Parents were injured in a Tesla crash. She ended up having to pay Tesla damages | Hacker News Reader

Parents were injured in a Tesla crash. She ended up having to pay Tesla damages

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Edited: Very similar to another Tesla crash in China with a social media protest. In that crash the brake lights did not come on at all. In fact the acccelerator was pressed down 100% for a full five seconds before the crash which was entirely the drivers fault.

The defendant knew this and Tesla gave the family the car telemetry data, but continued to falsely protest that the brakes were depressed during a lengthy social media campaign, and as a result determined by a Chinese court Telsa was awarded damages and the family was asked to publicly apologize.

https://carnewschina.com/2023/03/02/tesla-model-y-crash-inve...

Different crash. Article crash had people injured. Your link is a fatal crash.

OP's article is about a Model 3 crash, yours is about a Model Y.

Thanks, amended post.

It seems the facts of the story are similar though. In the Zhang case, they were driving 50 mph over the speed limit. Brakes were depressed, but not hard or early enough. Automatic braking kicked in, which caused the brake pedal to be depressed much harder, but not enough to avoid the crash (and possibly led to driver believing that there was a brake failure?).

At least, this is what I found [1] while trying to understand the story a bit better. Who knows what's true?

[1] https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/model-3-braking-fail...

> In the Zhang case, they were driving 50 mph over the speed limit. Brakes were depressed, but not hard or early enough.

... according to Tesla themselves. Why would we automatically believe their version of events? They could easily have fabricated that data.

There's no proof either way, so we must weigh facts ourselves. Which lie is more likely - an embarrassed driver who wrecked their new Tesla at 50 over the speed limit in a culture that values saving face, or a company with deep pocketbooks to compensate the occasional malfunction instead chooses to risk their entire authorization to sell to 1/5th of the earth by attempting fabricate millions of data points perfectly, any one of which could reveal their lie. The conspiracy levels one entertains can vary a lot person to person. I'm not implying the answer is obvious. It's up to each reader to choose their world model.

given recent events: the latter.

Yesterday was Wednesday. Different day. It was raining last night. Nothing can be inferred from which direction the sun will rise.

  >Dozens of Tesla owners had been publicly complaining about alleged brake failures, battery fires, unintended acceleration and other defects

Yep, "dozens" sounds like simply the base rate for humans pushing the wrong pedal, especially since they bizarrely lump that number in with fires (extremely rare compared to gas cars) and an absurdly sweeping catch-all category of "other defects."

Their one piece of 'data' is literally worthless, but I guess terrible journalism is fine as long as it's anti-Tesla.

It does recall to me the complaints about Audis about forty years ago. People were reluctant to tell drivers, No, you pushed on the accelerator, not the brake, but on the other hand nobody was able to propose a different and plausible explanation.

I'm perfectly happy with being anti-Tesla, by the way.

In France there is a detailled report of a Tesla in a similar accident, it end up speeding over 100km/h and killed a cyclist.

What's interesting is that after a red light acceleration was initially inhibited (don't remember exactly why), driver pressed on the accelerator more and more up to almost 100% but the car was not speeding up much.

Then when inhibition was lifted the car basically started a quarter mile and the driver was overwhelmed and just steered the car without lifting the accelerator until it crashed :(.

Edit: In this accident too, the driver thought he tried to stop but with no effect. AEBS was triggered, but the driver missed the notification and just accelerated more when the car started slowing down. A residual pressure in the breaking system meant that acceleration was initially limited.

The full report: https://www.bea-tt.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/bea...

after a red light acceleration was initially inhibited, driver pressed on the accelerator more and more up to almost 100% but the car was not speeding up much.

does anyone else see the problem in the design here? if acceleration is inhibited and then the inhibition is released, the accelerator should not activate in full force right away.

maybe acceleration should continue to be inhibited until the driver releases the accelerator before trying to use it again, or it should be locked so you can't press it down at all until the inhibition is lifted, but that too doesn't stop a driver from pressing down hard on it. though at least they would get feedback when acceleration starts.

>In that crash the brake lights did not come on at all. In fact the acccelerator was pressed down 100% for a full five seconds before the crash which was entirely the drivers fault.

