A Mistake in a Tesla and a Panicked Final Call: The Death of Angela Chao | Hacker News Reader

A Mistake in a Tesla and a Panicked Final Call: The Death of Angela Chao

wsj.com

> While making a three-point turn, she had put the car in reverse instead of drive, she said. It is a mistake she had made before with the Tesla gearshift. The car had zipped backward, tipping over an embankment and into a pond.

I've shifted to the wrong gear before during parking and so forth, luckily not causing an accident but it caused me to reevaluate my methods. Now after shifting (on an automatic) I let my foot off the brake and let the car creep a little bit before adding throttle if required. If I was in the wrong gear I would step on the brake immediately and the car would only have moved a couple inches.

Yes many vehicles have a electronic display on the dash showing the selected gear but an additional confirmation is always the safest. It's like how you shouldn't completely rely on the hot surface light on a stove or the loaded chamber indicator on a handgun.

The article also seemed to imply that Chao applied a decent amount of throttle right after shifting gears, causing the car to careen into the pond before she could react. While I can't speak for the exact conditions here but that's not something you should do especially at night with poor visibility.

When I picked up my '23 Model Y, by default it's set not to creep and since it's single-pedal driving, lifting a foot off the brake does nothing. I have my Tesla in "chill mode" though, so I can lightly press the pedal and it'll accelerate very slowly.

She put the Tesla in reverse by mistake and backed into a pond.

The Tesla part seems pretty incidental to this unless their gear controls are unusually confusing and easy to misuse. My Honda controls are not the conventional automatic shift--although Reverse is very clearly differentiated from Drive and it would be hard to press one rather than the other absent just a real mental error.

I thought the bigger issue was the inability to escape the vehicle once it was underwater. I don’t know the extent to which (1) heavier EVs sink faster than similar-class ICE vehicles, (2) EVs generally are hard to get out of because windows lack manual controls compared to ICE vehicles, or (3) Teslas are particularly lacking in escape mechanisms. Seems like the lesson is to have a window hammer and to break the window before the vehicle fills with water.

Model X's laminated glass is near impossible to break underwater according to the article.

Instead of a window hammer, in the US you could probably use a handgun to shatter the glass instead.

The Cybertruck though uses "bulletproof glass", so you can't even shoot your way to escape - it'll just make a hole to make the car sink faster.

> That is terribly difficult underwater and can be even more so when trying to bash through tempered glass or sturdier laminated glass, which most car companies use today. Those are the two types of glass that Tesla may have used in its 2020 Model X, according to company documents. Laminated glass, in particular, is lauded for its safety qualities, such as preventing a driver from being ejected during a crash; however it is nearly impossible to break underwater, according to testing done by the American Automobile Association.

So it sounds like it's a mixed bag from a safety perspective — you're less likely to be ejected, but more likely to drown. It's not crazy to choose this type of design if ejections are much more likely.

However, it seems like any car sold with this glass should come with a warning and perhaps an included safety tool to escape. I wonder if the AAA testing utilized window hammers or just regular brute force.

An accessible window hammer is probably not the worst thing to carry.

On the other hand, there's a bunch of safety and maintenance gear you could load in your car that most people will never need and it's not clear how much of that makes sense unless you routinely travel to remote locations outside of cell phone service.

Given how discombobulating it would be to drive into a lake, it would probably make sense to have a window hammer on both sides, or watch a youtube video or two about ways to break out of cars without window hammers. This would be less necessary if you're in a vehicle with mechanical door pulls, where window egress would not be as crucial.

I assume the vast majority of cars have mechanicaal door pulls. In fact, I'm a bit surprised to learn it's not universal--seems like a big potential safety hazard.

I have no idea how hard it is to open a door with a mechanical pull if you drive into a lake although I imagine I could learn online.

I believe it's hard when the vehicle doesn't have water inside, since you're effectively pushing against the external water pressure. But once the car is full/near-full of water, it becomes much easier — just like opening a door regularly.

They all have mechanical door pulls, it is mandatory.

Yeah, I just talked with a Rivian engineer (who owns a Tesla) and he said that all these vehicles have mechanical pulls, but the problem is that they are hidden and people don't know where they are. It's kind of odd the article didn't mention this fact and enlighten the readers as to how to avoid the same fate!

