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Amazing how you can convince some folks that they are suffering from a certain condition, etc merely by the media hyping it. How many Tesla drivers never even considered their cars to suffer from an incident of “sudden unintended acceleration” until they heard via the news media that the NHTSA is “investigating Tesla”. Just like the media has hyped how violent our society has become; that everyone of us is at huge risk for being a victim of a violent crime or a mass shooting; and therefore we should confiscate everyone’s guns.
U.S.: violent crime rate graph 1990-2017 | Statista
U.S.: violent crime rate graph 1990-2017 | Statista
Well, when I experienced the unintended acceleration These are the things that ran through my head after.
It is impossible, it must be me, they must have tested the car till death on this as it is a critical safety feature, It has multiple redundant sensors, etc etc...
I tried to accelerate and brake multiple times when I went through the stop sign where it happened, and it is no way that is what happened. I left it at that till I saw it on the news.
I posted here to see if any other folks experienced the same so it was not just me loosing it. I am glad to see it was not just me.
I am not sure if I will have the same train of thoughts as most skeptics if this did not happen to me.
No agenda here, I love the car, that's why I got the second one. I dont trust the company. If people believe Tesla will come clean and fix problems honestly, good luck with that.
Now I understand how victims come forward after a crime is reported and skeptics bashing them.
Kim
Cirrus MS100D
Member
mbp11
Member
I live in Pleasanton, California and last Saturday evening a Tesla Model S suddenly accelerated to a high rate of speed on a city street and lost control at a "T" intersection and crashed into a wall of an apartment complex, killing the driver and catching on fire, that the fire department had difficulty putting out.. even after the car was towed away, it caught fire again. It is still not known what happened but it was witnessed by several cars following the Tesla down the street and several onlookers.
There are a large number of reports of sudden unintended acceleration with Tesla vehicles very similar to the Toyota reports from 10 years ago. Tesla has responded to the news reports saying that review of the logs determined the car was behaving as it was supposed to, and suggested it was driver error, i.e., hitting the wrong pedal. There is currently a NHTSA investigation starting about this.
I have had a few surprises driving downtown and turning left or right and hitting the auto drive stalk by mistake, and having the car start to take off... but I have been able to hit the brake and stop it immediately.
However with the Tesla systems using "drive by wire" CPU systems, there have been other postulated theories, including the influence of cosmic rays and earth's bombardment with neutrino, and the risk that they could collide with a chip and cause a "bit-flip" and alter programming behavior temporarily. For more information, see the podcast Radio Lab and search for "bit-flip." This apparently has been documented in other electronic systems and has affected voting machines and other electronic systems.
More information
The Invisible Neutron Threat | National Security Science Magazine | Los Alamos National Laboratory
I am not going to debate whether this is the cause or if Tesla was correct about driver error, but I am wondering... if this should happen to me, what emergency procedures should I be practicing and be prepared for, just in case?
My first reaction would be to hit the brake as hard as I can, but I am not sure that the brakes could overcome the torque of my electric motor. If it continued, I think I could use the shift stalk to shift into neutral and stop the car from the acceleration... there are several you tube movies demonstrating this technique while driving downhill to see if they could improve their mileage. I am sure that I would not be going downhill and could probably bring the car to a stop.
Hitting the park button in speeds over 5 mph results in the error beep and nothing happening, thanks to a number of brave individuals who have posted on you tube. You will not tear out the transmission.
I would expect the double scroll wheel reset to have no effect but perhaps shutting the car down (under safety and security) might work... if I could do it quickly enough... but I might risk losing control fo the car.
Any other suggestions?
Mike P
There are a large number of reports of sudden unintended acceleration with Tesla vehicles very similar to the Toyota reports from 10 years ago. Tesla has responded to the news reports saying that review of the logs determined the car was behaving as it was supposed to, and suggested it was driver error, i.e., hitting the wrong pedal. There is currently a NHTSA investigation starting about this.
I have had a few surprises driving downtown and turning left or right and hitting the auto drive stalk by mistake, and having the car start to take off... but I have been able to hit the brake and stop it immediately.
However with the Tesla systems using "drive by wire" CPU systems, there have been other postulated theories, including the influence of cosmic rays and earth's bombardment with neutrino, and the risk that they could collide with a chip and cause a "bit-flip" and alter programming behavior temporarily. For more information, see the podcast Radio Lab and search for "bit-flip." This apparently has been documented in other electronic systems and has affected voting machines and other electronic systems.
