.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.
Actually called San Jose CHP and they said the only way to report is by calling 911. Even video footage isn’t acceptable.
I asked the officer how many minutes it would take for a patrol car to respond, and then, have them follow the truck in the hope that the driver drives erratically one more time, for them to actually issue a citation. He said the CHP local office can explain the legalities better, and he could transfer me to them.
Its a pretty high bar these fellas are setting, to report a dangerous and unsafe driver.
I just count my blessings that I was able to react in an instant and save our asses.
Yeah, I called the Salinas Trucking company, which was on the back of the truck. But they are just a truck sales company. The guy said get the info from the driver door, if you have it.
I remembered that the teslacam had saved a few seconds of footage AFTER the event, when the truck was next to me. Viewed the footage. It’s very low res. Too grainy to figure out what the company name is, on the side.
Deep sigh. I guess I should just count my blessings, curse teslcam and move on. I might think of getting the Blackvue or something to supplement the Teslacam. Let’s see.
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I checked the box to recover only the video files at first, then unchecked and asked to recover just about anything.
it gave me a list of files that were already on the drive, but none for the ‘deleted’ files. I have given up on this whole endeavor, I have a lot of work to complete today. I am just counting my blessings, and thanking my stars that nothing bad happened.
Life moves on!
Can I play devil's advocate here?
1) you had just passed a major interchange with a big truck to your left.
2) Trucker knows that he does not belong on the left, so wants to move to the right after clearing teh interchange.
3) Trucker fails to do a full lane scan (or you were in his blindspot), but your were coming up at a faster speed on his right.
4) Trucker starts to pull right, sees lane is occupied, and trucker moves back left.
5) You blow horn and slow.
6) Trucker takes that as an invitation to go ahead and move right (assuming that you are slowing to let him in).
At least that is what he will tell teh CHP.
fwiw: I learned long ago, anytime you clear a large BA interchange and a trucker is on your left -- where he does not belong -- he is gonna want to get right ASAP. So, either accelerate to get ahead, or slow and let him in.
1) you had just passed a major interchange with a big truck to your left.
2) Trucker knows that he does not belong on the left, so wants to move to the right after clearing teh interchange.
3) Trucker fails to do a full lane scan (or you were in his blindspot), but your were coming up at a faster speed on his right.
4) Trucker starts to pull right, sees lane is occupied, and trucker moves back left.
5) You blow horn and slow.
6) Trucker takes that as an invitation to go ahead and move right (assuming that you are slowing to let him in).
At least that is what he will tell teh CHP.
fwiw: I learned long ago, anytime you clear a large BA interchange and a trucker is on your left -- where he does not belong -- he is gonna want to get right ASAP. So, either accelerate to get ahead, or slow and let him in.
Rice&Curry
Member
As a general expectation of any dashcam feature - it should record continuously and if it runs out of space it should automatically ( w/o any manual intervention) overwrite the oldest video clip. Simple surveillance systems do it. I am not sure why Tesla has to make things so complex to use the dashcam- if Tesla wants' to mass market the cars then such complex procedure of settings and enabling the features will not lead to good experience for some users. Technically the dashcam feature works- no questions , but you have to set and enable everything in the right manner. I can only hope that Tesla makes it easy for people to use it.
Two things to correct here:
3. I wasn’t coming up faster than him. We were at the same speed.
6. When I blew the horn, (another car did, as well) I slowed down, enough to drop a foot or two back, but I could not slow down further because of traffic. That’s not an invitation for the truck to move over. And certainly not initiate another lane change without checking the adjacent lane for traffic. In the picture, the truck has two mirrors. A big one, and a smaller, angled one underneath. I am sure they cover the adjacent lane pretty well, without any blind spots.
All this is moot, the only way to resolve the situation according to CHP is by calling 911, and have an officer follow the truck. How will that work, I have no idea. The truck could exit at the very next off ramp, and be gone in seconds.
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
If that's the case, it seems like your drive was not recording in the first place. It should show a lot of video files if your drive was doing the 1 hour loop recording.
I used my drive exclusively for dashcam, so it doesn't have many other file types, it's essentially all mp4s (other than the json files you mentioned).
How come things like Blackvue work well (I am presuming) and a ‘technology company’ like Tesla cannot seem to do this competently?
Dude, I have clips of before and after. How do you even come to the conclusion that the drive wasn’t recording?
Sometimes you want to save a clip even though nothing has happened. Near misses, close encounters, etc. It's not a question of why do you need this. It's a question of why couldn't you do such a simple thing? You paid for it. Per earlier post, you could save past 10 min simply by touching the icon while driving regardless of the mode your dashcam is configured to. Learned one thing new today...
You need both footage and CHP arriving on the scene. Without the footage, you could be lying to the CHP about what happened (maybe you instigated the altercation, for instance, and you're trying to get out of being blamed). And even if you do have video footage, they can't prove who was driving at the time of the incident unless you have footage that shows what happened continuously between the time the incident happened and the time CHP arrive. It's best if you have a "real" dashcam like I do, which would record the entire incident in 4K as well as the audio from the call made to CHP so that they can later reconstruct what's happening between their dispatcher, their 9-1-1 tapes, and your dashcam video in a single timeline.
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
You can find plenty of the same problems of missing footage in the dashcam forums (this is from a few second google):
Files Missing After Viewing Via App
Camera not recording - Missing footage, short clips on Memory card
Dashcam turning off and on randomly and missing incidents.
There's no solution that's completely perfect. These are still consumer devices and many times using memory chips/drives that may be faulty in the first place.
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
Sorry, I was going by your original post, which made it sound like you only had clips after the incident. I didn't see your responses to others before posting that. Reading your later post, you say your drive is 128GB with 98% of it empty. In my experience (I have a 128GB microSD card myself) that should result in about 3000 deleted video files that is recoverable. It's curious you have zero recoverable deleted video files.
What format is it formatted in? Maybe your format is preventing recovery.
I will have to look back if I kept a record when I have the chance, but for Recuva I should note I skipped the wizard, and I believe I set it to deep scan in the settings and let it do its thing. I don't remember if the regular scan showed anything, but it might not given the program really needs to actually go into raw media to look for the file signatures (not just file records).
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stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
That's not entirely true. Touching the icon only moves footage from the Recent Clips to the Saved Clips folder. The dashcam still needed to be on (red dot) before you did that. If you didn't have it on (it was paused in a gray or icon wasn't active in first place), no clips would be saved. The buffering happens on the removable drive you plug in, it's not buffering on the car itself.
"Once enabled, you can save clips by touching the dashcam app in the App Launcher while the vehicle is in Drive (you can add the dashcam app to My Apps at the bottom of the touchscreen for easy access, see Customizing My Apps)."
Model S Owner's Manual | Tesla
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I drive defensively and always try to avoid overlapping or driving side-by-side, for more than a few secs, with a large vehicle, particularly a semi. Static images in the mirror are harder to see than dynamic ones. I mean, if you are going faster or slower, then the other vehicle is more likely to see that, than a vehicle holding its position. Of course, the Tesla has DRLs so, you kind of wonder how the semi didn't see you, but he may have just wanted to force his way over, because he's a jerk. Glad you didn't get hurt.