According to Tesla's own telemetry!

The framing of this whole article is weird. Zhang is put forward as some kind of example of the favourable treatment Tesla is getting in the courts and how Tesla is silencing critics. Yet she was wrong about the cause of the accident and didn't just criticize, but actively protested at industry events and Tesla still didn't open their defamation suit until after she started hers.

I'm sympathetic to the idea behind this article, but it doesn't seem to actually do any of the work to justify it's conclusions.

I do think that owners should be given full access to all telemetry data from their vehicles and the fact that Tesla doesn't do this is very disappointing.

Journalism is a masterclass in how to deceive without lying.

Nice way to put it, stealing that one.

> Yet she was wrong about the cause of the accident

I don't think we can take that at face value. Tesla refused to release the pre-crash data for... weeks? Months? And only did so after perhaps it seemed like they might lose the case. Why not release the data immediately?

Sure, it's possible that the driver screwed up, and even if he really did cry out "the brakes aren't working!" as the woman claims, he was just confused and doing the wrong thing. But I wouldn't put it past Tesla to release fake vehicle telemetry that supports their case, either.

> But I wouldn't put it past Tesla to release fake vehicle telemetry that supports their case, either.

Perhaps, but there isn't any evidence of this, just speculation from an interested party. This speculation is what the whole premise of the article hinges on, but there is no support provided for it. Instead the article seems to bank on a readership that dislikes Musk so much that they don't engage any critical thinking skills .

The risk of being exposed for lying in court and faking telemetry data does not seem like it would be remotely worth it to win this lawsuit for Tesla.

>but there isn't any evidence of this, just speculation from an interested party.

Yes. If only something like a journalist can shed light on this and prompt such investigation.

...of course, this is a story in China, so we know none of their government will push on this.

>The risk of being exposed for lying in court and faking telemetry data does not seem like it would be remotely worth it to win this lawsuit for Tesla.

It would not... so that's exactly what Elon would do. Especiallg if he feels cozy with Chinese leaders.

Don't reify journalists.

And be careful not to engage in wishful thinking. Ascribing malice towards people you don't like is precisely what's wrong with both sides of politics.

It's terrible handling of the early stages from Tesla. Or they know their car is faulty and took their time to doctor the data.

But assuming not, they could have just released the data and called it quits. It's not inconceivable that the driver was "pressing the pedal wrong" - wasn't that the ultimate problem with the Toyotas in the US? But they managed to peeve off a customer so much that they went berserk and frankly too far. But it's easy to understand the anger.

It almost feels like no one in this thread worked at a company. Who's to decide to release it or not? Low level workers have no decision rights. Mid-management that handles this has to cooperate with technical and legal departments and juggle associated risks, including "my-ass" risks. Upper management won't "just do it" without waiting on detailed reports on the facts and implications.

One doesn't simply just do it at Tesla scale, it doesn't work like that. No other automotive company would release it quicker than until the courtroom, unless there was a pre-designed set of processes for doing so anytime. You may blame Tesla for being shady in that regard -- that's true, they are opaque and tricky and their leader is a Demon Lord. But doctoring the case in a non-legal-risky way would probably cost much more to them than just throwing some money at $subj. Imagine all these departments working together to fabricate something not easily debunkable by a curious nerd... That's 100K..1M budget range with unavoidably huge reputational risks.

In Europe in general you are entitled to access all data a company holds on you. I don't know if that specifically extends to Tesla telemetrics but I can't see why not. You can get all your data from Facebook and Google. So I don't think this is so impossible.

[Im]possible is a technical term. It's demonstrably possible, that's not a question. The problem is in incentives, which are naturally counter-aligned to this.

It seems that you're thinking on "a company is just a guy" level. But that is never true (except for nano companies with no structure). When there's no incentives but lots of risks and responsibilities, things just don't happen until there's a grave necessity -or- some envisioning directive that streamlines it.

well yea, that's the issue. It's a cultural issue and I assume China's culture isn't as consumer-friendly. Even the US has some states with data request mandates. If I request my data, they must deliver it within 60 days of the request. Tesla would have to "just do it" lest lawsuits occur over that.

