Todd Burch
14-Year Member
All of my experience with autopilot (roughly 80,000 miles with it engaged now) tells me that this situation would have been almost impossible to play out without a driver in the driver's seat.
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Tesla investor car crash thread
- Thread starter EinSV
- Start date
StealthP3D
Well-Known Member
My thoughts:
The twitter thread speculation seems to imply a possible third person. While anything is possible given how little we know, I doubt it for the following reason:
One witness reported a "car in a tree". This implies the car was off the ground, probably nose-high. In that attitude the people inside were probably largely uninjured but may have been prevented from exiting the vehicle by being wedged between branches/trees. Green wood is strong and can act like a spring keeping the doors closed. It would be natural for the person in the driver seat to use the steering wheel to try to climb into the backseat with the hope of being able to force a rear door open. As the fire burned the limbs of the trees, they released the car and it fell out of the trees to the ground. This left the driver in the backseat and the passenger remained in the passenger seat. The story that the car was driving itself was fabricated from nothing more than this.
Artful Dodger
"Neko no me"
I don't think so. The report I saw was a telephone call to 911 reporting "a fire in the trees". At some point it was apparent that there was also a "car in the trees". I have never heard any report of the car being up in a tree.
Photos from the crash site show the car firmly on the ground in a wheels down orientation. Unless there is evidence to the contrary, I'll go with the simpler explanation.
The unstated question from the twitter thread is, are the police looking for a 3rd person, a driver who ran off after the crash. Hopefully we'll know more soon. That's why the status of the driver's side airbag is so important. If the airbag deployed, it's extremely unlikely the seat was unoccupied at the moment of the crash (given the very short time from start to finish of this drive).
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
What is being reinforced is that an out of control vehicle crashed and two people trapped inside died in a fire. What's being reinforced is that Tesla's catch fire and the technology is flawed. I'm failing to see the "win" in perception here.
Not when you get to work and five people ask you about the “fire that took 4 hours to put out” and are you still using “that self driving death trap”. It’s effing slander. Just like Dominion, Tesla should sue all media outlets not retracting their false reporting. Everyone I have slowly convinced EVs are ok slowly backs away and chooses ICE again.
Does the driver side airbag get disabled when no one is detected in the seat? I know this is common for the passenger seat to avoid injury to young kids. But it doesn't make sense to have a kid in the driver's seat. So why would they disable it? Maybe just to save the cost of an unnecessary deployment?
And if there is not a seat belt latch clicked in on the drive’s right side you can rule out buckeling the seat to trick AP to think there was a driver.
StealthP3D
Well-Known Member
The Fire Chief of the responding department, Palmer Buck, seems to be the least biased person with the most direct information. He was quoted as saying:
“The first calls that came in were a fire in the woods. Then we got at 9:30 p.m. where we got the first call when someone said, ‘I see a car in a tree, and it is on fire."
TX fire chief slams inaccurate Tesla crash coverage with firsthand details on Model S fire
Immediately following the fatal Tesla crash in Texas this weekend, reports from both local and national media outlets emerged citing the statements of Harris County Pct. 4 Constable Mark Herman, who remarked that police were 100% certain that there was no one in the driver seat of the ill-fated...
www.teslarati.com
Notice the words "I see a car in in a tree". There is also video evidence that confirms this eyewitness report (see below).
If you look at the opening frames of this video you will see a large white gouge on the tree in front of the burned car where the bark has been scraped away down to the cambium layer. You will also a see that there are plenty of saplings surrounding the larger trees (at least where the fire didn't burn them out around the car). There is also a large hole or gouge in the topsoil (directly in front of the officer's foot) that was likely gouged out of the topsoil by the rear bumper when the car came down off the tree. Clearly, the nose of the car travelled up the large tree gouging it down to the whiter cambium layer. This probably occurred as the nose of the car was lifted by green saplings before it hit the large trunk. Green saplings are very strong, particularly near the base, and would form a perfect ramp to launch the nose of the car upwards. You can see one remaining sapling that is broken off a few feet above ground level right in front of the burned out car.
Green saplings are strong and resilient this time of year. At least until they are heated past about 180 degrees F. Then they turn into limp noodles. This is how planks are steamed to conform to a boats curves. As the wood is heated, it turns to limp rubber. The car was likely caught up in the trees until the heat of the fire causes the wood to lose it's resiliency and the car to drop out of the tree. This is when the hole was gouged in the topsoil.
I highly doubt there is a third person. The facts of this case are consistent with two people going for a joyride, shooting into a forest surrounded by saplings with the nose of the car being launched vertically and the driver climbing down into the backseat before the fire caused the car to fall to the ground.
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TheTalkingMule
Distributed Energy Enthusiast
Actually makes a lot of sense. To me, this was a clear 3-person DUI walkaway except for the fact the driver was nowhere to be found. These people all knew each other, you're not gonna flee the scene AND have literally everyone cover this up for you. It would be blown by loved-ones and friends of the victims by now.