More information
The Invisible Neutron Threat | National Security Science Magazine | Los Alamos National Laboratory
I am not going to debate whether this is the cause or if Tesla was correct about driver error, but I am wondering... if this should happen to me, what emergency procedures should I be practicing and be prepared for, just in case?
My first reaction would be to hit the brake as hard as I can, but I am not sure that the brakes could overcome the torque of my electric motor. If it continued, I think I could use the shift stalk to shift into neutral and stop the car from the acceleration... there are several you tube movies demonstrating this technique while driving downhill to see if they could improve their mileage. I am sure that I would not be going downhill and could probably bring the car to a stop.
Hitting the park button in speeds over 5 mph results in the error beep and nothing happening, thanks to a number of brave individuals who have posted on you tube. You will not tear out the transmission.
I would expect the double scroll wheel reset to have no effect but perhaps shutting the car down (under safety and security) might work... if I could do it quickly enough... but I might risk losing control fo the car.
Any other suggestions?
Mike P
lowtek
Active Member
There are some reports being investigated and we don't know the exact number or the circumstances or even if they are legitimate ... there's also some reports that stock shorters are purposefully trying to drive down consumer trust in Tesla so they can get back a few of their billions ... this post seems intentionally inflammatory. Not saying it didn't happen, wasn't there, but just sayin'
If you press the brake it will disable acceleration and stop the car.
I'm not absolutely positive, but I believe almost all vehicles produced today are "fly by wire" and not direct connect. I'm not belittling the life lost or the possible Tesla connection, I'm just saying there are a lot of possibilities for what happened.
I'm not a fanboy or a critic. Until an investigation is done I would not rush to a conclusion.
As far as what you should do to prepare, I'll let others suggest possible emergency actions. And I'd like to know also.
The only suggestion I would make is..... Don't live in fear of what might happen, prepare and be confident about what you can control. Learn about what you can't.
Hope that makes sense.
I'm not a fanboy or a critic. Until an investigation is done I would not rush to a conclusion.
As far as what you should do to prepare, I'll let others suggest possible emergency actions. And I'd like to know also.
The only suggestion I would make is..... Don't live in fear of what might happen, prepare and be confident about what you can control. Learn about what you can't.
Hope that makes sense.
Moderator note: I merged a few posts in a new thread from the Model X side over here. Same discussion, and there was no point in duplicating it elsewhere. This isn't a model specific discussion.
pilotSteve
Active Member
Yes! Furthermore, as posted earlier in this thread by @wk057 it will also be safer to press BOTH pedals fully (brake and accelerator in a panic situation ) as full brake will override full accelerator.
Dr. J
Active Member
mbp11
Member
Thanks for all of the suggestions of the collected wisdom. I would certainly like to understand the car better.
Here is one of the articles on the NHTSA investigation.
Tesla Slams NHTSA's Unintended-Acceleration Investigation
Of course, my girlfriend, who is now terrified, found this on line. Now she is afraid to drive in the car!
I am going to wait and see.... I like my car.
It could very well be that there might be a pressing of the accelerator rather than the brake.
TeslaDeaths.com: Digital record of Tesla crashes resulting in deathtesladeaths.com
Here is one of the articles on the NHTSA investigation.
Tesla Slams NHTSA's Unintended-Acceleration Investigation
Of course, my girlfriend, who is now terrified, found this on line. Now she is afraid to drive in the car!
I am going to wait and see.... I like my car.
It could very well be that there might be a pressing of the accelerator rather than the brake.
TeslaDeaths.com: Digital record of Tesla crashes resulting in deathtesladeaths.com
Ludalicious
Active Member
All these claims are just crap. Got so many disagrees in the past for calling out these individuals. What a joke and bunch of insurance scammers
This thread is really frustrating. All the short bs that's always trying to stir up negative news and claw back a few of their lost $$$$ and the media who will run any story that will be read, means that you have to dig too deep and look way to hard to try and find the 'real story' that quite probably isn't even there.
Just reading threads like this give little or no context. There is always background noise of owners' cars doing stuff outside of their control irrespective of manufacturer. Likewise fires and people trapped in crashed vehicles.
But there are some things different about Tesla.
First, all Tesla cars accelerate way faster than many owners will have experienced with ICE cars, especially with more mainstream adoption of M3 by people 'just buying a car'.
