Two dead after Tesla drives into back of parked semi at FL rest stop

It would be very helpful if they could report whether bystanders saw the car drive at full speed off the freeway into the rest stop. If so, that looks more like it’s the car’s fault. If it was momentary acceleration after a normal-speed exit from the freeway, then it’s more likely driver error. For example, the driver might have been fully in control, but then tried to brake but hit the accelerator instead of the brake pedal. Teslas have such incredible acceleration that even a momentary mistake could be fatal. That’s one uniquely dangerous aspect of Teslas. There are plenty of other very fast cars out there, but senior citizens (who aren’t car enthusiasts) don’t tend to buy them. Even among sports cars, the low end torque of a Tesla is probably unmatched.

There wouldn't be a headline if this was anything but a Tesla.

117 People die per day in the US alone from automobile accidents

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...

Fair point, but slamming into large, stationary vehicles seems to be a recurring theme for the autopilot incidents. I'd put my money on this being autopilot.

This implication a 66 year old with decades of successful driving experience is likely to crash doesn't track.

https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/overview/age-of-dr...: drivers 65 to 74 account for 13.7% of licensed drivers, but represent only 6.9% of drivers in all crashes and 7.7% of drivers in fatal crashes.

Probably, they sold all rights to their stories to a company in your region.

The amount of revenue that is tied to EU visits is smaller than the cost of making technical changes and paying legal to verify that everything is GDPR-compliant.

One of my colleagues, a young and smart man 100% relies on Auto Pilot for a certain routine 400+ mile commute between cities. We have talked to him about it, his experience of never seeing it fail IMO creates a false sense of security in relation to Auto Pilot for him. I doubt he is alone in this kind of thinking.

Or could be that similar accidents happen fairly frequently with other cars but links are not posted to HN because they won’t result in a discussion. Tesla posts, on the other hand, lead to a never ending heated criticism.

Judging from the photo in the article, the truck was parked in a parking space, and somebody... just pulled into the space without realizing the truck was there? It's possible that the truck was moved to its position in the photo subsequent to the accident and that the accident occurred elsewhere, but from the way the car is embedded in the truck, I am disinclined to believe that.

Assuming that the photo depicts the location correctly, my first guess is that an automatic parking feature is involved, because I would be surprised that any driver--much less one with a passenger in the front seat--would so completely miss the fact that an eighteen-wheeler truck is in the parking space while attempting to park there, and continue to miss it for so long to embed the car that deep underneath.

Everything happens in an instant.

[1] has a slightly clearer wording (emphasis mine):

> According to FHP, a 66 year old female driver was behind the wheel of a 2015 Tesla traveling southbound on I-75 at mile marker 382, when, for unknown reasons, the Tesla left the interstate and crashed into the trailer of a truck parked at the Paynes Prairie Rest Area.

That is, the Tesla wasn't intentionally driving around in the rest area -- it started out on the highway, but swerved off the road and ended up hitting a truck in the rest area. So the car was probably travelling at highway speeds, and had tons of momentum when it hit the truck.

[1]: https://cdllife.com/2022/two-people-in-tesla-killed-after-cr...

Why do you think there was no guard? It's not entirely clear in the picture, but it looks to me like there is a frame extending down from the back of the trailer to about mid-door level on the car.

The photo looks like the bar was there, and sliced through the car.

An image search for "Walmart truck" shows up something like this as exemplary of the backside of the truck: https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/walmart-truck-gm1081922326..., and I'm not seeing any photos with that bar missing.

Admittedly, the photo on the article does manage to almost perfectly obscure where the bar would have been. You can clearly see the ladder steps on the right, but the bar that would be below it is obscured by the lid of the EMTs' toolbox.

Open up a larger version of the image in the article here (yay for URLs): https://cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/..., and you can actually just make out the red/white flashing on the bar below the bottom rung of the ladder and the lid of the toolbox. So the bar was clearly there. It also more clearly shows that the bar cleaved through the frunk pretty easily.

The trailer has a guard in the photo, and the right side looks intact. If the Tesla was traveling fast enough, it may have sliced itself in half, above and below the guard. Most of the mass in a Tesla is the battery, below the guard.

I wonder if the Tesla having a trunk in the front instead of a big heavy engine makes the difference there.

Maybe, maybe not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3MPKLy9qHU

People just want to feel smug about a Tesla crashing due to all the misinformation they've been reading.

The driver of that vehicle surely suffered due consequences for how they discharged their responsibility.

Tesla is not so far.

The driver of that vehicle only posrssed the power to affect a very smmall number of people with their irresponsible act.

The maker of that car isn't making claims that you can drive their cars drunk, and that car didn't have a "drunkpilot" button.

Elon is voluntarily pushing something which is unwise, wich affects many many more people. The primary guilt is the marketing not the tech itself. There is no excuse for any of these accidents, because human behavior is very well studied. You don't get to create the option to let a car drive itself, and name it autopilot, and then claim ignorance and innocense when people get in the back seat and go to sleep and every other crazy thing, no matter what you write in a manual somewhere.

When, Toyota has even a mere gas pedal glitch, it's a huge deal and all the cars get recalled and fixed, and it was a legitomate honest error while trying to be responsible, not an error while trying to be irresponsible.

Tesla deserves far more heat than they are getting.