A driver and passenger riding up the trees and getting stuck vertical makes the most sense. Passenger was unconscious or already dead. Driver awoke at some point and tried to free himself. Likely severely injured, the driver was able to unbuckle the seatbelt, but then just flopped into the back seat via gravity and his inability to hold himself in place.
Not so bright cop shows up and his brain starts whirring......
Yet people with orders on the forums are still giddy with excitement. Are you expecting an impact on Q2 sales?
I was driving home this am and was very tired. I had full confidence I could have overridden built in safety and taken a good snooze on the highway and arrived to the highway off ramp without harm to myself or others.
What about the BiL? How do you watch a car drive off “with the driver possibly moving to the passenger seat” and not wait to see if they make it around the cul-de-sac? Even if they just launch how do you not watch that too? Or hear a fiery crash 200 yards away, at what 60mph? Wouldn’t that be really loud?The Fire Chief of the responding department, Palmer Buck, seems to be the least biased person with the most direct information. He was quoted as saying:
“The first calls that came in were a fire in the woods. Then we got at 9:30 p.m. where we got the first call when someone said, ‘I see a car in a tree, and it is on fire."
TX fire chief slams inaccurate Tesla crash coverage with firsthand details on Model S fire
Immediately following the fatal Tesla crash in Texas this weekend, reports from both local and national media outlets emerged citing the statements of Harris County Pct. 4 Constable Mark Herman, who remarked that police were 100% certain that there was no one in the driver seat of the ill-fated...
Notice the words "I see a car in in a tree". There is also video evidence that confirms this eyewitness report (see below).
If you look at the opening frames of this video you will see a large white gouge on the tree in front of the burned car where the bark has been scraped away down to the cambium layer. You will also a see that there are plenty of saplings surrounding the larger trees (at least where the fire didn't burn them out around the car). There is also a large hole or gouge in the topsoil (directly in front of the officer's foot) that was likely gouged out of the topsoil by the rear bumper when the car came down off the tree. Clearly, the nose of the car travelled up the large tree gouging it down to the whiter cambium layer. This probably occurred as the nose of the car was lifted by green saplings before it hit the large trunk. Green saplings are very strong, particularly near the base, and would form a perfect ramp to launch the nose of the car upwards. You can see one remaining sapling that is broken off a few feet above ground level right in front of the burned out car.
Green saplings are strong and resilient this time of year. At least until they are heated past about 180 degrees F. Then they turn into limp noodles. This is how planks are steamed to conform to a boats curves. As the wood is heated, it turns to limp rubber. The car was likely caught up in the trees until the heat of the fire causes the wood to lose it's resiliency and the car to drop out of the tree. This is when the hole was gouged in the topsoil.
I highly doubt there is a third person. The facts of this case are consistent with two people going for a joyride, shooting into a forest surrounded by saplings with the nose of the car being launched vertically and the driver climbing down into the backseat before the fire caused the car to fall to the ground.
Update those sigs, people. TMC posts are being screen-shotted and used in a non-helpful way.
www.vice.com
Tesla Owners Are ‘Investigating’ the Crash That Killed Two People
After Elon Musk said Autopilot wasn’t engaged in the deadly Tesla crash, fans started drawing diagrams and analyzing maps to attempt to explain it.
www.vice.com
Stupid thing to say, on several levels, and especially in the context of this thread.
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
CR got it to drive with no one in the seat and without putting a weigh in the seat.
CR Engineers Show a Tesla Will Drive With No One in the Driver's Seat
Amid speculation about the cause of a fatal crash in Texas, Consumer Reports put Tesla Autopilot to the test on our track without a driver behind the wheel. Our testing shows that a Tesla will drive with no one in the driver seat.
www.consumerreports.org
CR got it to drive with no one in the seat and without putting a weigh in the seat.
CR Engineers Show a Tesla Will Drive With No One in the Driver's Seat
Amid speculation about the cause of a fatal crash in Texas, Consumer Reports put Tesla Autopilot to the test on our track without a driver behind the wheel. Our testing shows that a Tesla will drive with no one in the driver seat.www.consumerreports.org
Nobody argued that it was impossible... But they were in seat when they activated AP, and they had the seat belt buckled behind them and they hung a weight on the steering wheel and they had lane lines. Then they started it moving again by using the scroll wheel on the steering wheel to control the set speed. (This was in a Model Y, in the Model S the set speed is controlled by the AP stalk on the left side of the steering wheel, so harder to reach from the passengers or rear seats.)
All this does is give information to people on how to bypass the safegards...
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
I was just surprised that it would move with no weight in the seat. Seems as if it shouldn't be able to do that. Time delay could be used for transient weight shifts.
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