Hacker News Reader

Comment by bigtones | Hacker News Reader

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...

View on HN

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.

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.

>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!

  >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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com