>But doctoring the case in a non-legal-risky way would probably cost much more to them than just throwing some money at $subj

And given Musk he would do it. His ego is much bigger than any lawsuit.

Doctoring raw telemetry data is an insanely difficult proposition. This isn't like modifying database changelogs; a huge swath of sensor data would need to be modelled and simulated. If the telemetry includes camera data, the task becomes exponentially more difficult.

This is a major undertaking, would involve many employees, and those employees would be knowingly engaging in a criminal conspiracy. They'd be knowingly risking jail time if caught.

This hypothesis is, by any stretch of the imagination, beyond implausible.

If there's an actual problem with Chinese courts corruptly defending Tesla, why is this article presenting a case where Tesla seems to be in the right, rather than one in which the court made a clearly corrupt decision?

> rather than one in which the court made a clearly corrupt decision?

Are you aware of any clearly corrupt decisions?

The whole article is unrelated to the headline, it’s just a classic journalist turn. The authors already know who’s wrong without any hearings.

> why is this article presenting a case where Tesla seems to be in the right

The only evidence that the crash was caused by the driver was provided by Tesla themselves. Of course they would provide data to support their case, fabricated or otherwise.

It's weird that the woman in the article asked for Tesla to provide the pre-crash data, but they refused until much later, after the legal proceedings were going on. Why not provide that data immediately?

I can't think of a single company that would provide data upon request. Certainly Google, Microsoft, Apple, Ford, GM,Samsung, UPS, etc... wouldn't.

Good thing that's a state mandate in my state.

How would that matter in the case of malice? Modern cars are black boxes where the manufacturers could just choose to only hand over certain data or even modify it.

Unless I'm very mistaken, regulators/investigators are capable of independently reading a black box directly.

Tesla will however happily hold a press conference and use that data to imply you weren’t paying attention in a fatal accident, as happened a few years ago. Tesla: “our vehicle telemetry indicates the driver wasn’t paying attention, and in fact the vehicle had warned him of this”.

Reality: the driver had tripped -one- intention warning, and that was -eighteen minutes- before the crash. That part only came out after the NHTSA got involved, though…

Unusual that car black box data is not available to the car owner. I would expect it to be. With some effort, perhaps we can get it to be this way in California, though I suppose the fear is that the manufacturer will simply remove car telemetry in California if almost every car has something that could be twisted to be liability.

They eventually did in this story.

    Tesla had finally given Zhang what she’d been asking for, but they’d published the data publicly and included her vehicle identification number. She said she and her family started getting threatened and doxed online. Besides, she wondered, how could she be sure Tesla hadn’t modified or redacted the data from her car? It was less than the victory she’d hoped for. Feeling besieged, she sued Tesla a second time, in March 2022, for invading her privacy.
    
    Zhang lost both cases she brought against Tesla.

The problem isn't that the owner didn't get the data. The problem is that the method for getting the data is that you must beg Tesla for it, rather than just slurping it out of a USB port inside the car.

If Tesla is going to go to the trouble of uploading all this shit to the cloud anyway, the least they can do is give customers a no-questions-asked download button.

I agree with the sentiment, but in practice this is a horrific idea. Make it easy and it’ll be snaffled up by law enforcement, whether covertly, with intimidation, or with routine warrants.

It's currently accessible to law enforcement via the law-abiding manufacturer acting as sole custodian. I don't see how this makes any difference.

Not only do you have to beg Tesla for it, but you have to trust that Tesla hasn't doctored the data to corroborate the narrative that Tesla wants.

You say that like there's any plausible alternative. Unless you're compiling the source code running on the car, you are trusting the manufacturer.

This is factually not true. You fill out a single form on their website and get it less than a week later:

https://www.tesla.com/support/privacy#data-provided

There’s tons of anecdotes of people doing this very easily online. Good luck getting data this easily from any other major manufacturer

That counts as begging from my point of view.

> Good luck getting data this easily from any other major manufacturer

This is an industry-wide problem.