Second, Tesla have minimal live contact with their customers but as cars go, Tesla vehicles feel different and behave differently from most other cars - Ev's included. Having so much info on the single central display on the M3 is a big change. The first few months of driving stick in a US / lhd car when I went to live there was hard work especially with the rear view mirror being in the wrong place! Suddenly all your instinctive reactions and responses are unhelpful. While many M3 owners say they love the single central screen ONCE THEY GET USED TO IT, it definitely takes time to adjust and also to become familiar with what controls and info is accessed where.
Thirdly, sticks and stalks. Having the shifter on a stalk is like driving a pickup truck from the 50's. It is far less common now than in the past - very much so in Europe. The cruise stalk is somewhat easier to reach than the turn signal, especially if you are holding the wheel and are used to just extending your fingers to reach the turn stalk making it easy to accidentally engage TACC. One of my other cars has the turn stalk on the rhs, so I often shift into neutral the first couple of turns while driving the Model S. While mechanical shift sticks had way more mechanical resistance and felt different from say the turn signal stalk, the Tesla shift stalk has no resistance.
{Coming up to a right turn, foot off the accelerator to slow down, especially with creep or coast mode, push up on cruise stalk by mistake and.... TACC engages at current speed (or GPS speed for that location?) . OK, so if you are alert, you stamp on the brake and all is well, but when unexpected things happen we don't always make a sensible response.}
And I haven't got to the new stuff that's more unique to Tesla like AP and FSD. These beta features demand a higher level of alertness and understanding from the driver, while the way they are portrayed by some owners and media is that they facilitate less engagement from the driver.
Turning to the arguably better informed and more aware drivers who frequent these and other forums, it is not uncommon to have to take information about a wide range of vehicle specifications and geographical locations as well as variability of quality of information sources and decide what applies to you and what does not.
And finally back to my first point. Most Tesla models have extremely to insanely fast acceleration. Compared with performance stick shift ICE cars capable of anything better than 5 second 0-60 where you have to work very hard as a driver to make that happen, in a Tesla all it takes is stepping on the gas. What's more, with a touch of the wrong stalk (GPS speed limit = 60, engage TACC = car tries to accelerate to 60 iirc) the car will accelerate on its own. When things happen they can happen very quickly in a Tesla, which in itself can be disorienting because it's unfamiliar and unexpected.
When many people here (I guess) got their Teslas, they researched, learned and were looked after by a different Tesla than what many generic car buyers experience today when they buy an electric car that happens to be a M3 (lower cost new) or used MS (lower cost and potentially very high performance).
Just because it is possible to lay blame clearly as driver error in most if not all cases, that doesn't mean there is nothing to learn. And sometimes it turns out that amongst all the noise, there is a story after all, but may be not exactly the one you started off with.
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Dr. J
Active Member
Ludalicious
Active Member
Not entirely true.
The model SP100D is much faster than any model 3 and has been out over 3 years now. I dont recall seeing any of these claims over 3 years ago. I do agree a 12-11 second vehicle is very fast when you take into consideration the vehicle it probably replaced. 15 Second BMW/Benz ect..... So I do see the point you are getting at. Majority of these model 3 owners have never driven a high performance vehicle before.
I agree. MS used can be had for M3 new money. M3 screen is a big change at first too. And my whole post is somewhat 'devil's advocate' as personally I doubt few if any unintended acceleration cases are due to the possible causes I am trying to recognize. Also pointing out that as Tesla becomes more mainstream, so too will it's owners!
Even your probability means it (real problem) could (and probably did) happen considering the billions of miles driven. Maybe the driver reacted promptly so it did not make it into the news. Maybe it was hidden under "minor bug fixes" in release notes. Maybe...
Tesla (any modern car in general) is complex software system and such systems have bugs (inevitably). And what's even worse, more less any "AP-like" assistant (regardless on brand) is implemented as NN - opaque (non-debuggable non-validable) piece of software. So even the (un)reliability is just matter of probability.
This is probably what is happening or happened. I am seeing the low speed acceleration in many posts ie: you are coasting at <15mph, start holding the brakes the car does not slow down, tries to maintain the low speed till you hit the brakes hard. That is what happened to me no sudden high speed acceleration but the car was trying to keep the speed it was in.
All tesla has to do is monitor for ABS activation at <20mph and send a SW update to fix the bug. I did get a SW update the same night it happened even though there was one update just a week before.
I was concerned enough to take pics of the setup screen and send to my wife and tell her if I am in a crash and dont make it to look into this. Looks like many experienced only at low speeds when trying to stop, so the obvious assumption by skeptics is bad/dumb drivers they hit the accelerator instead of the brakes and try to explain how the car works.
Kim
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