Here's how to do it in a Model 3. [1] Apparently it differs by vehicle.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mu-tJc-BgaI

On the X/Y/3 front doors the pull handles are kind of where you expect it on a normal car, at least the ones I've seen.

I think it's a case of car manufacturers not optimizing for safety where there's no federal regulations for. There's no incentive for manufacturers to make their cars safer for scenarios not tested by regulation.

I watched a video on car safety about this [1] - initially regulators only tested for head-on collisions, but when they started testing for slightly skewed head collisions (which is also a common crash scenario), all the cars that passed with flying colors previously failed in this new test.

[1] https://youtu.be/OnWpZKhDgAo

> (2) EVs generally are hard to get out of because windows lack manual controls compared to ICE vehicles

My '07 ICE vehicle has non-manual windows. I thought basically everything except the very very cheapest did these days.

True, this should refer to door/window controls. My '07 ICE and '14 PHEV both have electric window controls but also have manual door pulls. My understanding is that it's not hard to open a door with a manual door pull after the water pressure equilibrates, assuming the door wasn't badly damaged in the crash.

I haven't had a window crank on decidely non-luxury vehicles since the early 90s at the latest.

I assumed it meant computer controlled, versus a switch directly powering the window motor

The doors on the Tesla have a flap below the button to open the door. If you pull it backwards, it manually opens the door.

If I backed into a pond, I'd pull the flap and get out before the car sinks.

EDIT: looks like this only applies to the newer models.

https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/model-x-emergency-op...

It isn't very easy on an older model x

As soon as the car door gets (partly) underwater (i.e. not too many seconds), even a sliding door could be incredibly difficult to open if it also had to be pushed outward first. Breaking the glass (or somehow still managing to slide the window) could be more realistic options, barring lucky cases of sinking unusually slowly.

The electronic door poppers should be illegal. They’re so clearly a safety hazard with no cost or function/ease of use upside.

Other brands that aren’t Tesla don’t go to such great lengths to hide the emergency releases, too.

I wonder which EVs these are? My Ioniq 5 has standard door and window controls. The doors still open when the 12V is disconnected. Maybe I should be glad I have a plebeian Hyundai.

My dad keeps a hammer in his Tesla to break a window in case he's trapped in without the windows working.

Will that work in a Cybertruck?

Can't promise, but since a steel ball just about broke through I imagine a few determined thwacks with a sledgehammer would do it.

https://youtu.be/BqGf8pqCZi0

Stalks or not?

Actually, I think it’s a significant omission as to whether or not her Tesla X had the old stalks, or the new “screen only” gear configuration (well, there are buttons overhead for gearing but they’re not intended as the primary selector).

I have a Tesla Y with stalks. I’ve test drove the new controls and personally would never buy a Tesla (or any other brand) with the new controls. I don’t buy MKBHD’s assertion that you get used to them.

The article says the family had 3 Teslas. Again, no mention of whether there was a mix of controls among those cars or if they all had one or the other set of stalks (or not). But the family doesn’t blame the car.

> The Tesla part seems pretty incidental to this unless their gear controls are unusually confusing and easy to misuse.

Don't EVs usually accelerate faster from a stop? That could also make it harder to react in time if she expected to be going forward onto a road.

As someone who's never been inside a tesla - I would not be surprised if Reverse is a touchscreen control. Probably next to a windshield wipers icon.

It is on the newer ones. You swipe up on a touch control to go into drive, down to go into reverse. It's a horrible design that shouldn't be legal.

It's worse than that actually. The newer Tesla's actually include a "beta feature" to guess which way you want to go. The idea is you should never have to use the touchscreen: When you put your foot on the brake the car automatically selects F or R based on what the sensors see. Like in a parking lot if you parked nose in, it would see another car or wall in front of you, so it would assume you want to go in reverse.

It's labeled beta and disabled by default, but lots of Tesla features are labeled beta and still get used a ton.

That’s terrible. You should never have to use a touchscreen for basic driving functionality.

Wait, is that _real_? That’s ridiculous.

I'm glad I have an old Model S!

The person who wrote the article may have been paid by the word.

It would be interesting to read a publication which paid staff to convey the message efficiently.

