How the hell the Tesla managed to hit a truck at what looks like highway speeds there is hard to imagine. If this was an FSD or autopilot failure, it would be by far the most egregious I’ve seen.
From the map it likely followed the traffic sweep in feeder to the rest stop and identified the parked vehicles as traffic ahead on what was assumed to be a highway.
By my understanding many Tesla models lack Lidar for ranging and speed estimates and operate solely on relatively limited PoV vision cameras.
IIRC: Elon Musk’s Crash Course (althugh there may be several, I'd have to check my records for the one(s) that I've viewed).
I am intensely curious what really does happen if you try to get a refund for FSD. (That, whether or not this was actually an FSD event.)
Presumably, you signed some BS about arbitration, so you go to arbitration. What then? Maybe their tame arbitrator says "f** off", so then you sue. Does Tesla contest it, or pay? If not, and it goes to court, does Tesla default and get ordered to pay?
Has anybody got a judge to order treble damages, for bad faith and for making you need to go to court just to get back what you paid for what they utterly failed to deliver?
It seems like there could be a specialty in suing Tesla for refusing a refund. And, there must be a fair number of cases either settled or adjudicated already.
https://i.imgur.com/YKtf8Jj.jpg (4032 x 3024 pixels)
I recall in Europe these became mandatory decades ago when a similar crash happened, killing one person, the family of which fought a long battle to have these bars become mandatory (which a couple of years later saved my father's life when he launched to overtake a truck, that suddenly decided to brake hard and turn left without notice at the last second).
edit: seems like in 2015, 2% were killed this way in Germany (where it's been mandatory for decades) vs 16% in the US https://www.dekra-roadsafety.com/fr/protection-anti-encastre...
Those are only rated for impacts to 35 mph. From the position of the Tesla in the image, it may have been travelling substantially faster.
The Tesla is also a deceptively massive automobile for its size, with much of that mass being low, in particular below the position of an underride bar, which might otherwise engage with the engine of a conventional vehicle. Effectively, the Tesla has a longer lever arm to apply force to the undderride bar. Whether or not that is a factor in Tesla-trailer collisons isn't clear, but might be something that warrants investigation and testing.
I don't know if all of them have it, or if it's mandated, but a lot of trailers do have those bars on the rear end.