If that's begging then signing up for literally any website is begging the website for an account

I believe massachitses has such a law on the books but is currently being sued by aitomalers so can't enforce it

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/02/11/business/automotive-r...

>massachitses

>aitomalers

Are you feeling OK?

Consider just ignoring posts with bad spelling altogether: https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/strikeout/

Wow. That's... Dramatic.

If you internally transliterated it correctly without much effort, why do you care? They might as well be the same word.

Correct/incorrect spelling/grammar/vocabulary only matters practicalky if using the "incirrect one" causes ambuguity in the giben context.

My mind stumbles upon it and loses the flow of thought. I tend to just ignore posts like that too after a couple of strikes (mistakes are fine, second language-ing is fine, leftovers are not fine). Don’t have linguistic respect, don’t have my attention.

That's the result of 2am swiping on my phone without looking, lol.

I upvoted the post just to show solidarity with the auto-correct gone wrong tribe

If the reason of the accident was responsibility of the user and then blamed the company, then I think is fair.

Especially like people in the US where people use the auto-drive function completely unattended, just to blame the company later.

"It is not common practice for automakers — in China or elsewhere — to sue their customers. But Tesla has pioneered an aggressive legal strategy and leveraged the patronage of powerful leaders in China’s ruling Communist Party to silence critics, reap financial rewards and limit its accountability."

Everyone missing the big picture here with this statement. This is not usual at all, doesn't matter about stuff like "driver error".

That's an example of the article being egregiously misleading.

It implies that Tesla used the courts to silence an innocent customer, when in fact the customer sued Tesla first. And also second. Given the actions of the customer, I'd argue that Tesla's strategy was quite restrained. There's no evidence of this being a "strategy".

As for the latter half of the paragraph, is there any evidence for any of that? Because it's certainly not presented in the article. Was any patronage "leveraged" here? Was any genuine critic silenced? Was any accountability limited?

Maybe, but there's no evidence for it.

The customer initially sued Tesla because they were refusing to provide the data. Apparently, to you, that’s overreaching by the customer.

And then when they did, they didn’t release it to her, they published it publicly, with identifying information leading to her allegedly receiving threats (when we all know Tesla fans would never ever harass detractors).

Regardless of who was actually at fault, the contortions you go through to paint this as a “restrained” response would likely put a pretzel to shame.

To be clear, I think Tesla should be providing that information to customers upon request. And I think all carmakers should be obligated to do so. But Tesla aren't currently obligated to do so under normal circumstances, and I can imagine why they wouldn't want to set a precedent prematurely. (As the saying goes, hard cases make bad law.)

> Apparently, to you, that’s overreaching

I didn't say that. I wouldn't say that. Putting words into my mouth isn't conducive to truth seeking, or basic conversational decency. I would never consider exercising one's legal rights to be overreach. The same goes for Tesla when they exercise their legal rights. My point is that this particular matter isn't a useful point to extrapolate Tesla's "strategy".

Tesla has sold a massive number of cars in China and across the world; presumably a large fraction going to reasonably wealthy people with the means to seek redress. If there was a systemic issue here, we'd expect to see far more evidence of it than this.

> allegedly receiving threats

I don't know the finer details of this specific case, but it seems this customer has a proven track record of making misleading statements for media attention. They don't get my benefit of the doubt, and they don't deserve yours.

> the contortions you go through to paint this as a “restrained” response

All I said to justify Tesla's actions as 'restrained' was "Given the actions of the customer". I'm confused where you allege the the pretzel-like contortion to be.

Another interesting flagged article related to negative news about Tesla

It's flagged because it's clickbait. The article is about a customer who tried to extort Tesla with false/misleading accusations designed to inflict reputational harm, then took it too far by suing Tesla, and then suing them again.

"The company has also sued at least six bloggers and two Chinese media outlets that wrote critically about the company, according to a review of public court documents"

From the article. It's more than just a single customer who they sued.

This article is about one customer.

If you want to assert that some other cases represent evidence of anything, I'd certainly be interested to read about it. But I'm not going to extrapolate that single sentence into a moral judgement — as though we're supposed to assume that anything Tesla does is bad until proven otherwise.

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