It would but the incentives of the Internet (SEO, clickbait, etc.) broke the "inverted pyramid" philosophy in journalism.

https://archive.is/x0lvr

It is my understanding that, because of the durability of the glass in the doors and sunroof, Tesla doors And windows are designed to automatically open when the vehicle becomes submerged. I'm curious as to why this did not happen in this particular situation.

assets.msn.com faster than wsj.com; for me, yes; ymmv

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-mistake-in-a-tesla-and-a...

Text-only, no Javascript:

     tnftp -o'|grep -Eo "\"body\":\".+\"readTimeMin\""' \
     https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/BB1jAkIW \
     |(echo "<meta charset=utf-8>";sed 's/\"body\":\"//;s/\\//g;
     s/\",\"readTimeMin\"//') > 1.htm

     firefox ./1.htm
     links -force-html 1.htm

The primary point of the article seems to be that the WSJ authors were shocked to discover that even rich people can drown if they drive their car into a pond.

Maybe if she had put the window down, instead of texting her friends, she would have lived?

Reality once again demonstrated it's priority over modern make believe life.

It's sad that this person lost their life because of this...

> In 2016, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration denied a petition to require carmakers to equip every vehicle with a glass-breaking tool, saying the effectiveness of such a tool isn't known.

That's some bizarre logic. Demand that the tool be effective, industry can get together and design a proper tool.

Having seen more than a few bipping videos, I am inclined to think that there are extremely 'effective' ways to shatter car glass. It's possible this trick doesn't work on laminated glass used in Teslas and other higher-end vehicles, but I've heard of Teslas getting hit — especially the rear corner windows, which give access to the trunk.

I suppose the logic is more that the amount of people able to save themselves, even given the tool, is a rather low number.

How do the shifters work in teslas? A lot of the more recent shifters I've seen in cars just seem very dangerous compared to classic designs-- no feedback, etc.

I'm kinda surprised a ranch property wasn't equipt to get a car out of the water or break its windows.

Article says she had a Tesla Model X. Looking online, it appears you shift by either using the touchscreen or some small capacitive buttons that are probably easy to mispress[1].

This is a radical opinion, but that’s the sort of UX malfeasance that should be punished by drawing and quartering even if it doesn’t result in a customer’s death.

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7dCo3EngU0E

It's not a "button", it's a slider. It's not easy to "mispress". And I don't think that slider is present on older Model X, so she probably pushed the stalk up to go into reverse. Which IMO is less confusing than most automatic shifter levers, where you have to remember than pulling it _back_ makes the car go forward.

https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/modelx/en_us/GUID-E9B387D...

Tesla calls them “buttons” that you “press”

Doesn’t matter - you can go and check a cybertruck review or something to see what that looks like. It’s no easier to screw up than a traditional shifter of any kind. I wonder what the toxicology report will say. I could see how someone under influence would not recognize in which direction they’re moving

Oh wow. I legit dislike touch screens for safety critical work.

Shifting ought to be something mechanical that you can’t mistake. It gets imprinted on muscle memory.

My personal rule is I should be able to let my fingers do the seeing. Without looking change turn signals, change gears, adjust volume, AC etc.

Conventional shifters don't rely on directional analogies at all. To go into reverse, you move the stick to the 'R', to drive you move it to 'D'. A directional analogy, while simpler on paper, is much easier to mess up if you forget it.

In mine, you press up to shift into reverse, and down to shift into drive, and there are no other options since there's no such thing as "gears" per se.

It's super noticeable when you go into reverse, because all screens become backup cameras and the mirrors tilt down so you can see your rear corners. It may play a different ding noise when you shift one vs the other but I can't recall.

Also, you know, humans are perfectly capable of knowing they are moving backwards. Some sort or sensor fusion SLAM Kalman filter AI in the brain.

> buying an Italianate mansion downtown and a sprawling ranch just under an hour west.

TIL that Italianate means "Italian in character or appearance".

Sort of like Jordan Schlansky.

Suicide by deregulation, essentially.

So are the conspiracies that Tesla is a Saneer-Weeksbooth assasination front, China kills their trade partners kids, threat to force Mitch McConnell out, or… I don’t want to delve into 4chan, Hedge fund TX billionaire rantings or Johnson City diner counter theories.

You probably should have mentioned that the article talks a little about the conspiracy theories that have been circulating about this incident, but does not go into much detail about them, and that you are asking for more detail.

Most people reading the comments here probably have not read the article, and are going to miss that you are asking for more details rather then pushing conspiracy theories yourself.

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