Totalled my S today....so I confirmed my Model 3 First Production order

[Keith S]

Making lemonade out of lemons. Got hit today by a dude with no license and no insurance. Video here;

You can see that he appeared to decide to hit me. Not sure what the deal was, just very, very glad we were both OK. I went to urgent care after the car was towed for some X-rays, and am chilling at home with ice packs now. My first experience with airbags.

Here are the remains of my baby. Very glad I was in such a safe car. I was going about 55 I think when he hit me. Who knows how fast he was going. I had JUST put on my gray Arachnid wheels a month or so ago. Ah well.

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Anyway: I chose a Blue Model 3 and got the 19" rims. Lemonade day. .

Why not a red 3..???

 

[ReversePolarity]

Wow!! Glad you were ok! Literally dodged a bullet on that one... Could have been a 100+ mph head on collision with much more serious consequences =/

Glad to see the dash cam in use as well... Many times accidents like this, you'd see the other party throw accusations of maybe you veering out of the lane and side swipe. Could have easily been ruled a 50/50 responsibility...

 

[Az_Rael]

Why not a red 3..???

I had been debating this endlessly, trust me. I love my red car, and really liked the red on the 3. The Tesla blue is also a wonderful vibrant color, and blue is actually my go to color for most other choices in my life.

In the end I voted for “change” and went blue. This pic sold me, honestly. Pictures of production Model 3s

 

[xpilot]

Wow! So glad that things are okay for you. Been thinking of grabbing a dash cam myself but I’ve been using Geohot’s Comma.ai (my old iPhone 5) as the medium and the instant cloud uploading is pretty slick. Haven’t attached anything to the windshield in the X just yet though so I’m still hesistsnt in which way to go.

 

[neptune2000]

When my husband showed up he pointed at the missing rear wheel and said “Well, there’s your problem!” followed closely by “that’ll buff right out!”

Hey, get a good lawyer and sue the crap out of the guy or his parents in Superior Court. Given your crash, it is not unusual that the payments would be in the tens of thousands. The video, when shown in court, will be a slam dunk. Get your Model 3 for free.

 

[SageBrush]

On a serious and personal note:

This accident is why people like me should drive a Model 3 type car: sparse dashboard and little distraction from gadgets, gizmos, dials, and meters. I am not so foolish as to text or yap on a phone, but numbers and meters for me are like a fly to a frog. All a subtle hint to keep my eyes on the road. OP's fast recognition and reflexes turned a possible head on collision into a scraper.

 

[Thomas Edison]

When my husband showed up he pointed at the missing rear wheel and said “Well, there’s your problem!” followed closely by “that’ll buff right out!”

Marry that man... oh wait

 

[Nuclear Fusion]

Glad you're OK -- very scary video!

In terms of dashcams, Vortex Radar just published their 'best dashcams" video here:

Personally, I like the Blacksys dashcam. It's a little less expensive than the blackview with almost all the same features, and what I consider a better looking form factor (it's the one the BBmyCar guy uses -- the one in the video was pulled from his car, while all the other ones were just unboxed -- so that says something).

I feel like everyone just gets the blackview because everyone else does too. There are other options. If I didn't get the blackview, I'd probably go for the Thinkware as a close second choice.

I also have the speed disabled in my dashcam so it can't be used against me if need to use the video as proof. But also, the speed reported by GPS is very accurate, usually more accurate than most car speedometers which can commonly read +/- 5mph.

My Thinkware F770 front cam just failed after 6 months. Simply wont start up & ive tested on a different power source
Let’s see how good their repair policy is under warranty.

 

[Ulmo]

I would be a bit concerned if it was determined to be intentional, as I think there are clauses in insurance policies excluding stuff like that. (Read a terrible case on r/insurance once where a pedestrian was intentionally hit by a car and they were denied any compensation by the driver’s insurance as intentional acts weren’t covered). Not sure how that would play out on my uninsured motorist coverage, which is what I will be using.

I think you're right to be concerned. I have read that clause in insurance many times (showing how worthless insurance can be), and every time, I interpreted it to myself to mean exactly how you described. Any intentional criminal act is not covered. I think they sometimes try to color that a little by saying intentional acts that are meant not to be criminal are OK, but I would expect many insurance policies to "accidentally (intentionally) leave that out".

 

[Ulmo]

This is a very interesting question that Tesla should answer. I'm sure Tesla would not want to be 'bothered' with legal requests like this where their system data would be used as evidence as that might pull them into court to answer technical questions about their systems (which may also force them to divulge proprietary information). At the end of the day, it's probably our responsibility to install dash cams. I'm now also in the market for one. I certainly would be interested in recommendations from the forum. What I hate about the ones that I've seen is the need for a continual power supply and the resulting need for ugly wires (Tesla – hint – why not put a USB port at the rear of the rear view mirror!).

I prefer if Tesla makes a good human-oriented policy on this and sticks to it. Something like you, the owner, are allowed access to your data and no one else is. The only way you can get it is to make a PGP key, and then Tesla will submit the data to you encrypted to your PGP key, and then Tesla will delete the data. Or, alternatively, Tesla encrypts the data themselves with multiple PGP keys, and then they hand the PGP keys and data to you, and destroys the originals on their end.

This won't solve everything, but it will at least make the data available, with some measure of resistance to bad use.

 

[Ulmo]

Im so glad you're ok Az_Real. I used to live in Valencia and frequented Bouquet Canyon. That's a road that requires more attention. Great job swerving! What part of the canyon did this happen?

Scary indeed. I drive with the basic premise that people on the road want to survive, and care for some of the other drivers too (and can't tell which so have to care for all of them). A death-cult society isn't compatible with that basic premise, and that does scare me. I'm very happy Az_Rael is ok.

 

[Ulmo]

Offtopic...
Going to the US->UK is generally fine for being on the other side of the road for most people, unless you're starting a drive in the middle of the night there are enough other cars around for you to automatically know where you should be. The problem I see most people have is being on the wrong side of the lane. You're used to seeing | X ... | and now you're seeing | ... X | so you unconsciously start drifting left. It only takes a short period of time to adjust though. Maybe a separate thread on the topic would be good, with tips on what people are likely to experience as unusual.

Ontopic....
Great job swerving to make the impact much smaller than it could have been. You could well have saved his life, you certainly reduced the injuries on both yourself and him. I hope my reactions are as good if it ever comes to it.

Another great example of why a dash cam is well worth the money, being able to definitely show what happened is awesome.

Caution: Teslas are not invincible. She could have likely saved her own life as well by avoiding the crash. There are many reports of people driving Teslas that get hurt in crashes; even though Teslas are far safer, they are not harm-free. Even some famous Tesla crashes have been fatalities: Los Gatos, the guy with the movie and AP, the thief, etc.

 

[Ulmo]

I was on that road last month after I missed my turn to 14 on the way to Palmdale.
No moon night, wholly unfamiliar territory and speed demon locals.....no fun.
There but by the grace of god.....
Glad no one was hurt.
Woulda loved to have seen the air bags deploy on the video.

One sand hill road I am thinking of in California (not the one of the OP) has a lot of speed demons on it, for the simple reason California has hundreds of miles of nearly useless sandy areas, so to go for a carton of milk and be back in time before it's time to go to bed requires driving like crazy. Some of those roads scare the hell out of me, and one such road made my decision for me that I would not commute on it. On that road, I saw slow minded people in slow cars that would never, ever drive fast in real life in any other circumstance crossing the road on every turn and going over maximum safe speed, just because it took hours to go anywhere. The freezing wind and sinkholes everywhere also made the proposition low value to begin with, and zero value after contemplating the road.

Your speed demon locals reminded me of that. There is such a thing as a road where "speed demon locals" are a thing, and for those, I recommend going during perfect conditions (well fed, well slept, tires broken in, sporty car with great crash safety, well lit, not freezing, low dust, low tumbleweed, low traffic, dry), if at all.

 

[Az_Rael]

I got a VIN already! Unless that's a placeholder or something. 1986 will be easy to remember.

Edit: looks like a 2017 model year if I am decoding that right.

 

[evp]

Yippee yea! Hmmm.... VINs above 2000 have already been spotted in the wild. Maybe they've been saving that one for you.

 

[Az_Rael]

Yippee yea! Hmmm.... VINs above 2000 have already been spotted in the wild. Maybe they've been saving that one for you.

Maybe it's one of the ones sitting in that giant lot outside the factory. Since all you pick is color and wheels, they are probably just cranking them out and matching folks once they order.

 

[Innovo]

Making lemonade out of lemons. Got hit today by a dude with no license and no insurance. Video here;

You can see that he appeared to decide to hit me. Not sure what the deal was, just very, very glad we were both OK. I went to urgent care after the car was towed for some X-rays, and am chilling at home with ice packs now. My first experience with airbags.

Here are the remains of my baby. Very glad I was in such a safe car. I was going about 55 I think when he hit me. Who knows how fast he was going. I had JUST put on my gray Arachnid wheels a month or so ago. Ah well.

View attachment 268054 View attachment 268055 View attachment 268056 View attachment 268057

Anyway: I chose a Blue Model 3 and got the 19" rims. Lemonade day. .

Wow! I'm glad you are okay!!!!

 

[int32_t]

That's like my worst fears of driving on an undivided road, realised. Oncoming driver in wrong lane —

 

[Az_Rael]

WOW. Tesla just called me and was ready to deliver my car next week! Unfortunately I will be out of town until the 31st for the holidays, so I had to delay it until 2018.

Guess I had better get financing arranged, insurance going, etc! At least I won't have to worry about driving the insurance rental for very long, LOL

I am guessing that VIN I got was one sitting in one of the lots already built. Wow, again!

 

[1speed]

So being a Model S owner bumped you up literately to the front of the line? I'm asking because we are thinking of adding a 3 to our family, and I assumed it would put me somewhere in the middle of the pack. I would have thought the list of S/X owners buying 3s to be much longer.